They Were Surrounded By
A Sea Of Mud, And The Foul Hovels In Which They Were Made To Sleep
And Live Were Fetid With Stench And Reeking With Filth.
I had at
this time been joined by another Englishman, and we went through
this place together.
When we inquired as to the health of the men,
we heard the saddest tales - of three hundred men gone out of one
regiment, of whole companies that had perished, of hospitals crowded
with fevered patients. Measles had been the great scourge of the
soldiers here - as it had also been in the army of the Potomac. I
shall not soon forget my visits to Benton Barracks. It may be that
our own soldiers were as badly treated in the Crimea; or that French
soldiers were treated worse in their march into Russia. It may be
that dirt and wretchedness, disease and listless idleness, a descent
from manhood to habits lower than those of the beasts, are necessary
in warfare. I have sometimes thought that it is so; but I am no
military critic, and will not say. This I say - that the degradation
of men to the state in which I saw the American soldiers in Benton
Barracks is disgraceful to humanity.
General Halleck was at this time commanding in Missouri, and was
himself stationed at St. Louis; but his active measures against the
rebels were going on to the right and to the left. On the left
shore of the Mississippi, at Cairo, in Illinois, a fleet of gun-
boats was being prepared to go down the river, and on the right an
army was advancing against Springfield, in the southwestern district
of Missouri, with the object of dislodging Price, the rebel
guerrilla leader there, and, if possible, of catching him.
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