Vol. II. January, 1889. No. 8.
The patience with which mankind submits to the demands oftyrants has been the wonder of each succeeding age, and heroes aremade of those who break one yoke only to bow with servility to agreater. The Roman soldier, returning from wars in which hisvalor had won wealth and empire for his rulers, was easily contentto become first a tenant, and then a serf, upon the very lands hehad tilled as owner before his voluntary exile as his country’sdefender, kissing the hand that oppressed, so long as it dispensed,as charity, a portion of his tithes and rentals in sports and food.And now, after ages of wonder and criticism, the soldiers of ournineteenth-century civilization outvie their Roman prototypes insubmitting to exactions and injustice of which Nero was incapableeither of imagining or executing, bowing subserviently to the moreingenious tyrant of an advanced civilization, if but his hand dropfarthings of pensions in return for talents of extortion. It may notbe that the soldiers and citizens of America shall become so thoroughlydebauched and degraded, nor that the consequences of theirrevolt shall be a burning capitol and a terrified monopolist; but ifthese evils are to be averted, it will be only because fearless handstear the mask from our modern Neros, and tireless arms hold up topopular view the naked picture of national disgrace.
Twenty-eight years ago the first step had been taken towards thefinal overthrow of the objective form of human slavery. There were,even in those days, cranks who were dreaming of new harmoniesin the songs of liberty; and when tyranny opposed force to therighteous demands of constitutional government, ploughsharesrusted in the neglected fields, workshops looked to alien lands for162toilers, while patriots answered the bugle-call, and a nation wasfreed from an eating cancer. But what was the return for suchsacrifices? Surely, if ever were soldiers entitled to fair and fullreward, it was those who responded to the repeated call of Lincolnfor aid in suppressing the most gigantic rebellion of history—notin the form of driblets of charity, doled with cunning arts to securetheir submission to extortions, not offered as a bribe to unblushingperjury and denied to honest suffering, but simple and exact justice,involving a full performance of national obligation in return forthe stipulated discharge of the duty of citizenship. The simplestatement of facts of history will serve to expose the methods ofthose who pose as par excellence the soldiers’ friends and the defendersof national faith.
The soldiers who enlisted in the war of the rebellion were promisedby the government, in addition to varying bounties, a stipulatedsum of money per month. It requires no argument to prove thatthe faith of the government was as much pledged to the citizenwho risked his life, as to him who merely risked a portion of hiswealth in a secured loan to the government. But the recordshows that the pay of the former was reduced by nearly sixty percent, while the returns of the latter were doubled, trebled, andquadrupled; that in many cases government obligations were closedby the erection of a cheap cast-iron tablet over a dead hero, whilethe descendants of bondholders were guarded in an undisturbedenjoyment of the fruits of their ancestors’ greed. For, after thearmies were in the field, the same legislative enactment that reducedthe value of the soldier’s pay increased that of t