DaveBrt
1st Lieutenant
- Joined
- Mar 6, 2010
- Location
- Charlotte, NC
From Richmond Examiner, 9/6/61:
Camp Bartow, Near Manassas, Sept. 2, 1861
To the Editor of the Examiner,
Your paper has been so energetic in behalf of soldiers that I take the liberty of making a complaint to you of certain treatment we have received. The Ninth Georgia Regiment was paid off yesterday, and the difficulty was in the mode and means of payment. The Government agent brought no change or small bills with him, and we were obliged to take from him large bills of fifty dollars and twenty dollars, and left to make sub-settlements among ourselves. Our pay was for nineteen days of June, and a commutation of twenty-one dollars for clothes, amounting to twenty-seven 96/100 dollars. Instead of paying each private as his name was called, he required us to sign the receipt first, and then paid to the captain of each company all the dues of his company in a lump. The result is, we cannot get our money, because we cannot change the fifty dollar bills. The agent said he would not pay any individual private unless we could make the change -- as if, Mr. Editor, we could get change better than the Government, and as if we could be expected to have change here, cut off as we are by restrictions of military law from all the rest of the world. That is a commodity scarce now everywhere, and never abundant except in commercial places. Is it not an injustice, in your opinion, that we should be cut off from our pay, long needed, because we have no change?
Suppose we had a little money left -- it is what we brought from home with us, and is all in gold, which is worth 8 or 10 per cent premium -- is it fair to demand us to give that up? Moreover, many of the bills are on little banks in distant places -- no Government money -- but on banks in Leesburg, Grafton, Romney, Charleston, and other places, which, for aught we know, may not be good. We have no way of knowing either. This makes the case still harder. Our money now lies in our captain's hand in large bills, that we can never change or get changed, without a considerable discount. Meantime we need it to buy our tobacco, or our candles and sugar, neither of which are given us now in rations, because they say they cannot be had. The Sutlers at Manassas have them, and we could buy it if we were fairly and honestly paid.
I state the above to you as an instance in which the Ninth Georgia Regiment is seriously imposed on, and all the others, too, perhaps, in Gen. Jones' Brigade.
I am, sir, &c,
Vol.
Camp Bartow, Near Manassas, Sept. 2, 1861
To the Editor of the Examiner,
Your paper has been so energetic in behalf of soldiers that I take the liberty of making a complaint to you of certain treatment we have received. The Ninth Georgia Regiment was paid off yesterday, and the difficulty was in the mode and means of payment. The Government agent brought no change or small bills with him, and we were obliged to take from him large bills of fifty dollars and twenty dollars, and left to make sub-settlements among ourselves. Our pay was for nineteen days of June, and a commutation of twenty-one dollars for clothes, amounting to twenty-seven 96/100 dollars. Instead of paying each private as his name was called, he required us to sign the receipt first, and then paid to the captain of each company all the dues of his company in a lump. The result is, we cannot get our money, because we cannot change the fifty dollar bills. The agent said he would not pay any individual private unless we could make the change -- as if, Mr. Editor, we could get change better than the Government, and as if we could be expected to have change here, cut off as we are by restrictions of military law from all the rest of the world. That is a commodity scarce now everywhere, and never abundant except in commercial places. Is it not an injustice, in your opinion, that we should be cut off from our pay, long needed, because we have no change?
Suppose we had a little money left -- it is what we brought from home with us, and is all in gold, which is worth 8 or 10 per cent premium -- is it fair to demand us to give that up? Moreover, many of the bills are on little banks in distant places -- no Government money -- but on banks in Leesburg, Grafton, Romney, Charleston, and other places, which, for aught we know, may not be good. We have no way of knowing either. This makes the case still harder. Our money now lies in our captain's hand in large bills, that we can never change or get changed, without a considerable discount. Meantime we need it to buy our tobacco, or our candles and sugar, neither of which are given us now in rations, because they say they cannot be had. The Sutlers at Manassas have them, and we could buy it if we were fairly and honestly paid.
I state the above to you as an instance in which the Ninth Georgia Regiment is seriously imposed on, and all the others, too, perhaps, in Gen. Jones' Brigade.
I am, sir, &c,
Vol.
Bringing the