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THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE THEY STAY THE
SAME --
Veterans' Advocate Jim Strickland looks at a
veteran's claim from 1888.
Veterans' Advocate Jim Strickland
provides regular columns for VA Watchdog dot Org.
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The letter below was forwarded to me from a reader last week. It drives
home the fact that not much has changed for the wartime Veteran.
On this first day of 2007, I'm amazed at the
similarity to a Vet's woes in 1888.
I may just copy this and send it to my VARO
over my signature the next time I hear from them. I'm convinced it's
authentic.
The link to an original Internet posting of
this soldier's letter is here
http://www.suvcw.org/pr/art040.htm
Happy New Year!
Jim Strickland
................................................................................................
Brig. General John Charles Black
Commissioner of Pensions
in 1888
................................................................................................
Redwood, April 23, 1888
Mr. Black, Commissioner:
Dear Sir,
I've just got another one of your postal cards telling me to go before
the doctors and be examined. I've been getting these cards about every
new moon since I applied for an increase of my pension two years ago.
I've been examined, poked in the ribs, sounded in the lungs and made to
bend over the back of a chair and perform all sorts a monkey shines in
my shirt tail, till I feel I otter have a salary with an agent to go
ahead and stick up bills.
To begin with, you sent a couple of doctors up to Skin Creek, and it
took em half an hour to find out that the reason why they couldn't find
any circulation in my left leg was because it was made of wood. The next
time you sent me a little cuss with glasses down to Swampville, and
after fumbling me over long enough, he put my truss on hind side afore
and said the pad was intended to brace up my spinal column. Three or
four times after that you sent me odds and ends of doctors who couldn't
tell the difference between an epileptic symptom and a boiled clam, and
the last time you sent me before a full board of surgeons down to the
county seat. They came to this conclusion, nigh’ as I could catch on,
that something was wrong with my bladder. Now I have my opinions of a
doctor who don't know the difference between a man's bladder and his
bollix. Perhaps this is all right. It may be fun for the doctors. It was
fun for me for a while, but now that you order me back again to the
first two doctors up to Skin Creek, and probably expect me to start on
the same old circus over again, I'm going to kick like a brindled steer.
Last summer, because of the friskiness of a pair of colts, my wooden leg
got tangled and all chewed up to cinders in a mowing machine. I 'plied
to the Surgeon General for a new leg, but he said that I'd only had the
old one three years, and I'd have to wait two years more before the
government could afford to make a hole in the surplus by getting me a
new one. So I'm waiting and in all this interesting panorama of
examinations, I've been hobbling around on one leg, and doing my best to
prove that one of Uncle Sam's veterans, with one leg in the grave and
the other damn near in, is better than a corpse by several percent. But
honking' around in this way ain’t first class fun for a man with a
steady job. I've stood it for a good while without grumbling and I
suppose, furnished a lot of fun for the doctors, while paying my own
expenses. Meanwhile my natural leg, the one I brought away safe from the
wilderness, has took to the rheumatism till I'm almost sorry I did not
drop it where I did the other one. And about the only hope my good leg
can give me now, is to serve as a sort of rudder when I'm sliding
downstairs on my rump.
Now, Mr Commissioner, about the matter of increasing my pension, you may
do just as you damn please. If you think that loosing one leg in the
wilderness in 1864, shot through the belly by a bullet at Antietam in
1862, and if you think that the pension I have been getting is full pay
for a set of busted insides that haven’t been in running order in more'n
twenty years and never will be on this side of New Jerusalem, all right.
If the government says so, I'm a silent partner. But I'm a going to tell
you just between us, that when the Minnie ball went through me at
Antietam, it played mischief with some of the important parts, and it
played for keeps. It cut something all to thunder. I don't know whether
it was my liver, or my lungs, my gizzard or my guts and your pet doctors
don’t seem to know as much about it as I do.
The plain fact is, and that’s what I am driving at, I'm physically broke
up and busted from my single heel to my chin whiskers and I got busted
up at Antietam before my leg was lost, and the record says so. They
wanted to discharge me for the first ball through my body at Anteitam,
and I wouldn't let them. I was bound to stick till we busted the
Rebellion or till the Rebels busted me, with more bullet holes through
my carcass, and I did. And now you’ve made me do as much marching from
pillar to post in this hide-and-seek game with the doctors as would have
took me from the wilderness to the end of the war. If I wasn't good
enough to march then, I'm damned if I'll do any more of it now, so you
don't need to pay any more doctors charges for me. You've been actually
paying the doctors on the average about ninety six dollars a year for
staving off my claim, and that’s more than you'd have to pay me if you’d
granted my increase at first sight. You stalled me on my getting a cent
of that ninety six dollars and now I am going to stall the cussed
doctors on getting any more of it. If I go before any more doctors for
an examination you've got to do something more than send me a postal
card. You'll have to haul me before 'em with a derrick.
Now I don't want to be sassy. I ain't built that way. But Mr. Black, if
you expect to blossom out as a Vice-President of the United States by
bucking against the honest claim of an old veteran with one foot
actually in the grave and the other damn near it, your getting down more
hay than you'll have time to cock up. You'll make about as much at that
game as the Surgeon General will by veto’n wooden legs.
Respectfully with a damn good memory,
Unsigned
................................................................................................
footnote:
BLACK, John Charles, (1839 - 1915)
Representative from Illinois; born in Lexington, Holmes County, Miss.,
January 27, 1839; moved to Danville, Vermilion County, Ill., in 1847;
attended the common schools and Wabash College, Crawfordsville, Ind.,
but was not graduated until after the close of the Civil War; served in
the Union Army from April 14, 1861, to August 15, 1865; entered as a
private, and was successively sergeant major, major, lieutenant colonel,
and colonel; brevetted brigadier general for service in the storming of
Fort Blakeley on April 9, 1865; received the Congressional Medal;
studied law in Chicago, Ill.; was admitted to the bar in 1867 and
commenced practice in Danville, Ill.; appointed United States
Commissioner of Pensions by President Cleveland and served from March
17, 1885, to March 27, 1889; elected as a Democrat to the Fifty-third
Congress and served from March 4, 1893, to January 12, 1895, when he
resigned; United States attorney for the northern district of Illinois
1895-1899; department commander of the Loyal Legion of Illinois
1895-1897; department commander of the Illinois department, Grand Army
of the Republic, in 1898; commander in chief of the Grand Army of the
Republic in 1903 and 1904; member of the United States Civil Service
Commission 1904-1913 and served as its president; resigned and returned
to Chicago, Ill., where he died August 17, 1915; interment in Spring
Hill Cemetery, Danville, Ill.
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Larry Scott
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