Never in my life before had I been in a place so horrid to the eyes and nose as Benton Barracks. The path along the front outside was deep in mud. The whole space between the two rows of sheds was one field of mud, so slippery that the foot could not stand. Inside and outside every spot was deep in mud. The soldiers were mud-stained from foot to sole. These volunteer soldiers are in their nature dirty, as must be all men brought together in numerous bodies without special appliances for cleanliness, or control and discipline as to their personal habits. But the dirt of the men in the Benton Barracks surpassed any dirt that I had hitherto seen.
Nor could it have been otherwise with them. 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. Ishall 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. Price had been the opponent of poor General Lyons, who was killed at Wilson's Creek, near Springfield, and of General Fremont, who during his hundred days had failed to drive him out of the State. This duty had now been intrusted to General Curtis, who had for some time been holding his headquarters at Rolla, half way between St. Louis and Springfield. Fremont had built a fort at Rolla, and it had become a military station. Over 10,000 men had been there at one time, and now General Curtis was to advance from Rolla against Price with something above that number of men. Many of them, however, had already gone on, and others were daily being sent up from St. Louis.
Under these circumstances my friend and I, fortified with a letter of introduction to General Curtis, resolved to go and see the army at Rolla.
On our way down by the railway we encountered a young German officer, an aide-de-camp of the Federals, and under his auspices we saw Rolla to advantage. Our companions in the railway were chiefly soldiers and teamsters. The car was crowded, and filled with tobacco smoke, apple peel, and foul air. In these cars during the winter there is always a large lighted stove, a stove that might cook all the dinners for a French hotel, and no window is ever opened. Among our fellow-travelers there was here and there a west-country Missouri farmer going down, under the protection of the advancing army, to look after the remains of his chattels--wild, dark, uncouth, savage-looking men. One such hero I specially remember, as to whom the only natural remark would be that one would not like to meet him alone on a dark night. He was burly and big, unwashed and rough, with a black beard, shorn some two months since.
He had sharp, angry eyes, and sat silent, picking his teeth with a bowie knife. I met him afterward at the Rolla Hotel, and found that he was a gentleman of property near Springfield. He was mild and meek as a sucking dove, asked my advice as to the state of his affairs, and merely guessed that things had been pretty rough with him. Things had been pretty rough with him. The rebels had come upon his land. House, fences, stock, and crop were all gone. His homestead had been made a ruin, and his farm had been turned into a wilderness. Everything was gone. He had carried his wife and children off to Illinois, and had now returned, hoping that he might get on in the wake of the army till he could see the debris of his property. But even he did not seem disturbed. He did not bemoan himself or curse his fate. "Things were pretty rough," he said; and that was all that he did say.
It was dark when we got into Rolla. Everything had been covered with snow, and everywhere the snow was frozen. We had heard that there was a hotel, and that possibly we might get a bed-room there.
We were first taken to a wooden building, which we were told was the headquarters of the army, and in one room we found a colonel with a lot of soldiers loafing about, and in another a provost martial attended by a newspaper correspondent. We were received with open arms, and a suggestion was at once made that we were no doubt picking up news for European newspapers. "Air you a son of the Mrs.
Trollope?" said the correspondent. "Then, sir, you are an accession to Rolla." Upon which I was made to sit down, and invited to "loaf about" at the headquarters as long as I might remain at Rolla.
Shortly, however, there came on a violent discussion about wagons.