9th Regiment, Infantry
New York Volunteers

Spanish American War

Capt. William F. Morris of Company K, Ninth New York Volunteers, returned yesterday from Camp Thomas, Chickamauga Park. The Captain was the second senior Captain in the Ninth Regiment before it left the National Guard to become part of the volunteer service. Capt. Morris is the Superintendent of Station D of the Brooklyn Post Office. He is one of the best known line officers in the New York National Guard, in which he has served twenty three years, in that time holding a commission sixteen years. For years he has been President of the Delinquency Court of the Ninth Regiment, where his decisions on important cases involving the rights of enlisted men have been widely quoted.

Capt. Morris returned, boiling over with indignation against the way he alleges the New York troops are treated in Camp Thomas. When interviewed yesterday he spoke with great vehemence and force. He was a stanch advocate of Col. Greene before that officer was chosen to head the Ninth in place of Col. William Seward. It was largely through influence of the Captain that Col. Greene got the place. Of all the line officers who have resigned in the last few weeks, Capt. Morris was the last to go.

"I stood it as long as I could," he said yesterday. "but matters got so bad that I could not remain longer, realizing my inability to alleviate the sufferings of the men. No matter what interested gentleman may report to New York people after going to camp for a few days and being petted and banqueted by higher officers, I want to declare it as a fact that the camp is a modern Andersonville. Everything I say I am prepared to prove. I say nothing to anything which I did not see. As I look back on the scenes I witnessed there only a few days ago, it all seems like an awful dream. I left there Saturday. The day before a Sergeant whom I had known long and well was taken to the hospital of the division. As he left the regiment he said to me that I need not look for him again, as he was going to the hospital, and, frankly, I doubt whether I shall ever seen him again. He was a noble fellow, too." The Captain's voice faltered and his eyes grew dim under the influence of the memory of his old friend.

Conditions in the Hospital

"That's the idea," the Captain continued, "that the men have of the hospital. It seems like the door of despair to them. One would expect sick soldiers to welcome the hospital. In Camp Thomas they don't, so far as the Ninth Regiment men I saw go there are concerned. They look upon it as the house of doom. Here are some of the things I know of the hospital of the division. I heard one day that a man from the Ninth, one of my own company, was dying there. With Col. Greene I went there. The man was ill of typhoid fever, and his temperature was far above one hundred. When I reached his cot I nearly staggered with horror. The man's face was literally black with flies. His mouth, which was open - the poor fellow was to weak to close it - was filed with flies. Col. Greene denounced such a state of affairs, as did I. The person in charge nonchalantly remarked that there were not enough nurses to go around. Then I told him as emphatically as the solemnity of the place would permit, that his duty was to let the men of the company know, and they would gladly have acted as volunteer nurses. I sent a man from my quarters over.

"The man I sent over was a trained nurse before he joined the army as a soldier. He knew in an instant what was needed. He found that the man who was so ill with the fever had had no bath, although burning up with fever. He asked for some cold water. The doctor in charge wanted to know what for. When the man replied that he wished to give the patient a bath, the doctor told him to get the water out of a barrel which had been standing in the sun. The water was actually tepid. The nurse indignantly told the doctor he would not attempt to lower the temperature with water that would only increase it. "What do you know about it?", snapped the doctor. "Because I know about those things, and have been a nurse." was the answer. This convinced the person in charge that my representative knew too much to be smothered, and after several hours he managed to get some ice. Imagine how much it was. A pound, exactly. With this he expected to lower the temperature of the man dying with fever. Several days later the man was dead.

" In another case a man who died in the division hospital was found to be literally alive with maggots under his armpits, and his dying agonies were intensified by the movements of these vermin. There are other shocking cases of neglect which are too horrible to be recounted. It is incredible that such things should have happened in this, the richest country on the globe. When there were 280 men in the hospital at one time I found that there were but two thermometers to take the temperature, and remember, nearly all these patients were fever stricken. To have used the instruments for the purpose intended would have consumed exactly eleven hours and forty minutes. The want of ice was criminal. The moaning of the men for ice when they were burning up with fever is something I shall never forget. Why, officers of the regiment had to subscribe money out of their own pockets to get ice in the interest of humanity. And then the amount procured was totally inadequate to the need. The men knew all about the horrors of the hospital. The Sergeant, who was taken to the hospital the day before I left, was so ill three weeks ago that he ought to have gone in, and he suffered the greatest pain day after day. He wouldn't listen to advice to go to the hospital. He said that would be the end of him, and he would keep out of it as long as he could, no matter how much he suffered. At last he collapsed. Convalescents who are still so weak they can hardly stand get boiled beef and boiled onions for breakfast, a tough meal for even the strongest of men at camp. 

"Even when a man was dead it seemed that he was pursued. Two men in my company died. When the first one left us the Government furnished only a pine box for his body. It would not furnish the ammunition with which to fire a salute over the poor fellow's grave, nor would it pay for the transportation of the remains from camp to the cemetery, nor even to Lytle, where the men took the train for the cemetery. The company had to get an undertaker from Chattanooga, at considerable expense. The Government would not even pay the escort's carfare to and from the cemetery.

"As to the resignations in the regiment and the general state of disorganization now prevailing in it, it can be attributed entirely to Col. Greene. I did my utmost to get him elected Colonel at Peekskill, but I now see my error. He would never have got the place there if he had not promised to keep up the spirit of the Ninth and work with the Ninth men. He has violated every such promise, and, consequently, he has taken out of the regiment its old-time esprit de corps, which used to be of of the finest things in the National Guard, and kept us together a fine regiment for years over an old stable, to the wonder of out brother Guardsmen. All that is changed now. 

"The Colonel has found that the officers of the Ninth will not stand by and see it pass into the hands of carpet-baggers, you might say. It won't do for certain visitors from New York who have been to Col. Greene's headquarters to come back with stories about disappointed ambitions and all that. A soldier without ambition amounts to nothing.

"When an officer has the right to expect a certain promotion, then that promotion becomes a right. In the regular army seniority governs promotion, and in the National Guard, officers are elected, but in the volunteer service the appointments are entirely at the mercy of the Colonel, who can appoint whom he likes. No such arbitrary conduct as that practiced on the Ninth by Col. Greene would be tolerated in the regular army. It is only fair to the friends of the Ninth in this city to know how things have been done there. The Colonel tried to jump a Second Lieutenant over the heads of all the other line officers to be Major. This was Lieut. Peck of Watertown. Putting aside the question of bad taste in choosing a man from a small town up the State to be Major of a city regiment, what could the officers do but protest against the choice of a  Second Lieutenant not only, but the junior Lieutenant as well of the regiment, who had already proved that he could not drill his own company. It is true that he had been to West Point, but that counted for nothing, for he could not adjust his sword properly. This man had not been in the Ninth three months when it was proposed to make him a Major. The office was declared vacant and not to be filled, so Col. Greene failed to get his man in.

The Colonel's Indifference

"Again the Colonel brought in a man from the Seventy-fourth Regiment at Buffalo to act as Regimental Adjutant as if there were no men capable of filling the place in the Ninth. Two enlisted men whom he had got into the regiment after leaving Camp Townsend the Colonel had raised to the position of Regimental Sergeant Major and Quartermaster Sergeant of the regiment, two of the highest non-commissioned officers in a regiment. In this he passed over all the 'non-coms' in the Ninth, and we had some of the best in the camp. This was only a small part of the Colonel's indifference to the officers of the regiment. He never consulted us for anything where our opinions were required, as did other Colonels who were glad to keep in touch with their officers. He treated us as if we were a parcel of schoolboys.

"An officer could get leave from camp only once a month. Once I wished to go over to the camp of the Fourteenth to see Col. Kline about money matters pertaining to the regiment. I happened to mention to Col. Greene that I was going over there. "Who gave you permission to go?" he snapped out. I told him I didn't know it was necessary for a line officer to ask permission for such a thing. If it was I would ask it. "What is your business there?" he exclaimed. I then told him I should not go under the circumstances. In no other regiment in the park was such subjection of line officers to their Colonel heard of. We were not the only unfortunates. The Colonel ordered that no private could get excused from drill by his Captain; for that he had to go to the Colonel.

Guards in the Rain for Hours

"The Colonel compelled the men on guard from the regiment to stand unprotected in the driving rain for hours at a time. Not the slightest tent shelter was afforded them, and many cases of illness that resulted seriously for the victims are traceable to this neglect of the men. I believe that ours was the only regiment not thus provided with shelter for the guards. Again, in every other regiment when a man had put in twenty-four hours' guard duty he received twenty-four hours off, but Col. Greene ordered that these men should turn out for 5 o'clock drill. I have seen men time and again compelled on this order to get into their clothed which had not had time to dry after a hard night in the rain on guard. 

"Once our company after a hard tour of work early in the morning was ordered to march off about 10 A.M. for outpost duty a number miles from camp. The thermometer marked 95 in the shade. I suggested to Col. Greene that as the men were tired and the day was very hot it would be wise to have the wagons carry the shelter tents. "They'll find it a blanked sight hotter yet before they get back!" was the Colonel's reply. So, loaded with all their clothing and the tents, they had to march miles under the blazing sun. I also asked for a wagon to haul water to our men. This the Colonel refused. 

"Gen. Grant found us without water and learning that a wagon had been refused, was indignant and said he would order one. As the outcome of Col. Greene's harsh and tyrannical methods there are to-day not more than 350 men in the Ninth out of 1,200 who are fit for duty. It is only wise for the friends of the men in this city to know this."

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