In such a position, they can with the
utmost ease be supplied with whatever they really want,--so profuse as
are the funds placed at the command of the authorities. Considering
this, and the well-known handiness of Americans, there need surely be no
disease and death from privation. This may be confidently said while we
have before us the case of the British in the Crimea during the second
winter of the war. A sanitary commission had been sent out; and
under their authority, and by the help of experience, everything was
rectified. The healthy were stronger than ever; there was scarcely any
sickness; and the wounded recovered without drawback. As the British
ended, the Americans ought to begin.
On the last two heads of the soldier's case there is little to be said
here, because the American troops are at home, and not in a perilous
foreign climate, and on the shores of a remote sea. Their drill can
hardly be appointed for wrong hours, or otherwise mismanaged. In regard
to transport, they have not the embarrassment of crowds of sick and
wounded, far away in the Black Sea, without any adequate supply of
mules and carriages, after the horses had died off, and without any
organization of hospital ships at all equal to the demand.
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