The Forgotten Soldiers: A Post-War Reckoning
Decades after the Civil War, Snohomish's local paper draws a bitter parallel between the veterans who fought to 'free the negro' and the rising tide of impoverished, displaced laborers struggling for survival in 1877.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Tramp! Tramp! Tramp, the boys are marching. They wanted these 'tramps' during the year of the war. They wanted them to make the bonds good. The 'rebellion' had to be put down and the 'tramps' did put it down. There was a class then, at the beginning of the war, who had a few thousand dollars each, but they were too cowardly to go into the service; but they were patriotic enough to give forty cents on the dollar for bonds. The 'tramps' were sent out to do the fighting. Sent out to fight men as poor as themselves. Sent out to free negroes and enslave white men. That is the long and the short of it, and the best way to tell the truth is to come right at it. They promised to pay these 'tramps' $13.00 a month in gold. They paid them in greenbacks which the bondholder said were worth but forty cents on the dollar. The Government went back on the 'tramps'—repudiated its obligations. It agreed to pay a dollar, and paid but forty cents. The 'tramp' tried to make out with the forty cents, but he couldn't do it. He found the bondholder against him, and the bondholder had the advantage because the Government paid the rich men dollar for dollar, but the 'tramp' soldier got but forty cents on the dollar. It was too much of a contest for the 'tramp' and he fell. The soldiers who had encountered bullets at Shiloh, Chickamauga and at Donelson, and still survived, yielded when the bondholder got after them with the difference of 60 per cent in his favor. The 'tramp' soldier revived his old trade—he began to seek work. He went west, to one town and another, and being refused, started to the next nearest one. All the boys are marching! Nearly as many men are now walking for bread as were fighting for negroes in 1863. More men, white and black, are in want than before the emancipation of the negro. Who then should be emancipated now? If the blood and treasure of the country were all risked to free the negro in 1861, what should be done for the white 'tramp', the ex-soldiers, the people generally in 1877?
“More men, white and black, are in want than before the emancipation of the negro. Who then should be emancipated now?”
This piece captures the deep disillusionment of the 1877 railroad strikes, highlighting a 'forgotten class' of veterans who felt the government prioritized banking interests over the men who fought for the Union. It serves as a haunting reminder of how economic inequality and the precarity of labor often leave those who served their country in the lurch, a cycle of history that remains eerily resonant today.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.