Disorderly Federal soldiers.
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Lack of Discipline.--A correspondent of the New York Tribune writes as follows from
Washington:
‘
Never before have I been so fully impressed with the truth of the remark that "great armies are great evils." Our country, hitherto a stranger to them, is now, at their several points of assemblage, passing through an experience of their corrupting influence upon society.
Washington, being the central point, feels it more than any other city in the nation.
How much our military organizations lack in discipline may be inferred from the fact that the streets of this city, from day to day and night after night, are filled with drunken, riotous, quarrelsome soldiers, who are permitted to crowd saloons and hotels, and to engage in brawls in the streets with entire impunity.
I confess I cannot understand it.
Our soldiers in the city are fearfully demoralized, and citizens walk the streets with no positive immunity against assaults of any kind.
It is impossible to go the length of the avenue without refusing several applications from drunken soldiers for money to buy a treat or a plug of tobacco.
Fights are frequent and bloody, and in many instances pistols and bayonets are flourished by men maddened with liquor.
Nearly all the saloons of the city were closed yesterday by the proprietors, through fear of the soldiery, and at those which were open, fights were of constant occurrence.
It seems to me that a proper regard for the peace of the city and the safety of the inhabitants, even if military considerations fail, should cause such an enforcement of discipline as will at least amount to protection and safety.
The work of demoralization among soldiers needs no excitements outside their several encampments.
It is rapid enough among raw recruits and volunteers, when subjected to the strictest discipline, but it must needs become terrible when permitted to progress unchecked.
The soldiers belonging to the regiments encamped in the vicinity of
Washington, now numbering more than a hundred thousand, many of them necessarily men of desperate character and fortunes, should be compelled to stay in their respective camps or to visit the city only upon the condition of good conduct.
If such be the case now, then it would be better for both soldiers and citizens that they be kept in camp altogether, for, if permitted to come here, riots, accidents, murders, and violence of all kinds, are only events that bide their time.
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