PATRIOTISM AT A SAFE DISTANCE.
But, while lustily indulging in patriotic palaver, the propertied classes took excellent care that their own bodies should not be imperilled. Inspired by enthusiasm or principle, a great array of the working class, including the farming and the professional elements, volunteered for military service. It was not long before they experienced the disappointment and demoralization of camp life. The letters written by many of these soldiers show that they did not falter at active campaigning. The prospect, however, of remaining in camp with insufficient rations, and (to use a modern expressive word) graft on every hand, completely disheartened and disgusted many of them. Many having influence with members of Congress, contrived to get discharges; others lacking this influence deserted. To fill the constantly diminishing ranks caused by deaths, resignations and desertions, it became necessary to pass a conscription act.
With few exceptions, the propertied classes of the North loved comfort and power too well to look tranquilly upon any move to force them to enlist. Once more, the Government revealed that it was but a register of the interests of the ruling classes. The Draft Act was so amended that it allowed men of property to escape being conscripted into the army by permitting them to buy substitutes. The poor man who could not raise the necessary amount had to submit to the consequences of the draft. With a few of the many dollars wrung, filched or plundered in some way or other, the capitalists could purchase immunity from military service.
As one of the foremost capitalists of the time, Cornelius Vanderbilt has been constantly exhibited as a great and shining patriot. Precisely in the same way as Croffut makes no mention of Vanderbilt's share in the mail subsidy frauds, but, on the contrary, ascribes to Vanderbilt the most splendid patriotism in his mail carrying operations, so do Croffut and other writers unctuously dilate upon the old magnate's patriotic services during the Civil War. Such is the sort of romancing that has long gone unquestioned, although the genuine facts have been within reach. These facts show that Vanderbilt was continuing during the Civil War the prodigious frauds he had long been carrying on.
When Lincoln's administration decided in 1862 to send a large military and naval force to New Orleans under General Banks, one of the first considerations was to get in haste the required number of ships to be used as transports. To whom did the Government turn in this exigency? To the very merchant class which, since the foundation of the United States, had continuously defrauded the public treasury. The owners of the ships had been eagerly awaiting a chance to sell or lease them to the Government at exorbitant prices. And to whom was the business of buying, equipping and supervising them intrusted? To none other than Cornelius Vanderbilt.
Every public man had opportunities for knowing that Vanderbilt had pocketed millions of dollars in his fraudulent hold-up arrangement with various mail subsidy lines. He was known to be mercenary and unscrupulous. Yet he was selected by Secretary of War Stanton to act as the agent for the Government. At this time Vanderbilt was posing as a glorious patriot. With much ostentation he had loaned to the Government for naval purposes one of his ships—a ship that he could not put to use himself and which, in fact, had been built with stolen public funds. By this gift he had cheaply attained the reputation of being a fervent patriot. Subsequently, it may be added, Congress turned a trick on him by assuming that he gave this ship to the Government, and, to his great astonishment, kept the ship and solemnly thanked him for the present.