Trump Is Coming for Veterans' Disability Benefits

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31. veteran's disability claim 1888

veteran's disability claim 1888

VA NEWS FLASH from Larry Scott at VA Watchdog dot Org -- 01-02-2007 #2


THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE THEY STAY THE SAME -- Veterans' Advocate Jim Strickland looks at a veteran's claim from 1888.


Veterans' Advocate Jim Strickland provides regular columns for VA Watchdog dot Org.

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The letter below was forwarded to me from a reader last week. It drives home the fact that not much has changed for the wartime Veteran.

On this first day of 2007, I'm amazed at the similarity to a Vet's woes in 1888.

I may just copy this and send it to my VARO over my signature the next time I hear from them. I'm convinced it's authentic.

The link to an original Internet posting of this soldier's letter is here http://www.suvcw.org/pr/art040.htm

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Brig. General John Charles Black

Commissioner of Pensions in 1888

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Redwood, April 23, 1888

Mr. Black, Commissioner:


Dear Sir,

I've just got another one of your postal cards telling me to go before the doctors and be examined. I've been getting these cards about every new moon since I applied for an increase of my pension two years ago. I've been examined, poked in the ribs, sounded in the lungs and made to bend over the back of a chair and perform all sorts a monkey shines in my shirt tail, till I feel I otter have a salary with an agent to go ahead and stick up bills.


To begin with, you sent a couple of doctors up to Skin Creek, and it took em half an hour to find out that the reason why they couldn't find any circulation in my left leg was because it was made of wood. The next time you sent me a little cuss with glasses down to Swampville, and after fumbling me over long enough, he put my truss on hind side afore and said the pad was intended to brace up my spinal column. Three or four times after that you sent me odds and ends of doctors who couldn't tell the difference between an epileptic symptom and a boiled clam, and the last time you sent me before a full board of surgeons down to the county seat. They came to this conclusion, nigh’ as I could catch on, that something was wrong with my bladder. Now I have my opinions of a doctor who don't know the difference between a man's bladder and his bollix. Perhaps this is all right. It may be fun for the doctors. It was fun for me for a while, but now that you order

me back again to the first two doctors up to Skin Creek, and probably expect me to start on the same old circus over again, I'm going to kick like a brindled steer.


Last summer, because of the friskiness of a pair of colts, my wooden leg got tangled and all chewed up to cinders in a mowing machine. I 'plied to the Surgeon General for a new leg, but he said that I'd only had the old one three years, and I'd have to wait two years more before the government could afford to make a hole in the surplus by getting me a new one. So I'm waiting and in all this interesting panorama of examinations, I've been hobbling around on one leg, and doing my best to prove that one of Uncle Sam's veterans, with one leg in the grave and the other damn near in, is better than a corpse by several percent. But honking' around in this way ain’t first class fun for a man with a steady job. I've stood it for a good while without grumbling and I suppose, furnished a lot of fun for the doctors, while paying my own expenses. Meanwhile my natural leg, the one I brought away safe from the wilderness, has took to the rheumatism till I'm almost

sorry I did not drop it where I did the other one. And about the only hope my good leg can give me now, is to serve as a sort of rudder when I'm sliding downstairs on my rump.


Now, Mr Commissioner, about the matter of increasing my pension, you may do just as you damn please. If you think that loosing one leg in the wilderness in 1864, shot through the belly by a bullet at Antietam in 1862, and if you think that the pension I have been getting is full pay for a set of busted insides that haven’t been in running order in more'n twenty years and never will be on this side of New Jerusalem, all right. If the government says so, I'm a silent partner. But I'm a going to tell you just between us, that when the Minnie ball went through me at Antietam, it played mischief with some of the important parts, and it played for keeps. It cut something all to thunder. I don't know whether it was my liver, or my lungs, my gizzard or my guts and your pet doctors don’t seem to know as much about it as I do.


The plain fact is, and that’s what I am driving at, I'm physically broke up and busted from my single heel to my chin whiskers and I got busted up at Antietam before my leg was lost, and the record says so. They wanted to discharge me for the first ball through my body at Anteitam, and I wouldn't let them. I was bound to stick till we busted the Rebellion or till the Rebels busted me, with more bullet holes through my carcass, and I did. And now you’ve made me do as much marching from pillar to post in this hide-and-seek game with the doctors as would have took me from the wilderness to the end of the war. If I wasn't good enough to march then, I'm damned if I'll do any more of it now, so you don't need to pay any more doctors charges for me. You've been actually paying the doctors on the average about ninety six dollars a year for staving off my claim, and that’s more than you'd have to pay me if you’d granted my increase at first sight. You

stalled me on my getting a cent of that ninety six dollars and now I am going to stall the cussed doctors on getting any more of it. If I go before any more doctors for an examination you've got to do something more than send me a postal card. You'll have to haul me before 'em with a derrick.


Now I don't want to be sassy. I ain't built that way. But Mr. Black, if you expect to blossom out as a Vice-President of the United States by bucking against the honest claim of an old veteran with one foot actually in the grave and the other damn near it, your getting down more hay than you'll have time to cock up. You'll make about as much at that game as the Surgeon General will by veto’n wooden legs.


Respectfully with a damn good memory,


Unsigned

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footnote:


BLACK, John Charles, (1839 - 1915)


Representative from Illinois; born in Lexington, Holmes County, Miss., January 27, 1839; moved to Danville, Vermilion County, Ill., in 1847; attended the common schools and Wabash College, Crawfordsville, Ind., but was not graduated until after the close of the Civil War; served in the Union Army from April 14, 1861, to August 15, 1865; entered as a private, and was successively sergeant major, major, lieutenant colonel, and colonel; brevetted brigadier general for service in the storming of Fort Blakeley on April 9, 1865; received the Congressional Medal; studied law in Chicago, Ill.; was admitted to the bar in 1867 and commenced practice in Danville, Ill.; appointed United States Commissioner of Pensions by President Cleveland and served from March 17, 1885, to March 27, 1889; elected as a Democrat to the Fifty-third Congress and served from March 4, 1893, to January 12, 1895, when he resigned; United States attorney for the northern district of

Illinois 1895-1899; department commander of the Loyal Legion of Illinois 1895-1897; department commander of the Illinois department, Grand Army of the Republic, in 1898; commander in chief of the Grand Army of the Republic in 1903 and 1904; member of the United States Civil Service Commission 1904-1913 and served as its president; resigned and returned to Chicago, Ill., where he died August 17, 1915; interment in Spring Hill Cemetery, Danville, Ill.

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There are eight Redwoods in the US so it is hard, if not impossible to imagine where this letter originated. It was found some years ago in the National Archives in Washington D.C. The kind soul that sent this to me indicated that they didn't remember where it was located. The Mr. Black indicated in the letter, was the commissioner, John C Black who won the Medal Of Honor at Prairie Grove, Arkansas while a member of the 37th Illinois, He was, at the time, being considered as potential material to run for Vice President on the Republican ticket. Please note the original spelling from the letter is unchanged.

Submitted by: Richard Brooks Camp #149 Pennsylvania Department Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War August 2001



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Larry Scott