New York, December 19, 1861.
My Dear Mr. Forbes,
— Mr. Olmsted sends on his letter for approval, and it finds me flat on my
back, which accounts for this delay. Since Dr. Van Buren sent on the memorial
for signatures, things have taken on a much more active state of quarrel
between the Sanitary Commission and the Medical Bureau. General McClellan sent
for me and asked me to draw a bill for the reorganization of the Medical
Bureau, which I did. He carefully considered and wholly approved the bill, and
personally went with me to the President to ask his support; to the Secretary
of War (not at home), to the Assistant Secretary of War (much the wiser man),
who heartily approved. By their advice, the bill was brought forward in the
Senate by Senator Wilson a week ago. Several of the leading senators warmly approve
it. The bill strikes at all the senility and incompetency in the bureau and
would put about eight first-class men, selected by the President out of the
whole Medical Staff, into the control and management of affairs. It would lay
on the shelf, on full pay, all the venerable do-nothings and senile
obstructives that now vex the health and embarass the safety of our troops. . . . The Medical Staff (that is, all but the
Medical Bureau and the twenty men in right line of succession) must feel the
bill to be a great boon to them, as it opens eight prizes for merit and
competency, in their stupid seniority system, where folly at seventy was put in
absolute control of no-matter-what-amount-of skill, knowledge, reputation, and
fitness at forty! I told the President, who enjoys a joke, that the bureau
system at Washington, in which one venerable noncompos succeeded another
through successive ages, reminded me of the man who, on receiving a barrel of
apples, eat every day only those on the point of spoiling, and so at the end of
his experiment found that he had devoured a whole barrel of rotten apples. If
there were any radical difficulties about obtaining signatures to our letter,
they will all disappear when our report to the Secretary of War comes out,
which will be in your hands in about a week.
We are very much delighted with your financial report, which
will be louder still when we feel the silver bullets or golden balls
pouring into our nearly exhausted exchequer.
Commend me to our active and disinterested friends, Mr.
Ward, Mr. Norton, and the all-alive gentlemen of your monetary circle.
Yours gratefully and
truly,
Henry W. Bellows.
SOURCE: Sarah Forbes Hughes, Letters and
Recollections of John Murray Forbes, Volume 1, p. 267-8
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