Decidedly Ungenerous

When the 112th was about to be mustered into the service of the United States, one of the Henry County Companies (Capt.Srouf’s [sic]) not having the minimum number of men required by law, and consequently could not be mustered in, it was arranged that enough of Capt. Wright’s men to supply the deficiency should be enrolled in Capt. Sroufe’s Company and mustered into the service; and as inducement for Capt. Wright’s men to leave their own Company and join the Henry County Company, they were promised the bounty offered by the Supervisors of that County to her soldiers and that after they were mustered in they should be transferred to their own Company again. On those conditions our boys suffered themselves to be made tools of to work an unfinished job off Henry County’s hands on to Uncle Sam. In due course of time, the muster rolls of the different Companies of the Regt. were sent home to their respective County Clerks, certified to by the proper officers in order that the boys might draw their bounties without any trouble. The names of those men appeared on Capt. Sroufe’s roll, as they should, and not on Capt. Wright’s. The officers of the Regiment all understood the arrangement as the men did, and thought it fair and honorable. But when the matter came up before the Henry County Board of Supervisors, that honorable body refused to pay the bounty they offered to those brave men, who stepped in, helped a Henry county Captain out of a scrape, and saved the credit of Henry County. Their names not appearing on the muster roll of Capt. Wright, furnished the Clerk of Stark County, of course, they received no bounty, and so they are entirely cut out.

Now we ask, if that is not, to give it to the mildest possible definition, a very ungenerous transaction of the part of the Henry County Board of Supervisors?

If they mean to do what is right and honorable in this matter, they will rescind their former action immediately, and allow those men what they are justly entitled to.

– Published in the Stark County News, Toulon, Illinois, June 4, 1863