IT is a fixed principle of military law that no person is allowed to sell supplies within the lines of a camp without permission of the commandant.
It is also a fixed principle of military law that he must sell only at prices approved by the commandant.
I shall never forget how I first learned of these military rules. We were at Camp Onward and old Jones had just become our colonel.
One day a farmer came to the camp with a heavily laden wagon. It was in the summer of 1861, when food in Northern Virginia was abundant, and when our money was as good as anybody’s.
Our farmer had among his supplies, dressed turkeys, suckling pigs, lamb, mutton, watermelons, cantaloupes, string beans, Lima beans, green peas, and in brief almost all those things that we read about on the bill of fare of a swagger hotel, kept on the “American Plan.”
He had butter also, and lard. He had eggplants and pumpkins, and a great many other things.
We were a rather hungry lot, and were strongly inclined to buy of him.
But this farmer had evidently made up his mind to get comfortably rich off that single wagon load of provisions. Two years later we should not have been surprised at his prices, but at that time we were appalled. Nevertheless, some of us were buying with the recklessness of men who do not know at what hour a bullet may draw a red line below all accounts.
Just then old Jones came out in his yellow coat and his pot hat, looking greatly more like a farmer than the wagon man did. Speaking through his nose, and with that extraordinary deliberation which always made his conversation a caricature of human speech, he asked: “What are you chargin’ for turkeys? What are you chargin’ for butter?” And so on through the list, receiving a reply to each query, and carefully noting it in his thoroughly organized mind.
Then he turned to one of the men and said: “Send the regimental commissary to me.”
When the commissary came he said to him: “Take these supplies, and distribute them equitably among the different messes according to their numbers.”
By this time the farmer had become alarmed. He said: “Who’s goin’ to pay for all this?”
“I am,” said old Jones. “In my own way.”
“Well, hold on,” said the farmer.
“No, I reckon we won’t hold on,” said old Jones.
“But I’ll send for the colonel of the regiment,” said the farmer.
Then old Jones replied with a relish: “I am the colonel of this regiment. And I have ordered these food supplies distributed to the men in the messes. The regimental commissary will obey my orders. And as soon as your wagon is emptied, you will get out of this camp in a considerable of a hurry,”—perhaps he used a shorter word than “considerable,”—“or I’ll hang you in front of headquarters. There’s no court of appeals in this camp. Now git!” as the last of the supplies were taken out of the wagon by the regimental commissary.
We were all a little bit sorry that the poor farmer should lose his entire load. And yet we sympathized with old Jones’s remark as he walked away.
“I’ll teach these thieves that they can’t loot a camp that I’m a runnin’.”