heroes’ welcome, at least in D.C. in May(“Grand Review of Army, Wash. D.C., May, 1865” Library of Congress)
The The Grand Review of the Union armies occurred in Washington, D.C. on May 23rd and 24th. The soldiers would keep heading north to their homes and the next stage in their lives. The New-York Times promoted the government employment of veterans, especially those who were disabled. A Democrat paper (probably from Albany, New York) shared the concern for the disabled and saw an opportunity for The Democracy.
From a Seneca County, New York newspaper in May 1865:
How Shall the Returning Soldiers be Employed?
“Unidentified soldier with amputated arm in Union uniform in front of painted backdrop showing cannon and cannonballs” (between 1861 and 1865, Library of Congress)
The great problem before the country is how to employ the soldiers? The Evening Journal recommends them to go to “tilling the soil, to the workshop, &c.” Many of these poor fellows, alas, are wounded or disabled by fatigues and disease. They cannot meet the rugged work of farm and workshop. In the paper which makes this proposition is a list of sixty newly appointed office holders in this county, not one of whom is a soldier; yet the duty assigned to them was only to take a census of the county. Nearly 2,000 such officers are to be or have been appointed in the State. How many are returned soldiers? Few indeed we fear.
Gov. Fenton appointed Harbor Masters, Notaries, Commissioners, and a host of well paid officials. How many were taken from the scarred veterans of the field? – Not one. The organ of the office-holders bids them to be gone and dig. To the work shop or the workhouse with them! Greeley’s “Root Hog or Die,” – his benediction to the freed negroes – is equalled in brutality by the cool consignment of wounded men to the labors of the field, or the alternative of starvation!
The Democracy must take the matter in hand, and mend it, with other things. – Argus.
