Show THE TWENTIETH ILLINOIS Story of Their Scrape and Gen Grant Summary Punishment To a group of comrades of the Columbia Co-lumbia post of the G A R the other evening dipt Oscar Ludwig told an Interesting story of tho summary punIshment pun-ishment meted out by Gen Grant to the entire regiment of tho Twentieth Illinois Infantry which was referred to as a precedent by President Roosevelt Roose-velt In his recent communication to congress relative to his action In the affair nt Brownsville Tex where three companies of negro troops were summarily dismissed from tho service for tho act of n few In attacking citizens citi-zens says the Chicago IlocordHcrald I was a member of tho Twentieth Illinois infantry for more than four years said Capt Ludwlg and was with tho regiment nt tho tlmo of tho vandalism cited A sutlers store at Jackson Tcnn where eight regiments were assembled to Intercept the confederates con-federates was broken Into and supplies sup-plies estimated to he worth 1240 wero taken It was known at the tlmo that men of nil or nearly all of the eight regiments regi-ments had participated In the raid for eatables and liquid refreshment Tho only truce of tho sutlers supply discovered dis-covered however was part of a box of cigars In one of the tents of tho Twentieth IllinoisAn Illinois-An official Investigation failed to fasten the crime upon any of tho soldiers sol-diers individually as no one would admit knowledge of the affair Tho general feeling was that among so many It would be Impossible to ferret out the wrongdoers and nothing would be done about tho matter And then no ono carol to Inform on his comrades com-rades But Gen Grant was determined to put a stop to such disorder and to suppress sup-press any tendency to lawlessness among the troops As none of the members would como forward to aid In securing a satisfactory explanation as to tho presence of those few cigars In our quarters the entire regiment was made to suffer The officer commanding the regiment regi-ment and the officer of the day were dishonorably dismissed from the service serv-ice for neglecting to discover the guilty parties and the whole Twentieth Twen-tieth Illinois officers and men were fined pro rata according to pay an amount sufficient to cover tho 1240 loss to the flutter My sharo of tho fine was 318 The fines were deducted de-ducted from our pay A good deal of goodnatured fun was poked at us by the other soldiers for having paid such an exorbitant I profit on the sutlers goods thegoods were said to have been worth only 500 and not 1240 the amount of the claim put In by tho sutler and which was allowed It was tho talk of the camp that some of tho good things taken In the raid found their way to the officers quarters So the boys of tho Twentieth used to answer the raillery of those of other regiments In this way Who robbed the sutler Dont know 1 Who paid for It Twentieth Illinois Who ate the stuff Gen Grants staff The verdict of tho courtmartial seemed uncalled for and unjust at that time but all recognized that an example should be made In order to check tho tendency to outlawry It seemed hard though that we should be tho ones selected for that purpose However there was no bitterness no disloyalty among tho men as subsequent subse-quent acts of tho regiment on the battlefield bat-tlefield showed Within n month tho regiment participated in one of the bloodiest battles of the war Urlttons Lane In which wo lost In killed and wounded onefourth of our number |