United States or Greenland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Your excellency will certainly approve my not arresting any officer for being brought before a court-martial for any neglect of duty; but when they will be robbers or cowards, or when they will assassinate in all, when they will deserve being cashiered or put to death. Give me leave to tell your excellency how I am adverse to court-martials.
These court-martials you're having here now have stirred up the whole country. I guess we'll hear now how those fortunes were made. To listen to those witnesses lie about each other on the stand is better than the theatre." Stephen laughed at the comical and vivid manner in which the General set this matter forth.
Only, when the grand catastrophe came, and Jefferson and the House of Virginia of that day undertook to break on the wheel all the possible Clarences of the then House of York, by the great treason trial at Richmond, some of the lesser fry in that distant Mississippi Valley, which was farther from us than Puget's Sound is to-day, introduced the like novelty on their provincial stage; and, to while away the monotony of the summer at Fort Adams, got up, for spectacles, a string of court-martials on the officers there.
"But, as I was a-saying only last night to Jim Marksby, the hall-porter, sir," he continued, "court-martials, sir, isn't wot they used to was. Lord-sakes! sir, I remembers, as if it were yesterday, in old Sir Titus Fitzblazes's time, sir, when they was as plentiful as the blackberries on Browndown!
They carried their muskets at "support arms," and paced up and down, measuredly, like two cloaked and solemn ghosts. I wrapped myself in the damp blankets, and slept through the bangs of four or five court-martials and several executions. At three o'clock, they changed ramrods, the old doppel-gangers going away, and two new ones fulfilling their functions.
Autobiography, p. 116. Works, vi. 204. Works, vii. 391. Works, vii. 321-25. Court-martials are hardly a happy example now. 'Truth v. Ashhurst' , Works, v. 235. Ibid. vi. 11. Ibid. v. 92. Works, vii. 204, 331; ix. 143. Ibid. vii. 214. Ibid. v. 349. Ibid. v. 364. Works, v. 371. Ibid. v. 375. Ibid. vii. 188. Ibid. v. 370. Thus Bentham, as his eyes were opened, became a Radical.
Threatening court-martials and vengeance on his return, Hampton now set out by land; but at Chateaugay he was met by a much smaller force of Canadians who resisted him so successfully that he ordered a retreat and his army retired to Plattsburg. Meanwhile General Wilkinson had done even worse. His army numbered 8000. Of these the rear guard were 2500.
Our days were enlivened by visits from the Arabs who were also bound for Unyanyembe; by comical scenes in the camp; sometimes by court-martials held on the refractory; by a boxing-match between Farquhar and Shaw, necessitating my prudent interference when they waxed too wroth; by a hunting excursion now and then to the Kingani plain and river; by social conversation with the old Jemadar and his band of Baluches, who were never tired of warning me that the Masika was at hand, and of advising me that my best course was to hurry on before the season for travelling expired.
These court-martials you're having here now have stirred up the whole country. I guess we'll hear now how those fortunes were made. To listen to those witnesses lie about each other on the stand is better than the theatre." Stephen laughed at the comical and vivid manner in which the General set this matter forth.
You ought to practice writing Court-Martials, Returns, and Reports of all sorts, Acquittance Rolls, Muster Rolls, and Letter Writing; taking always great pains to have a good hand of writ and to spell well. 10th. 11th.
Word Of The Day