USA > Tennessee > History of the Twentieth Tennessee regiment volunteer infantry, C.S.A > Part 39
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unnecessary or wanton injury to private property ; and he enjoins upon all officers to arrest and bring to summary punishment all who shall in any way offend against the orders on this subject." "R. E. LEE, General."
The London Times commented most favorably on this order, and its American correspondent said of it and of the conduct of our troops :-
" The greatest surprise has been expressed to me by officers of the Austrian, Prussian, and English armies, each of which have representatives here, that volunteer troops, provoked by nearly twenty-seven months of unparalleled ruthlessness and wan- tonness, of which their country has been the scene, should be under such control, and should be willing to act in harmony with the long suffering and forbearance of President Davis and General Lee."
To show how faithfully that order was carried out, the same writer tells how he saw with his own eyes, General Lee and a surgeon of his command repairing a farmer's fence that had been damaged by the army. Indeed, we might rest our whole case on the impartial judgment of a distinguished foreigner, who, writing in 1864, drew this vivid picture and striking con- trast between the way the war was conducted on our part and on that of the Federals. He says :-
" This contest has been signaled by the exhibition of some of the best and some of the worst qualities that war has ever brought out. It has produced a recklessness of human life, a contempt of principles, a disregard of engagements. . .. The headlong adoption of the most lawless measures, the public faith scan- dalously violated, both towards friends and enemies; the liberty of the citizens at the hands of arbitrary power; the liberty of the press abolished; the suspension of the Habeas Corpus act; illegal imprisonments ; midnight arrests; punishments inflicted without trial; the courts of law controlled by satellites of govern- ment ; elections carried on under military supervision ; a ruffian- ism, both of word and action, eating deep into the country. . .. The most brutal inhumanity in the conduct of the war itself; outrages upon the defenseless, upon women, children, and prison- ers ; plunder, rapine, devastation, and murder - all the old hor-
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rors of barbarous warfare which Europe is beginning to be ashamed of, and new refinements of cruelty added thereto, by way of illustrating the advance of knowledge."
He further says :-
" It has also produced qualities and phenomena the opposite of these. Ardor and devotedness of patriotism, which might alone make us proud of the century to which we belong; a unan- imity such as was probably never witnessed before; a wisdom of legislation, a stainless good faith under extremely difficult circum- stances, a clear apprehension of danger, coupled with a deter- mination to face it to the uttermost; a resolute abnegation of power in favor of leaders in whom those who selected them could trust ; with an equally resolute determination to reserve the liberty of criticism, and not to allow those trusted leaders to go one inch beyond their legal powers, a heroism in the field and behind defenses of besieged cities, which can match anything that history has to show. A wonderful helpfulness in supplying needs and creating fresh resources ; a chivalrous and romantic daring, which recalls the middle ages ; a most scrupulous regard for the rights of hostile property ; a tender consideration for the vanquished and weak. ... And the remarkable circumstance is, that all the good qualities have been on the one side, and all the bad ones on the other."
In other words, he says that all the good qualities have been on the side of the South and all the bad ones on the side of the North. (See " Confederate Secession," by the Marquis of Lothian, page 183.)
All of this was written prior to the conduct of the armies under Sherman and Sheridan, some of which we have herein set forth. How could the learned Marquis find words to portray the acts of robbery and arson of Sherman and Sheridan?
We could cite other authorities to substantiate the same, but surely this arraignment from this high source ought to be suffi- cient. If any one thinks this distinguished writer has overdrawn the picture, especially in regard to illegal arrests, imprisonments, and brutal conduct toward women and children, and the defense- less gnerally, let him read a little book entitled, " The Old Cap- ital and its Inmates," which has inscribed on its cover what Mr.
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Seward boastingly said to Lord Lyons, the British Minister at Washington, on Sept. 14, 1861, " My Lord, I can touch a bell on my right, and order the arrest of a citizen in Ohio. I can touch a bell again, and order the arrest of a citizen in New York. Can the Queen of England in her dominions do as much?"
The late Judge Jeremiah H. Black of Pennsylvania, at one time president of the supreme court of that State, and afterward attorney-general of the United States under Mr. Buchanan, one of the most distinguished lawyers and writers of his day, thus writes of Mr. Seward and his little bell :-
" Now as to the little bell. The same higher law that gave the Federal Government power to legislate against the States in defiance of the Constitution, would logically justify any execu- tive outrage that might be desired for party purposes, on the life, limb, and property of individuals. Such was Mr. Seward's theory, and such was the practice of himself and his subordinates and some of his colleagues."
He says further to Mr. Charles Frances Adams to whom he was writing :-
"I will not pain you by a recital of the wanton cruelties they inflicted upon unoffending citizens. I have neither space nor time nor skill to paint them. A life-size picture of them would cover more canvass than there is on the earth. .. .
" Since the fall of Robespierre nothing has occurred to cast so much disrepute upon republican institutions. When Mr. Sew- ard went into the State department, he took a little bell to his office, in place of the statute book, and this piece of sounding brass came to be a symbol of the Higher Law. When he desired to kidnap a free citizen, to banish him, to despoil him of his property, or to kill him after the mockery of a military trial, he rang his little bell, and the deed was done." (See " Black's Essays," page 153.)
In speaking of the murder of Mrs. Surratt, he says :-
"In 1865, months after the peace, at the political capital of the nation, in full sight of the executive mansion, the capitol and the city hall, where the courts were in session, a perfectly innocent and most respectable woman was lawlessly dragged from her family and brutally put to death, without judge or
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jury, upon the mere order of certain military officers convoked for that purpose. It was, take it all in all, as foul a murder as ever blackened God's sky. But it was done in strict accordance with higher law, and the law department of the United States approved it."
Now that is what a Northern man, living in Washington at . the time, a profound lawyer and statesman, has to say of these things.
As a matter of course, the North will attempt to reply (about the only reply they can offer with any apparent justification). " Well," they will ask, " was not Chambersburg burned by Gen- eral Early's order?" Yes, it was, but under circumstances which show that that act was no justification whatever for the outrages we have set forth in this paper, and was only resorted to by General Early by way of retaliation, and to stop, if possible, the outrages then being committed. It was only resorted to, too, after full warning and an offer to the municipal authorities of Chambersburg to prevent the conflagration by paying for certain private property just previously destroyed by General Hunter. But this offer these authorities refused to accede to, saying they were not afraid of having their town burned, and that a Federal force was approaching. General Early says in his report :-
" I desired to give the people of Chambersburg an opportunity of saving their town by making compensation for part of the injury done, and hoped that the payment of such a sum (one hundred thousand dollars in gold, or five hundred thousand in greenbacks) would have the desired effect, and open the eyes of the people of other Northern towns to the necessity of urging upon their government the adoption of a different policy." (See "Early's Memoirs," where the full report of this occurrence is given.)
Among the private property destroyed by Hunter, for which this sum was demanded by General Early, were the private resi- dences of Andrew Hunter, Esq. (then a member of the senate of Virginia, who had prosecuted John Brown as Commonwealth's attorney of Jefferson County, Virginia), of Alexander R. Boteler, Esq. (an ex-member of the Confederate and United States Congresses), and of Edmund J. Lee, Esq. (a relative of General
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Lee), with their contents, only time enough being given the ladies to get out of the houses.
General Hunter had also caused the Virginia Military Institute, the house of Governor Letcher, and numerous other houses in the valley, to be burned. Even General Halleck, writing to General Sherman on Sept. 28, 1864, refers thus to this conduct of Hunter :-
"I do not approve of General Hunter's conduct in burning private houses or uselessly destroying private property. That is barbarous." (See "Sherman's Memoirs," Vol. II, page 129.)
No soldier in the Confederate army understood better than General Early the rules of civilized warfare, or was more opposed to vandalism in every form. His conduct at York, Pa., before referred to, and his address to the people of that town, show this in the most satisfactory manner. He says :-
" I have abstained from burning the railroad buildings and car shops in your town, because, after examination, I was satis- fied the safety of your town would be endangered. Acting in the spirit of humanity, which has ever characterized my govern- ment and its military authorities, I do not desire to involve the innocent in the same punishment with the guilty. Had I applied the torch without regard to consequences, I would have pursued a course which would have been fully vindicated as an act of just retaliation for the unparalleled acts of brutality on our own soil. But we do not war on women and children."
Gen. R. H. Anderson, in his report of the Gettysburg campaign, says :-
"The conduct of my troops was in the highest degree praise- worthy. Obedient to the order of the Commanding General, they refrained from retaliating upon the enemy for outrages inflicted upon their own homes. Peaceful inhabitants suffered no moles- tation. In a land of plenty they often suffered hunger and want. One fourth their number marched ragged and barefooted through towns in which merchants were known to have concealed ample supplies of clothing and shoes."
On the 2nd of July, 1863, when the battle of Gettysburg was being fought, and when President Davis had every reason to believe that we would be victorious, he wrote :-
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"My whole purpose is, in one word, to place the war on a footing such as are waged by civilized people in modern times, and to divest it of the savage character which has been impressed upon it by our enemies, in spite of all our efforts and protests." - Hoke's " Great Invasion," page 52.
I. From the reports of the United States War Department, that though we had fifty thousand more Federal prisoners than they had of Confederates, yet four thousand more Confederates died in Northern prisons than died of Federals in Southern prisons.
2. The laws of the Confederate Congress, the regulations of our surgeon-general, the orders of our generals in the field, and of those who had the immediate charge of prisoners, all provided that they should be kindly treated, supplied with the same rations that our soldiers had, and cared for when sick in our hospitals, and placed on exactly the same footing as Confederate soldiers.
3. If these regulations were violated by subordinates in indi- vidual instances, it was done without the knowledge or consent of the Confederate authorities, which promptly rebuked and punished cases reported.
4. If prisoners failed to get full rations, or had those of inferior quality, the Confederate soldiers suffered the same privations, and these were the necessary consequences of the mode of carry- ing on the war on the part of the North, which brought desolation and ruin on the South, and these conditions were necessarily reflected on their prisoners in our hands.
5. That the mortality in Southern prisons resulted from causes beyond our control, but these could have been greatly alleviated had not medicines been declared by the Federal government as contraband of war, and had not the Federal authorities refused the offer of our agent of exchange, the late Judge Ould, that each government should send its own medicines and surgeons to relieve the sufferings of their own respective soldiers in prisons,-refused to accept our offer to let them send medicines, etc., to relieve their own prisoners, without any such privilege being accorded by them to us,-refused to allow. the Confederate government to buy medicines for gold, tobacco, or cotton, etc., which it pledged its honor should be used only for their prisoners in our hands,- refused to exchange sick and wounded, and neglected from
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August to December, 1864, to accede to our agent's proposition to send transportation to Savannah and receive without any equiva- lent from ten to fifteen thousand Federal prisoners, although the offer was accompanied with the statement of our agent of ex- change (Judge.Ould), showing the monthly mortality at Ander- sonville, and that we were utterly unable to care for these prisoners as they should be cared for, and that Judge Ould again and again urged compliance with this humane proposal on our part.
6. The sufferings of Confederates in Northern prisons was ter- rible, almost beyond description; they were starved in a land of plenty ; they were allowed to freeze where clothing and fuel were plentiful; they suffered for hospital stores, medicines, and proper attention when sick; they were shot by sentinels, beaten by officers, and subjected to the most cruel punishments on the slight- est pretexts; our friends of the North were, in many instances, refused the privilege of clothing their nakedness or feeding them when they were starving; and these outrages were often perpetrated not only with the knowledge, but by the orders of E. M. Stanton, Secretary of War of the United States.
7. The sufferings of prisoners on both sides were caused by the failure to carry out the terms of the cartel for exchange, and for this failure the Federal authorities were alone responsible.
It must be remembered, too, that a large number of persons at the North still delight to speak of that war as a "rebellion" and of us as "rebels" and "traitors." We have shown by the testi- mony of their own people, not only that they rebelled against, but overthrew, the Constitution to make war against us, and that when they did go to war, they violated every rule laid down for the government of their armies, and waged it with a savage cruelty unknown in the history of civilization.
The late commander-in-chief of the British army has recently written of our great leader, "In a long and varied life of wander- ing I have met only two men whom I prized as being above all the world I have ever known, and the greater of these was General Lee, America's greatest man, as I understand history."
The present chief magistrate of this country, Theodore Roose- velt, wrote twelve years ago, "The world has never seen better
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soldiers than those who followed Lee, and their leader will undoubtedly rank as, without any exception, the very greatest of all great captains that the English-speaking people have brought forth." (See "Life of Benton," page 38.)
Is it a matter of surprise, then, that the same hand should have recently written ?-
" I am extremely proud of the fact that one of my uncles was an admiral in the Confederate navy, and that another fired the last gun fired aboard the 'Alabama.' I think the time has now come when we can, all of us, be proud of the valor shown on both sides in the Civil War."
If President Roosevelt really believed that his uncles were ever rebels and traitors, would he be "extremely proud" of that fact? Would he be proud to be the nephew of Benedict Arnold? No, and no man at the North who knows anything of the founda- tion of this Government believes for a moment that any Confed- erate soldier was a rebel or a traitor, or that the war on our part was a rebellion. Goldwin Smith, the harshest and most unjust historian to the South who has ever written about the war, says: "The Southern leaders ought not to have been treated as rebels, for secession was not rebellion."
And so we say, the time has come when these intended oppro- bious epithets should cease to be used. But whether called rebels or not, the Confederate soldier has nothing to be ashamed of. Can the soldiers of the Federal armies read this record and say the same ?
Yes, our comrades, let them call us rebels if they will, we are proud of the title, and with good reason. More than a hundred years ago, when, as Pitt said, "even the chimney sweeps in the streets of London talked boastingly of their subjects in America," rebel was the uniform title of those despised subjects.
This sneer was the substitute for argument, which Camden and Chatham met in the House of Lords, and Burke and Barre in the Commons as their eloquent voices were raised for justice to the Americans of the last century. "Disperse, rebels," was the opening gun at Lexington. "Rebels" was the sneer of General Gage, addressed to the brave lads of Boston Commons. It was the title by which Dunmore attempted to stigmatize the Burgesses
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of Virginia, and Sir Henry Clinton passionately denounced the patriotic women of New York. At the base of every statue which gratitude has erected to patriotism in America, you will find "Rebel" written. The springing shaft at Bunker Hill, the modest shaft which tells where Warren fell, the fortresses which line our coasts, the name of our country's capitol, the very streets of our cities,-all proclaim America's boundless debt to rebels ; not only to rebels who, like Hamilton and Warren, gave their first love and service to the young republic, but rebels who, like Franklin and Washington, broke their oath of allegiance to become rebels.
And so we say, let them call us what they may, the justice of our cause precludes fear on our part as to the final verdict of history. We can commit the principles for which we fought ; we can confide the story of our deeds; we can consign the heritage of heroism we have earned, to posterity with the confident expecta- tion of justice at the hands of the coming historian.
"A LAND WITHOUT RUINS."
"A land without ruins is a land without memories; a land without memories is a land without history. A land that wears a laurel crown may be fair to see ; but twine a few sad cypress leaves around the brow of any land, and be that land barren, beautiless, and bleak, it becomes lovely in its consecrated coronet of sorrow, and it wins the sympathy of the heart and of history. Crowns of roses fade; crowns of thorns endure. Calvarys and crucifixions take deepest hold of humanity. The triumphs of might are transient-they pass and are forgotten ; the sufferings of right are graven deepest on the chronicle of nations."
" Yes, give me the land where the ruins are spread, And the living tread light on the hearts of the dead ; Yes, give me a land that is blest by the dust,
And bright with the deeds of the down-trodden just. Yes, give me the land where the battle's red blast Has flashed to the future the fame of the past ; Yes, give me the land that hath legends and lays, That tell of the memories of long vanished days; 31
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Yes, give me the land that hath story and song!
Enshrine the strife of the right with the wrong! Yes, give me a land with a grave in each spot, And the names on the graves that shall ne'er be forgot ; Yes, give me the land of the wreck and the tomb;
There is grandeur in graves, there is glory in gloom ; For out of the gloom, future brightness is born, As after the night comes the sunrise of morn; And the graves of the dead with the grass overgrown, May yet form the footstool of liberty's throne ; And each single wreck in the war-path of might,
Shall yet be a rock in the temple of right."
- Father Ryan.
TO THE YOUTH OF THE SOUTH.
No doubt you have read from Northern dailies and Northern histories that your fathers treated badly Federal prisoners who were confined in Southern prisons during our Civil War. When you hear these charges made, we want you to ask if the Southern prisoners who were confined in Northern pens were treated like human beings.
Let us now go into a few prison facts :-
There was a record taken of the Elmira, N. Y., prison for the three months of March, April, and May, 1865, and sent to Wash- ington to be used in Mrs. Surratt's trial. This sworn testimony showed that there were confined in Elmira prison during these three months five thousand and twenty-five (5025) Southern prisoners, and only six had died during these three months, which testified as to the good treatment they received at the hands of the Federal government and its authorized officers.
This record was such a glaring falsehood, manufactured for the sole purpose of hanging a poor woman and implicating President Jefferson Davis, that two of their own papers, viz., the Elmira Gazette, and the Buffalo, N. Y., Courier, took it upon themselves to ascertain the truth of this record, and they found that there
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were, as stated, confined in Elmira prison for the said three months of March, April, and May, 1865, five thousand and twenty-five (5025) Southern prisoners, but of this number there died in March four hundred and ninety-five (495), in April two hundred and sixty-five (265), and in May one hundred and twenty-four (124), making a total of eight hundred and eighty- four (884) against six (6) as reported, which makes a difference of eight hundred and seventy-eight (878) ; if the record had in- cluded the mortality for the month of February of the same year, which was four hundred and twenty-six (426), the death list in these four months would have been thirteen hundred and eleven (1311) out of a total confinement of five thousand and twenty- five (5025).
Can the death list of the Black Hole of Calcutta beat this? Does it not look strange that the descendants of a people who were run out of England for conscience' sake should be found by their own paper lying in this manner ?
Let us see what treatment the Southern prisoners were receiv- ing at Camp Douglas, away up on the banks of Lake Michigan, where in mid-winter the thermometer will sometimes drop to forty degrees below zero. We find in the depths of winter, six (6) blankets were issued to one hundred and sixty (160) prison- ers, and one stove only was allowed to ten thousand ( 10,000) men. Many a poor fellow froze to death on the ground without anything under him or over him except the clothes he had on.
Here prisoners were hung up by the thumbs for three or four hours at a time, for the least violation of the rules. Rats and dogs were eaten daily when they could be had, yes, anything to save dear life.
It was here in Camp Douglas, when it was so cold that icicles hung from the roof of the prison down to within six inches of the stove pipes, that the breath of these men froze to their beards, many a poor fellow who was detailed to bring in wood was frost- bitten when he returned, and often his arms would be frozen around his load of wood so that his comrades would have to help him turn it loose. The Northern people may talk of Anderson- ville, but is was a Paradise compared to Camp Douglas.
At Point Lookout prison, in order to humiliate the proud
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Southerner as much as possible, negro soldiers were often put on guard, and on one occasion a negro guard fired into a squad of about two hundred (200) prisoners, killing and wounding five.
The brutal officer of the day called out to his negro guard in the presence of his prisoners, "If your ammunition gives out, let me know, and I will furnish you more." This was all done without provocation.
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