YANKEE INFAMY—CONDUCT OF THE WAR—SHERMAN'S
MARCH—VIRGINIA DISMEMBERED
The Yankees were continually giving out to the world exaggerated
accounts of the conditions of their soldiers in Confederate prisons, and
are still at it, all the while refusing to exchange prisoners, except in
a few instances.
The Yankees during the war did many mean, contemptible and uncivilized
things, but I have always thought about the most contemptible and
meanest thing they did was when, sometimes, there was an exchange of
sick and wounded prisoners, they would strip to the skin their sick and
wounded men, the most emaciated, have their pictures taken and sent
broadcast over the country, to fire the Northern people and prejudice
the world against the Confederates, when they knew the Confederate sick
from Northern prisons were equally emaciated; but never a picture of
these did they take and scatter abroad. I have seen some of these
pictures. They are still harping on the horrors of Andersonville, but
never a word do they utter about the wilful, malicious and cruel
treatment of prisoners on Morris Island, and in Fort Pulaski, and Hilton
Head.
The Confederates fed the Yankee prisoners, as best they could, the same
rations issued to Confederate soldiers—cut off as they were from the
world, a large part of their country overrun by a brutal and merciless
foe, who carried desolation and destruction through the land, wherever
their worse than Hessian hoards went. There was much suffering
everywhere in the South.
Food was scarce in the South, women and children suffered, and our own
soldiers in the field had scanty rations, very often nothing but bread
and not enough of that, while the Yankees, with plenty of supplies,
their ports open to the world, less than half fed the Confederates in
all their prisons, through malice and revenge.
It is a well-known fact, established by the records, that while there
were more Yankee prisoners in Southern prisons than there were
Confederates in Northern prisons, many thousands more of Confederate
prisoners died in Northern prisons than Yankees in Southern prisons. It
is established by the records of the war office at Washington that,
during the war, Yankee prisoners to the number of 270,000 were captured
and that 220,000 Confederates were captured. Of these prisoners 20,000
Yankees died in Southern prisons (about eight per cent.), while 26,000
Confederate prisoners died in Northern prisons (about sixteen per cent.
of those captured). Most of the Confederate prisoners were confined in
prisons in cold lake regions, and at Point Lookout, where they suffered
untold miseries from exposure in those bleak locations. Confined in
open, board barracks and tents with a very, very scant supply of fuel,
with only a few thin blankets, thin, worn out clothing, and less than
half fed, no wonder many of them died, victims of Yankee cruelty.
Let it ever be remembered that all this suffering, privation, and tens
of thousands of deaths, were caused by the Yankees during the last two
years of the war refusing to exchange prisoners, while the Confederates
were always willing and anxious to exchange. General Grant said, when
urged to agree to exchanges to prevent suffering and death in prison of
his own men, "It is hard on our men confined in Southern prisons, but it
would be harder on our soldiers in the field to consent to an exchange,
because, if the 30,00 Rebel prisoners were released, they would go back
to the army and fight, while our men would return to their homes." The
Confederate authorities offered the Yankees the privilege of sending
food, medicine, and hospital supplies to their prisoners in the South to
be dispensed by Yankee doctors, but the offer was coldly and cruelly
declined.
As proof of this, I refer to Col. Robt. Olds' letter to General Grant,
dated Richmond, Va., January 24, 1865, in "War of the Rebellion,
Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies," Series II, Vol.
2, pages 122-23, published by the United States Government.
Not only this, but in truth no reply was made. They made medicine
contraband of war; that is, they would not allow medicine to be shipped
into the South any more than they would powder and lead or food or
clothing—something no other nation of modern times has ever done. These
things here recorded are historic, known and read by all men.
CONDUCT OF THE WAR
The conduct of the war on the part of the North was cold-blooded and
cruel in the highest degree. The Northern soldiers burned and pillaged
thousands of homes, and ruthlessly destroyed millions of dollars' worth
of private property. The beautiful and fertile Valley of Virginia, "the
garden spot of the world," was made a howling wilderness by wanton
destruction and devastation; every mill and barn was burned, together
with many dwellings; every kind of food for man or beast was destroyed,
and the women and children left in a pitiable plight, the vandal
Sheridan sending a message to Grant after the dastardly work was done,
that "A crow flying over the Valley would have to take his rations with
him." Gen. U. S. Grant had ordered this destruction and devastation, and
found in Sheridan a willing tool to execute the infamous order.
The annals of history, ancient or modern, furnish few if any atrocities
equal to those perpetrated by the Northern armies. The monster, Sherman,
in his march through Georgia and North Carolina, burned and pillaged as
no army ever did before, leaving a burned and blackened swath behind him
forty to sixty miles wide. A few years ago, when the world was horrified
at the cruelty the United States soldiers practiced on the Philippinos,
including the "water cure," which consisted of inserting a rubber tube
into the throat while the victim lay bound on his back, and pouring
water in the tube and down the throat until the stomach was filled and
distended to its fullest capacity, then jumping on the victim's stomach
with the feet, forcing the water out, repeating the operation time and
time again—when I read of this I remarked to some one that I was not
surprised: that the Yankees were mean enough to do anything; that I knew
them of old.
SHERMAN'S MARCH
General Sherman, in his official report of his operations in Georgia,
says: "We consumed the corn and fodder in the country thirty miles on
either side of a line from Atlanta to Savannah: also the sweet potatoes,
hogs, sheep, poultry, and carried off more than 10,000 horses and mules.
I estimate the damage done to the State of Georgia at one hundred
million dollars, at least, twenty millions of which inured to our
benefit, and the remainder was simply waste and destruction." Could
anything be more diabolical?
From Gen. Bradley Johnston's "Life of Gen. Jos. E. Johnston," I take the
following extracts, descriptive of Sherman's march: "A solid wall of
smoke by day forty miles wide, and from the horizon to the zenith, gave
notice to the women and children of the fate that was moving on them. At
early dawn the black veil showed the march of the burners. All day they
watched it coming from the northwest, like a storm-cloud of destruction.
All night it was lit up by forked tongues of flame, lighting the lurid
darkness. The next morning it reached them. Terror borne on the air,
fleet as the furies, spread out ahead, and murder, arson, rapine,
enveloped them. Who can describe the agonies of mothers for their
daughters, for their babes, for their fathers and young boys?
"This crime was organized and regulated with intelligence and method.
Every morning details were sent out in advance and on the flanks. The
burners spread themselves over the whole country for miles beyond either
flank of the marching columns, and they robbed everything.
"All valuables, gold, silver, jewels, watches, etc., were brought in at
night and a fair division made of them among all parties. The captain
was entitled to so much, the colonel to his share, the general to his
portion.
"Let a few other things also speak. Major-General Halleck, then, I
believe, commander-in-chief, under the President, of the armies of the
Union, on the 18th of December, 1864, dispatched as follows to General
Sherman, then in Savannah: 'Should you capture Charleston, I hope that
by some accident the place may be destroyed, and if a little salt should
be sown upon its site, it may prevent the growth of future crops of
nullification and secession.'"
On the 26th of December, 1864, General Sherman made the following
answer: "I will bear in mind your hint as to Charleston, and don't think
that 'salt will be necessary.' When I move, the Fifteenth Corps will be
on the right wing, and the position will bring them naturally into
Charleston first, and if you have watched the history of that corps, you
will have remarked that they generally do their work pretty well. The
truth is, the whole army is burning with an insatiable desire to wreak
vengeance upon South Carolina."
The Northern people have immortalized these dastardly deeds in the song,
"Marching Through Georgia," and still exultingly sing and play it, which
but perpetuates an infamy which should and does cause every American,
worthy of the name, to hang his head in shame.
Here we have it from those high in authority approving and urging on the
demons in human form who were perpetrating the most dastardly
atrocities, and gloating over it, too. Who can doubt but that Hades
burned hotter and his Satanic Majesty rubbed his hands in glee, when
Stanton, Halleck, Sherman, _et id genus omne_, were hurled headlong into
the bottomless pit?
How different was the conduct of General Lee and his army when invading
the enemy's country! I give here General Lee's order when in
Pennsylvania:
* * * * *
"HEADQUARTERS ARMY NORTHERN VIRGINIA,
_June 27, 1863_,
"Gen. Orders No. 73.
"The Commanding General has observed with marked satisfaction the
conduct of the troops on the march. There have, however, been instances
of forgetfulness on the part of some that they have in keeping the yet
unsullied reputation of this army, and that the duties exacted of us by
civilization and Christianity are not less obligatory in the country of
the enemy than our own.
"The Commanding General considers that no greater disgrace could befall
the army, and through it our whole people, than the perpetration of
barbarous outrages upon the unarmed and defenseless, and the wanton
destruction of private property that have marked the course of the enemy
in our own country....
"It will be remembered that we make war only upon armed men.
(Signed) R. E. LEE, General."
* * * * *
What a contrast! Robert E. Lee would have thrust his right hand into the
fire and burned it off inch by inch before he would have written such
words as Halleck and Sherman wrote.
W. T. Sherman was utterly incapable of entertaining or expressing such
high and noble sentiments as emanated from Lee in the above-quoted
order.
It is true that Early burned Chambersburg, but this was done in
retaliation for wanton destruction of private houses in Virginia by the
Yankee General Hunter, upon the refusal of the town to pay an indemnity
in money.
VIRGINIA DISMEMBERED
A most atrocious act of the Yankee Government during the war,
high-handed and inexcusable and without any semblance of law, right or
necessity, was the dismemberment of the State of Virginia, when the old
Mother of States was despoiled of one-third of her territory. West
Virginia, cleft as it was from the side of the old Mother State by the
sword, when in the throes of war, left that mother bleeding, and robbed
of her richest mineral territory. Not that it would make the United
States Government any stronger or richer, but only to satiate the
hatred, revenge and malice of the Yankee nation. Virginia! The proud Old
Dominion, that in 1795 voluntarily gave to the young Republic that vast
northwestern domain, 250,000 square miles in extent, which her sons,
during the Revolutionary War, single-handed and alone, under the
leadership of the indomitable George Rogers Clark, wrested from the
British and their Indian allies, and which now comprises the states of
Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and that part of Minnesota
east of the Mississippi River; yet her original domains, as one of the
thirteen States as fixed and adjusted after Kentucky was formed, and the
ceding to the United States of this great western empire; the oldest,
foremost, and proudest of the States, on whose shores the first English
settlement on the continent was made, whose ter-centennial in this year
of Grace, 1907, is being celebrated, and on whose sacred soil the fires
of liberty were kindled and fanned into flame by the burning words,
"Give me liberty or give me death," which fell from the lips of her own
Patrick Henry; yet Virginia, the proud old Mother of States and
statesmen, her borders extending from the sands on the ocean shore on
the east to the Ohio River on the west, must be cut in twain, in hatred,
in malice and in revenge.
These facts, the treatment of prisoners, and destruction of private
property, are here recorded that the truth of history may be vindicated,
and that the cold-blooded and cruel atrocities of the enemies of the
South may not be forgotten. Multiplied instances of cruelty and
vandalism might be here written down, but the subject is distasteful.
All this cruelty and these wanton acts of devastation and destruction
were visited on the South and her people, not because they were
criminals and outlaws, but to satiate Yankee hatred and revenge. That
the South acted within her rights in withdrawing from the Union is now
conceded by all unbiased and fair-minded men who have intelligence
enough to investigate the rights of the states under the original
compact—the Bill of Rights, the constitutions of several states, and the
Constitution of the United States.
Impartial history will accord the South honor, genius, skill, bravery
and endurance, under adverse conditions, unexampled; victories many,
against great odds. Truthfully has it been said of the Confederacy:
"No nation rose so white and fair,
Or fell so pure of crime"—
While to the North will be accorded success through unlimited resources
and vastly superior numbers, together with dishonor and shame for
cruelty, revengefulness and wanton destruction of private property,
unequaled in modern history.