THE BLACK CHAPTER.
PERSECUTIONS OF UNION MEN--THE BLACK FLAG--THE GUERILLAS--SECESSION
FROM SECESSION--RIOT IN CONCORD, N. H.--MASSACRE AT FORT PILLOW--CARE
OF PRISONERS--ANDERSONVILLE--OTHER PRISONS--SUSPENSION OF
EXCHANGES--VIOLATION OF PAROLES--PRINCIPLES RELATING TO
CAPTURES--CRUELTIES COMMITTED BY UNION SOLDIERS IN VIRGINIA--GENERAL
IMBODEN'S STATEMENTS REGARDING FEDERAL ATROCITIES--GENERAL EARLY'S
ACCOUNT OF THE BURNING OF CHAMBERSBURG.
So far as the military situation was concerned, the victories at
Gettysburg and Vicksburg wrote the doom of the Confederacy, and there
the struggle should have ended. That it did not end there, was due
partly to a hope that the Democratic party at the North might carry
the next presidential election, as well as to the temper of the
Southern people, which had been concentrated into an intense
personalized hatred. This began before the war, was one of the chief
circumstances that made it possible to carry the conspiracy into
execution, and seemed to be carefully nursed by Mr. Davis and his
ministers.
[Illustration: PRISONERS IN ANDERSONVILLE STOCKADE.]
Gen. Andrew J. Hamilton, who had been attorney-general of Texas, in a
speech delivered in New York in 1863, declared that two hundred men
were hanged in Texas during the presidential canvass of 1860, because
they were suspected of being more loyal to the Union than to slavery.
Judge Baldwin, of Texas, speaking in Washington in October, 1864,
said: "The wrongs inflicted on the Union men of Texas surpass in
cruelty the horrors of the Inquisition. From two to three thousand men
have been hanged, in many cases without even the form of a trial,
simply and solely because they were Union men and would not give their
support to secession. Indeed, it has been, and is, the express
determination of the secessionists to take the life of every Union
man. Nor are they always particular to ascertain what a man's real
sentiments are. It is sufficient for them that a man is a d----d
Yankee. One day a secessionist said to the governor of Texas, 'There
is Andrew Jackson Hamilton--suppose I kill the d----d Unionist.' Said
the governor, 'Kill him or any other Unionist, and you need fear
nothing while I am governor.' As I was passing through one place in
Texas, I saw three men who had been hanged in the course of the night.
When I inquired the cause, I was told in the coolest manner that it
was to be presumed they were Union men. In Grayson County, a man named
Hillier, who had come from the North, was forced into the Confederate
army. Soon afterward his wife was heard to remark that she wished the
Union army would advance and take possession of Texas, that her
husband might return and provide for his family. This being reported
to the provost marshal, he sent six men dressed in women's clothes,
who dragged her to the nearest tree and hanged her in the sight of her
little children."
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL A. J. HAMILTON. (Military Governor of
Texas.)]
In the mountainous portions of Virginia, Tennessee, and North
Carolina, where comparatively few slaves were kept, large numbers of
the people were opposed to secession, and for their devotion to the
Union they suffered such persecution as had never been witnessed in
this part of the world. It was perhaps most violent in East Tennessee.
Among the numerous deliberate and brutal murders, committed by men in
Confederate uniform, were those of the Rev. L. Carter and his son in
Bradley County, the Rev. M. Cavander in Van Buren County, the Rev. Mr.
Blair of Hamilton County, and the Rev. Mr. Douglas--all for the simple
reason that they were Unionists. Many of the outrages upon the wives
and children of Union men were such as any writer would shrink from
recording. Those who could get away fled northward, often after their
homes had been burned and their movable property carried off, and
became subjects of charity in the free States.
Many secessionists, residing in States that did not secede, had gone
unhindered to the Confederate armies, and when such were captured by
the National armies they received no different treatment from other
prisoners of war. But the Confederate Government professed to look
upon all Unionists in the seceded States (and even in some of the
States whose secession was at least a doubtful question) as traitors,
and numerous {316} orders declaring them such and prescribing their
punishment were issued. In one of these, dated November 25, 1861,
Judah P. Benjamin, the Confederate Secretary of War, said to a
Confederate colonel at Knoxville: "I now proceed to give you the
desired instruction in relation to the prisoners of war taken by you
among the traitors of East Tennessee. First, all such as can be
identified in having been engaged in bridge burning are to be tried
summarily by drum-head court-martial, and, if found guilty, executed
on the spot by hanging. It would be well to leave the bodies hanging
in the vicinity of the burned bridges. Second, all such as have not
been so engaged are to be treated as prisoners of war, and sent with
an armed guard to Tuscaloosa.... In no case is one of the men known to
have been up in arms against the Government to be released on any
pledge or oath of allegiance. They are all to be held as prisoners of
war, and held in jail till the end of the war." The Rev. Thomas W.
Humes, in his "Loyal Mountaineers," says that, in consequence of this
order, "Two men, Hensie and Fry, were hung at Greenville by Colonel
Ledbetter's immediate authority, and without delay. Had not the
execution been so hasty, it might have been discovered, in time to
save Fry's life, that not he but another person of the same surname
was the real offender in the case." Many residents of Knoxville and
its vicinity were imprisoned under this order; and the Rev. William G.
Brownlow, who was one of them, says that on the lower floor of the
jail, where he was kept, the prisoners were so numerous that there was
not room for them all to lie down at one time, and that the only
article of furniture in the building was a dirty wooden bucket from
which the prisoners drank water with a tin cup. The following entries,
taken from his diary while he was thus imprisoned, are fair samples of
many: "December 17: Brought in a Union man from Campbell County
to-day, leaving behind six small children, and their mother dead. This
man's offence is holding out for the Union. To-night two brothers
named Walker came in from Hawkins County, charged with having 'talked
Union talk.'" "December 18: Discharged sixty prisoners to-day, who had
been in prison from three to five weeks--taken through mistake, as was
said, there being nothing against them." "December 22: Brought in old
man Wampler, a Dutchman, seventy years of age, from Green County,
charged with being an 'Andrew Johnson man and talking Union talk.'"
In Virginia, Governor Letcher wrote to a man named Fitzgerald, who had
been arrested on suspicion of Unionism and asked to be released: "In
1856 you voted for the abolitionist Frémont for President. Ever since
the war, you have maintained a sullen silence in regard to its merits.
Your son, who, in common with other young men, was called to the
defence of his country, has escaped to the enemy, probably by your
advice. This is evidence enough to satisfy me that you are a traitor
to your country, and I regret that it is not sufficient to justify me
in demanding you from the military authorities, to be tried and
executed for treason." The Lynchburg _Republican_ said, "Our people
were greatly surprised, on Saturday morning, to see the black flag
waving over the depot of the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad Company.
We are for displaying that flag throughout the whole South. We should
ask no quarter at the hands of the vandal Yankee invaders, and our
motto should be, an entire extermination of every one who has set foot
upon our sacred soil." And the Jackson _Mississippian_ said, in the
summer of 1862, "In addition to pitched battles upon the open field,
let us try partisan ranging, bushwhacking, and henceforward, until the
close of this war, let our sign be the black flag and no quarter."
According to Governor Letcher, as quoted in Pollard's "Secret History
of the Confederacy," Stonewall Jackson was, from the beginning of the
war, in favor of raising the black flag, and thought that no prisoners
should be taken. The same historian is authority for the story that
once, when an inferior officer was regretting that some National
soldiers had been killed in a display of extraordinary courage, when
they might as readily have been captured, Jackson replied curtly,
"Shoot them all; I don't want them to be brave."
The rules of civilized warfare forbid the use of explosive bullets, on
the ground that when a bullet strikes a soldier it is likely to
disable him sufficiently to put him out of the combat; and, therefore,
to construct it so that it will explode and kill him after it has
entered the flesh, is essentially murder. It has been asserted that in
some instances explosive bullets were fired by the Confederates; and
it has also been strenuously denied. Gen. Manning F. Force, in his
"Personal Recollections of the Vicksburg Campaign," read before the
Ohio Commandery of the Loyal Legion, says: "There was much speculation
and discussion about certain small explosive sounds that were heard.
General Ransom and others maintained they were caused by explosive
bullets. General Logan and others scouted the idea. One day one struck
the ground and exploded at Ransom's feet. Picking up the exploded
shell of a rifle-ball, he settled the question. After the siege, many
such explosive rifle-balls, which had not been used, were picked up on
the former camp-grounds of the enemy."
The Confederate Congress passed an act, approved April 21, 1862,
authorizing the organization of bands of partisan rangers, to be
entitled to the same pay, rations, and quarters as other soldiers, and
to have the same protection in case of capture. These partisan rangers
were popularly known as guerillas, and most of them were irresponsible
marauding bands, acting the part of thieves and murderers until
captured, and then claiming treatment as prisoners of war, on the
ground that they were regularly commissioned and enlisted soldiers of
the Confederacy.
Some of the devices that were resorted to for the purpose of
intensifying the hatred of Northern people and Unionists now appear
ludicrous. Thousands of people in the South were made to believe that
Hannibal Hamlin, elected Vice-President on the ticket with Mr.
Lincoln, was a mulatto; that Mr. Lincoln himself was a monster of
cruelty; and that the National army was made up largely of Irish and
German mercenaries.
As Mr. Lincoln predicted, and as every reflecting citizen must have
known, those who attempted to carry out the doctrine of secession from
the United States were obliged to confront its corollary in a proposal
to secede from secession. In North Carolina a convention was held to
nominate State officers, with the avowed purpose of asserting North
Carolina's sovereignty by withdrawing from the Confederacy--on the
ground that it had failed in its duties as agent for the sovereign
States composing it--and making peace with the United States. The
convention was largely attended, and included many of the most
intelligent and wealthy men in the State; but the Confederate
Government sent an armed force to break up the meeting and imprison
the leaders. In the Confederate Congress there were forty members who
always voted in a body, in secret session, as Mr. Davis wanted them
to. They were commonly known as "the forty thieves." When the war
began to look hopeless, a popular movement in favor of peace resulted
in the choice of other men to fill their places. But, before their
terms expired, a law was passed which made it treason to use language
that could be {317} construed as a declaration that any State had a
right to secede from the Confederacy. The people of southwestern North
Carolina, like those of eastern Tennessee, were mostly small,
industrious farmers, without slaves, living in a secluded valley. They
knew almost nothing of the political turmoil that distracted the
country, and did not wish to take any part in the war. They had voted
against disunion, and asked to be exempted from the Confederate
conscription law. When this was denied, they petitioned to be
expatriated; and when this also was refused, they resorted to such
measures as they could to avoid conscription. Thereupon, the
Confederate Government sent North Carolina troops to subdue them; and
when these were found to fraternize with the people, troops from other
States were sent; and when they also failed to do the required work, a
brigade of Cherokee Indians was turned into the valley, who committed
such atrocities as might have been expected.[1]
[Footnote 1: See report of a speech by the Hon. C. J. Barlow, of
Georgia, delivered in Cooper Institute, New York, October 15, 1864.]
There were Unionists also in other parts of North Carolina, and
against them the Confederate Government appeared to have a special
grudge. Some of them entered the National service by regular
enlistment, and when the Confederate force, under General Hoke,
captured Plymouth, in April, 1864, some of these loyal North
Carolinians were among the garrison. Knowing what would be their fate
if captured, they had provided themselves with morphine, and when the
Confederate sergeants went through the ranks and picked them out, they
secretly swallowed the drug. As soon as it was discovered what they
had done, each was placed between two Confederate soldiers, who kept
him walking and awake until its effects had passed away, in order that
the "traitors," as they were called, might die by hanging, and soon
afterward they were hanged.
[Illustration: EXECUTION OF A PRIVATE SOLDIER FOR DESERTION AND
ATTEMPTED COMMUNICATION WITH THE ENEMY.]
There were instances of intolerance and outrage at the North, but they
were comparatively few. One of the most notable occurred in Concord,
N. H., in August, 1863, where a newspaper that had been loud in its
disloyalty was punished by a mob, mainly of newly recruited soldiers,
who gutted the office and threw the type into the street. The
sheriff's reading of the Riot Act consisted in climbing a lamp-post,
extending his right arm, and saying persuasively to the rioters, "Now,
boys, I guess you'd better go home."
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL JOHN S. PRESTON, C. S. A. (In charge
of the Bureau of Conscription.)]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL JOHN H. WINDER, C. S. A.
(Superintendent of Prisons.)]
[Illustration: SAMUEL COOPER, C. S. A. (Adjutant and
Inspector-General.)]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL S. B. MAXEY, C. S. A. (Superintendent of
Indian Affairs.)]
The most serious charge made by Confederate writers, with sufficient
proof, of violation of the laws of war on the part of National troops
or commanders, is that which they bring against Gen. David Hunter for
his acts in the Shenandoah Valley, when he commanded there in the
summer of 1864. Gen. John D. Imboden has made the most dispassionate
and apparently honest statement of these that has been published. He
says:
"What I write is history--every fact detailed is true, indisputably
true, and sustained by evidence, both Confederate and Federal, that no
living man can gainsay, and a denial is boldly challenged, with the
assurance that I hold the proofs ready for production whenever,
wherever, and however required. Perhaps no one now living was in a
better position to know, at the time of their occurrence, all the
details of these transactions than myself.
"Up to his occupation of Staunton, where his army was so much
strengthened by Crook and Averill as to relieve his mind of all
apprehension of disaster, his conduct had been soldierly, striking his
blows only at armed men. But at Staunton he commenced burning private
property, and the passion for house-burning grew upon him, and a new
system of warfare was inaugurated that a few weeks afterward
culminated in the retaliatory burning of Chambersburg. At Staunton,
his incendiary appetite was appeased by the burning of a large woollen
mill that gave employment to many poor women and children, and a large
steam flouring mill and the railway buildings.
"At the breaking out of the war David S. Creigh, an old man of the
highest social position, the father of eleven sons and daughters,
beloved by all who knew them for their virtues, and intelligence,
resided on his estate, near Lewisburg, in Greenbrier County. His
reputation was of the highest order. No man in the large county of
Greenbrier was better known or more esteemed; few, if any, had more
influence. Besides offices of high public trust in civil life, he was
an elder in the Presbyterian church of Lewisburg, one of the largest
and most respectable in {318} the synod of Virginia. In the early part
of November, 1863, there being a Federal force near Lewisburg, Mr.
Creigh, on entering his house one day, found a drunken and dissolute
soldier there using the most insulting language to his wife and
daughters, and at the same time breaking open trunks and drawers, and
helping himself to their contents. At the moment Mr. Creigh entered,
the ruffian was attempting to force the trunk of a young lady teacher
in the family. Mr. Creigh asked him to desist, stating that it was the
property of a lady under his protection. The villain, rising from the
trunk, immediately drew a pistol, cocked it, pointed it at Mr. Creigh,
and exclaimed: 'Go out of this room. What are you doing here? Bring me
the keys.' Mr. Creigh attempted to defend himself and family, but a
pistol he tried to use for the purpose snapped at the instant the
robber fired at him, the ball grazing his face and burying itself in
the wall. They then grappled, struggled into the passage, and tumbled
downstairs, the robber on top. They rose, and Mr. Creigh attempted to
wrest the pistol from the hands of his adversary, when it was
accidentally discharged, and the latter wounded. They struggled into
the portico, where the ruffian again shot at Mr. Creigh, when a negro
woman who saw it all ran up with an axe in her hand, and begged her
master to use it. He took it from her and despatched the robber. After
consultation and advice with friends, it was decided to bury the body
and say nothing about it.
"The troops left the neighborhood, and did not return till June, 1864,
when they were going through to join Hunter. A negro belonging to a
neighbor, having heard of the matter, went to their camp and told it.
Search was made, the remains found, and Mr. Creigh was arrested. He
made a candid statement of the whole matter, and begged to be
permitted to introduce witnesses to prove the facts, which was
refused, and he was marched off with the army, to be turned over to
General Hunter, at Staunton.... Mr. Creigh had no trial, no witnesses,
no counsel nor friends present, but was ordered to be hanged like a
dog for an act of duty to his helpless wife and daughters.
"At Lexington he enlarged upon the burning operations begun at
Staunton. On his way, and in the surrounding country, he burnt mills,
furnaces, storehouses, granaries, and all farming utensils he could
find, besides a great amount of fencing and a large quantity of grain.
In the town he burnt the Virginia Military Institute, and all the
professors' houses except the superintendent's (General Smith's),
where he had his headquarters, and found a portion of the family too
sick to be removed. He had the combustibles collected to burn
Washington College, the recipient of the benefactions of the Father of
his Country by his will; but, yielding to the appeals of the trustees
and citizens, spared the building, but destroyed the philosophical and
chemical apparatus, libraries, and furniture. He burned the mills and
some private stores in the lower part of the town. Captain Towns, an
officer in General Hunter's army, took supper with the family of Gov.
John Letcher. Mrs. Letcher, having heard threats that her house would
be burned, spoke of it to Captain Towns, who said it could not be
possible, and remarked that he would go at once to headquarters and
let her know. He went, returned in a half hour, and told her that he
was directed by General Hunter to assure her that the house would not
be destroyed, and she might, therefore, rest easy. After this, she
dismissed her fears, not believing it possible that a man occupying
Hunter's position would be guilty of wilful and deliberate falsehood
to a lady. It, however, turned out otherwise, for the next morning, at
half-past eight o'clock, his assistant provost-marshal, accompanied by
a portion of his guard, rode up to the door, and Captain Berry
dismounted, rang the door-bell, called for Mrs. Letcher, and informed
her that General Hunter had ordered him to burn the house. She
replied, 'There must be some mistake,' and requested to see the order.
He said it was verbal. She asked if its execution could not be delayed
till she could see Hunter. He replied: 'The order is peremptory, and
you have five minutes to leave the house.' Mrs. {319} Letcher then
asked if she could be allowed to remove her mother's, her sister's,
her own and her children's clothing. This request being refused, she
left the house. In a very short time they poured camphene on the
parlor floor and ignited it with a match. In the meantime Miss Lizzie
Letcher was trying to remove some articles of clothing from the other
end of the house, and Berry, finding these in her arms, set fire to
them. The wardrobe and bureaus were then fired, and soon the house was
enveloped in flames. While Hunter was in Lexington, Capt. Mathew X.
White, residing near the town, was arrested, taken about two miles,
and, without trial, was shot, on the allegation that he was a
bushwhacker. During the first year of the war he commanded the
Rockbridge cavalry, and was a young gentleman of generous impulses and
good character. The total destruction of private property in
Rockbridge County, by Hunter, was estimated and published in the local
papers at the time as over two million dollars.
"From Lexington he proceeded to Buchanan, in Botetourt County, and
camped on the magnificent estate of Col. John T. Anderson, an elder
brother of Gen. Joseph R. Anderson, of the Tredegar Works at Richmond.
Colonel Anderson's estate, on the banks of the Upper James, and his
mansion, were baronial in character. The house crowned a high, wooded
hill, was very large, and furnished in a style to dispense that lavish
hospitality which was the pride of so many of the old-time Virginians.
It was the seat of luxury and refinement, and in all respects a place
to make the owner contented with his lot in this world. Colonel
Anderson was old--his head as white as snow--and his wife but a few
years his junior. He was in no office, and too old to fight, hence was
living on his fine estate strictly the life of a private gentleman.
There was no military or public object on God's earth to be gained by
ruining such a man. Yet Hunter, after destroying all that could be
destroyed on the plantation when he left it, ordered the grand old
mansion with all its contents to be laid in ashes.
"It seems that, smarting under the miserable failure of his grand raid
on Lynchburg, he came back to the Potomac more implacable than when he
left it a month before. His first victim was the Hon. Andrew Hunter,
of Charlestown, Jefferson County, his own first cousin, and named
after the general's father. Mr. Hunter is a lawyer of great eminence,
and a man of deservedly large influence in his county and the State.
His home, eight miles from Harper's Ferry, in the suburbs of
Charlestown, was the most costly and elegant in the place, and his
family as refined and cultivated as any in the State. His offence, in
General Hunter's eyes, was that he had gone politically with his
State, and was in full sympathy with the Confederate cause. The
general sent a squadron of cavalry out from Harper's Ferry, took Mr.
Hunter prisoner, and held him a month in the common guard-house of his
soldiers, without alleging any offence against him not common to
nearly all the people of Virginia, and finally discharged him without
trial or explanation, after heaping these indignities on him. Mr.
Hunter was an old man, and suffered severely from confinement and
exposure. While he was thus a prisoner General Hunter ordered his
elegant mansion to be burned to the ground with all its contents, not
even permitting Mrs. Hunter and her daughter to save their clothes and
family pictures from the flames. His next similar exploit was at
Shepherdstown, in the same county, where, on the 19th of July, 1864,
he caused to be burned the residence of the Hon. A. R. Boteler. Mrs.
Boteler was also a cousin of General Hunter. This homestead was an old
colonial house, endeared to the family by a thousand tender memories,
and contained a splendid library, many pictures, and an invaluable
collection of rare and precious manuscripts, illustrating the early
history of that part of Virginia, that Colonel Boteler had collected
by years of toil. The only members of the family who were there at the
time were Colonel Boteler's eldest and widowed daughter, Mrs.
Shepherd, who was an invalid, her three children, the eldest five
years old and the youngest eighteen months, and Miss Helen Boteler.
Colonel Boteler and his son were in the army, and Mrs. Boteler in
Baltimore. The ladies and children were at dinner when informed by the
servants that a body of cavalry had turned in at the gate, from the
turnpike, and were coming up to the house. It proved to be a small
detachment of the First New York cavalry, commanded by a Capt. William
F. Martindale, who, on being met at the door by Mrs. Shepherd, coolly
told her that he had come to burn the house. She asked him by what
authority. He told her by that of General Hunter, and showed her his
written order. On reading it, she said: 'The order, I see, sir, is for
you to burn the houses of Col. Alexander R. Boteler and Mr. Edmund I.
Lee. Now, this is not Colonel Boteler's house, but is the property of
my mother, Mrs. Boteler, and therefore must not be destroyed, as you
have no authority to burn her house.' 'It's Colonel Boteler's _home_,
and that's enough for me,' was Martindale's reply. She then said: 'I
have been obliged to remove all my personal effects here, and have
several thousand dollars' worth of property stored in the house and
outbuildings, which belongs to me and my children. Can I not be
permitted to save it?' But Martindale curtly told her that he intended
to 'burn everything under roof upon the place.' Meanwhile some of the
soldiers were plundering the house of silver spoons, forks, cups, and
whatever they fancied, while others piled the parlor furniture on the
floors, and others poured kerosene on the piles and floors, which they
then set on fire. They had brought the kerosene with them, in canteens
strapped to their saddles. Miss Boteler, being devoted to music,
pleaded hard for her piano, as it belonged to her, having been a gift
from her grandmother, but she was brutally forbidden to save it;
whereupon, although the flames were roaring in the adjoining rooms,
and the roof all on fire, she quietly went into the house, and seating
herself for the last time before the instrument, sang her favorite
hymn, 'Thy will be done.' Then shutting down the lid and locking it,
she calmly went out upon the lawn, where her sick sister and the
frightened little children were sitting under the trees, the only
shelter then left for them."
Gen. Jubal A. Early, in his "Memoir of the Last Year of the War,"
makes briefly the same accusations against General Hunter that have
just been quoted from General Imboden's paper, and adds:
"A number of towns in the South, as well as private country houses,
had been burned by the Federal troops, and the accounts had been
heralded forth in some of the Northern papers in terms of exultation,
and gloated over by their readers, while they were received with
apathy by others. I now came to the conclusion that we had stood this
mode of warfare long enough, and that it was time to open the eyes of
the people of the North to its enormity, by an example in the way of
retaliation. The town of Chambersburg in Pennsylvania was selected as
the one on which retaliation should be made, and McCausland was
ordered to proceed with his brigade and that of Johnson and a battery
of artillery to that place, and demand of the municipal authorities
the sum of one hundred thousand dollars in gold, or five hundred
thousand dollars in United States currency, as a compensation for the
{320} destruction of the houses named and their contents; and, in
default of payment, to lay the town in ashes. A written demand to that
effect was sent to the municipal authorities, and they were informed
what would be the result of a failure or refusal to comply with it. 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 would have the desired effect and
open the eyes of people of other towns at the North to the necessity
of urging upon their Government the adoption of a different policy.
McCausland was also directed to proceed from Chambersburg toward
Cumberland in Maryland, and levy contributions in money upon that and
other towns able to bear them, and, if possible, destroy the machinery
at the coal-pits near Cumberland, and the machine shops, depots, and
bridges on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, as far as practicable. On
the 30th of July McCausland reached Chambersburg and made the demand
as directed, reading to such of the authorities as presented
themselves the paper sent by me. The demand was not complied with, the
people stating that they were not afraid of having their town burned,
and that a Federal force was approaching. McCausland proceeded to
carry out his orders, and the greater part of the town was laid in
ashes. For this act I alone am responsible, as the officers engaged in
it were executing my orders and had no discretion left them."
The resentment excited by the enlistment of black troops, and the
determination not to treat them in accordance with the rules of
civilized warfare, were most notably exemplified at the capture of
Fort Pillow, April 12, 1864. This work was on the bank of the
Mississippi, about forty miles above Memphis, on a high bluff, with a
ravine on either side. In the lower ravine were some Government
buildings and a little village. The fort, under command of Major L. F.
Booth, had a garrison of about five hundred and fifty men, nearly half
of whom were colored. The Confederate General Forrest, with about five
thousand men, attacked the place at sunrise. The garrison made a
gallant defence, aided by the gunboat _New Era_, which enfiladed the
ravines, and after half a day's fighting, though the commander of the
fort was killed, the besiegers had made no progress. They then
resorted to the device of sending in flags of truce, demanding a
surrender, and took advantage of the truce to move up into positions
near the fort, which they had vainly tried to reach under fire. As
soon as the second flag of truce was withdrawn, they made a rush upon
the fort, passed over the works, and with a cry of "No quarter!" began
an indiscriminate slaughter, though the garrison threw down their
arms, and either surrendered or ran down the river-bank. Women and
children, as well as men, were deliberately murdered, and the savagery
continued for hours after the surrender. The sick and the wounded were
butchered in their tents, and in some cases tents and buildings were
set on fire after the occupants had been fastened so that they could
not escape. In one instance a Confederate officer had taken up a negro
child behind him on his horse. When General Chalmers observed this, he
ordered the officer to put the child down and shoot him, and the order
was obeyed. Major W. F. Bradford, on whom the command of the fort had
devolved, was murdered the next day, when he was being marched away as
a prisoner. Fewer than a hundred of the garrison were killed in the
battle, and about three hundred were butchered after the surrender.
Forrest's loss is unknown. His early reports of the affair were
exultant. In one he wrote: "We busted the fort at ninerclock and
scatered the niggers. The men is still a killanem in the woods....
Them as was cotch with spoons and brestpins and sich was killed and
the rest of the lot was payrold and told to git." Again he or his
adjutant wrote: "The river was dyed with the blood of the slaughtered
for two hundred yards.... It is hoped that these facts will
demonstrate to the Northern people that negro soldiers cannot cope
with Southerners." Forrest had been a slave-trader before the war, and
did not know that there could be any such thing as cruelty or
treachery in dealing with black men. When he found that the civilized
world was horrified at what he had done, he attempted to palliate it
by saying that the flag at the fort had not been hauled down in token
of surrender when his men burst over the works, and that some of the
garrison retreating down the river-bank fired at their pursuers. But
his argument is vitiated by the fact that, three weeks before, in
demanding the surrender of a force at Paducah he notified the
commander that if he had to carry the place by storm no quarter need
be expected.
[Illustration: LIBBY PRISON--INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR.]
There had been from the beginning a difficulty about the care of
prisoners in the hands of the Confederates, which arose chiefly from
the incompetence and brutality of Commissary-General Northrop. Once
when Captain Warner, who had charge of the prisoners in Richmond, was
directed to make a requisition on Northrop for subsistence, he was
answered, "I know nothing of Yankee prisoners--throw them all into the
James River!" "But," said the captain, "at least tell me how I am to
keep my {321} accounts for the prisoners' subsistence." "Sir," said
Northrop, "I have not the will or the time to speak with you. Chuck
the scoundrels into the river!" This man was maintained in the post of
commissary-general throughout the war--though his maladministration of
the office many times produced a scarcity of food in the Confederate
camps--and in the last year the subsistence of prisoners was also
intrusted to him.
Of the prisoners captured by the Confederate armies, most of the
commissioned officers were confined in the Libby warehouse
(thenceforward known as Libby Prison) in Richmond, and at Columbia,
S. C. The non-commissioned officers and privates were kept in
camps--on Belle Isle, in the James River, at Richmond; at Salisbury,
N. C.; at Florence, S. C.; at Tyler, Tex.; and at Andersonville and
Millen, Ga. Most of these were simply open stockades, with little or
no shelter. That at Andersonville enclosed about twenty acres,
afterward enlarged to thirty. The palisade was of pine logs, fifteen
feet high, set close together. Outside of this, at a distance of a
hundred and twenty feet, was another palisade, and between the two
were the guards. Inside of the inner stockade, and about twenty feet
from it, was a slight railing known as the "dead line," since any
prisoner that passed it, or even approached it too closely, was
immediately shot. A small stream flowed sluggishly through the
enclosure, and furnished the prisoners their only supply of water for
washing, drinking, or cooking. The cook-houses and camp of the guards
were placed on this stream, above the stockade. There was plenty of
timber in sight from the prison, yet no shelter was furnished inside
of the stockade, except such as the prisoners could make with the few
blankets they possessed. Their rations were often issued to them
uncooked, and they burrowed in the ground for roots with which to make
a little fire. The stream was soon polluted, and its banks became a
mass of mire and filth. A common exclamation of newly arrived
prisoners, as they entered the appalling place, was, "Is this hell?"
[Illustration: MAJOR R. R. TURNER, C. S. A. (Keeper of Libby Prison.)]
It is said that the Confederate general, John H. Winder, under whose
direction the stockade was built, was asked to leave a few trees
inside of it, and erect some sheds for the shelter of the prisoners,
but he answered, "No! I am going to build the pen so as to destroy
more Yankees than can be destroyed at the front." Winder's well-known
character, the place chosen for the stockade, all its arrangements,
and the manner in which it was kept, leave no reasonable doubt that
such was the purpose. When Mr. Davis and his cabinet were appealed to
by the Confederate inspector of prisons, and others, to replace
General Winder by a more humane officer, they answered by promoting
Winder to the place of commissary-general of all the prisoners.
One of the prisoners, Robert H. Kellogg, sergeant-major of the
Sixteenth Connecticut Regiment, who was taken to Andersonville when it
had been in use about two months, says in his diary: "As we entered
the place, a spectacle met our eyes that almost froze our blood with
horror, and made our hearts within fail us. Before us were forms that
had once been active and erect, stalwart men, now nothing but mere
walking skeletons, covered with filth and vermin. In the centre was a
swamp occupying three or four acres of the narrowed limits, and a part
of this marshy place had been used by the prisoners as a sink, and
excrement covered the ground, the scent arising from which was
suffocating. The ground allotted to our ninety was near the edge of
this plague spot, and how we were to live through the warm summer
weather in the midst of such fearful surroundings was more than we
cared to think of just then. No shelter was provided for us by the
rebel authorities, and we therefore went to work to provide for
ourselves. Eleven of us combined to form a family. For the small sum
of two dollars in greenbacks we purchased eight small saplings, eight
or nine feet long. These we bent and made fast in the ground, and,
covering them with our blankets, made a tent with an oval roof, about
thirteen feet long. We needed the blankets for our protection from the
cold at night, but concluded it to be quite as essential to our
comfort to shut out the rain. There were ten deaths on our side of the
camp that night. The old prisoners called it 'being exchanged,' and
truly it was a blessed transformation."
[Illustration: "CASTLE THUNDER," RICHMOND, VA. (In this building Union
prisoners were confined.)]
At one time there were thirty-three thousand prisoners in the
stockade, which gave a space about four feet square to each man. The
whole number sent there was about forty-nine thousand five hundred, of
whom nearly thirteen thousand died. At Salisbury prison the deaths
were thirteen per cent. a month, and at Florence twelve per cent. Most
of the deaths were from disease and starvation, but there were
numerous murders. It was said that every sentry, on shooting a
prisoner for violation of rules, received a month's furlough; and this
was corroborated by the alacrity with which they seized any pretext
for firing. In Libby, men were often shot for approaching near enough
to a window for the sentry to see their heads. In Andersonville one
was shot for crawling out to secure a small piece of wood that lay
near the dead-line; and there were many incidents of that kind. Some
of the men became deranged or desperate, and {322} deliberately walked
up to the dead-line for the purpose of being put out of their misery.
There were many escapes from these prisons; but the fugitives were
generally soon missed, and were followed by fleet horsemen and often
tracked by bloodhounds, and though they were always befriended by the
negroes, who fed them, concealed them by day, and guided them at
night, but few ultimately reached the National lines.
A captain in the Eighty-fifth Pennsylvania Regiment, who was a
prisoner in the hands of the Confederates, gives this leaf from his
experience: "During the night of July 27, 1864, while several hundred
of my brother officers were being transported from Macon to Charleston
by rail, Captain Kellogg, of Wisconsin, Ensign Stoner, of New York,
Ensign Smith, now of Washington, Lieut. E. P. Brooks, of Washington,
Paymaster Billings, of the United States Navy, and myself, jumped from
a car and escaped to the swamp, through which we hardly thought an
alligator could have followed us. Late in the afternoon of the second
day, however, we heard the deep baying of the dogs, and soon we were
surrounded with dogs, which we held at bay with stout clubs until the
two fiendish hunters had called them off. Before starting on our weary
march back to that dread imprisonment, one of our captors took
occasion to say: 'It's a good thing for you-uns that our catch-dogs
gave out half a mile back, for I reckon they'd a tored you-uns up
'fore we-uns got thare.' He said the dogs that recaptured us were a
mixture between the fox-hound and the beagle-dog, but that the large,
brutish catch-dogs were a cross between the full South American
bloodhound and the bull-dog. He said he kept two large packs of these
dogs, with quite a number of catch-dogs, or bloodhounds, at Hamburg,
which he hired out for the purpose of hunting escaped Yankee prisoners
and runaway niggers. I saw Captain Holmes, of St. Louis, Mo., a
prisoner of war at Macon, Ga., in July, 1864, who had been fearfully
mangled and torn by a catch-dog in Alabama while he was trying to
escape. I frequently saw two large South American bloodhounds outside
of the stockade at Macon. At Andersonville they had a large pack of
bloodhounds."
[Illustration: CAMP DOUGLAS, AT CHICAGO. (Confederate prisoners were
confined here.)]
The crowded condition of the prisons in 1864 was owing to the fact
that exchanges had been discontinued. A cartel for the exchange of
prisoners had been in operation for some time; but when it was found
that the Confederate authorities had determined not to exchange any
black soldiers, or their white officers, captured in battle, the
United States Government refused to exchange at all, being bound to
protect equally all who had entered its service. Paroling prisoners on
the field was also discontinued, because the Confederates could not be
trusted to observe their parole. There had been much complaint that
Confederate officers and soldiers violated their word in this respect,
either because in their intense hatred of the North they could not
realize that they were bound by any promise given to it, or because
their own Government forced them back into its service. Many of them
were captured with arms in their hands, while they were still under
parole from a previous capture. All such, by the laws of war, might
have been summarily executed, but none of them were. The thirty
thousand taken by Grant at Vicksburg, and the six thousand taken by
Banks at Port Hudson, in July, 1863, were released on parole, because
the cartel designated two points for delivery of prisoners--Vicksburg
in the West, and Aiken's Landing, Va., in the East--and Vicksburg,
having been captured, was no longer available for this purpose, and
Aiken's Landing was too far away. Three months later, the Confederate
armies being in want of reinforcements, Colonel Ould, Confederate
commissioner of exchange, raised the technical point that the
prisoners captured by Grant and Banks had not been delivered at a
place mentioned in the cartel, and therefore he declared them all
released from their parole, and they were restored to the ranks. At
Chattanooga, in November, Grant's army captured large numbers from
Bragg's army whom they had captured in July with Pemberton and had
released on {323} a solemn promise that they would not take up arms
again until properly exchanged.
Other difficulties arose to complicate still further the question of
exchanges. At one time the Confederate authorities refused to make any
but a general exchange--all held by either side to be liberated--which
the National Government declined, since it held an excess of about
forty thousand. It was observed, also, when partial exchanges were
effected, that the men returning from Southern prisons were nearly all
wasted to skeletons and unfit for further service, while the
Confederates returning from Northern prisons were well clothed, well
fed, and generally in good health. Photographs of the emaciated men
from Andersonville and Belle Isle were exhibited throughout the North,
and caused more of horror than the report from any battlefield.
Engravings from them were published, in the summer of 1864, by
newspapers of both parties, for opposite purposes--the Republican, to
prove the barbarity of the Confederate authorities and the atrocious
spirit of the rebellion; the Democratic, to prove that President
Lincoln was a monster of cruelty in that he did not waive all
questions at issue and consent to a general exchange. At a later
period, the Confederate authorities, being badly in need of men to
fill up their depleted armies, offered to give up their point about
black soldiers, and exchange man for man--or rather skeleton for
man--without regard to color. But as the war was nearing its close,
and to do this would have reinforced the Southern armies with some
thousands of strong and well-fed troops, and prolonged the struggle,
the National Government refused. Efforts were made, both by the
Government and by the Sanitary Commission, to send food, clothing, and
medical supplies to those confined in the Confederate prisons; but
only a small portion of these things ever reached the men for whom
they were intended. At Libby Prison, at one time, boxes for the
prisoners arrived at the rate of three hundred a week; but instead of
being distributed they were piled up in warehouses in sight of the
hungry and shivering captives, where they were plundered by the guards
and by the poorer inhabitants of the city. In one case, a lieutenant
among the prisoners saw his own home-made suit of clothes on a prison
official, and pointed out his name embroidered on the watch-pocket.[2]
[Footnote 2: See "Narrative of Privations and Sufferings of United
States Officers and Soldiers while Prisoners of War in the Hands of
the Rebel Authorities. Being the Report of a Commission of Inquiry
Appointed by the United States Sanitary Commission. With an Appendix
containing the Testimony." (1864.) Valentine Mott, M.D., was chairman
of the commission.]
The total number of soldiers and citizens captured by the Confederate
armies during the war was 188,145, and it is estimated that about half
of them were actually confined in prisons. The number of deaths in
those prisons was 36,401. The number of Confederates captured by the
National forces was 476,169, of whom 227,570 were actually confined.
The percentage of mortality in the Confederate prisons was over 38; in
the National prisons it was 13.3.
There has been much acrimonious controversy over this question of the
prisoners, and attempts have been made, by juggling with the figures,
to prove that they were as badly treated in Northern as in Southern
prisons. The most plausible excuse for the starving of captives at the
South is in the assertion that the Confederate army was on short
allowance at the same time. It is a sorrowful subject in any aspect,
and presents complicated questions; but if it is to be discussed at
all, several principles should be kept in view, some of which appear
to have been lost sight of. No belligerent is under any obligation to
enter into a cartel for the exchange of prisoners. In the war of
1812-15, between the United States and Great Britain, there were no
exchanges till the close of the contest. Every belligerent that takes
prisoners is bound by the laws of war to treat them well, since they
are no longer combatants. A belligerent that has not the means of
caring properly for prisoners is in so far without the means of
carrying on civilized warfare, and therefore comes so far short of
possessing the right to make war at all. Every time a soldier is put
out of the combat by being made a prisoner instead of being shot, so
much is gained for the cause of humanity; and if all prisoners could
be cared for properly, the most humane way of conducting a war would
be to make no exchanges, since these reinforce both sides, prolong the
contest, and increase the mortality in the field.
Whatever may be said of individual experiences in the prisons, North
or South, and whatever may have been the brutality, or the humanity,
of this or that keeper, one great fact overtops everything and settles
the main question of the treatment of prisoners beyond dispute. The
prisons at the South were open stockades, with no building of any kind
inside, no tree, no tent, no shelter furnished for the prisoners from
sun or rain, not even the simplest sanitary arrangements, and an
enormous number of prisoners were crowded into them. At Belle Isle the
prisoners were packed so close that when they lay sleeping no one
could turn over until the whole line agreed to turn simultaneously. On
the other hand, the Northern prisons contained buildings for the
shelter of the prisoners, with bunks as comfortable as in any
barracks, and stoves to heat them in cold weather, while the sanitary
arrangements were carefully looked after, and good rations issued
regularly. It is impossible to look upon these contrasted pictures and
not say that it was the intention of the one Government that its
prisoners should suffer as much as possible, and the intention of the
other Government that its prisoners should be made as comfortable as
prisoners in large numbers ever can be.
[Illustration]
{324}