sister when I get back to Boston,’ and so saying, in nasal tones
that were hateful to my ears, the ruffian pocketed the only souvenir
I possessed of ‘the tender grace of a day that is dead that can
never come back to me.’
* * * * *
“Meanwhile, the tumult outside increased. Fresh voices appeared to
swell the chorus of yells, and we soon learned that the Yankees had
been joined by another troop of horsemen. These, with the negroes
who had by this time cast off all restraint, and who numbered fifty
or sixty, were holding a wild revel over several barrels of
whiskey—for it was the latter and not gold that had called forth
such jubilant cries. Unfortunately, only a day before this, this
liquor had been stored away for safe-keeping in an outhouse.
“Now followed a succession of scenes that beggars description. The
ruffians drank and swore, and some, sitting beside the barrels,
uttered the most horrible blasphemies. Others with a canteen of
whiskey in one hand, while the other brandished a gun, filed in and
out of the house, filling our ears with what they intended doing if
the gold was not soon found. The negroes, half-crazed by the liquor
they had imbibed, and urged on by the Yankees, crowded into the
rooms, taking liberties they had never before attempted, and
appropriating what little spoil the men had left. Only a few proved
faithful in this hour of trial.
“All night long the men kept up their wild orgies, quarrelling and
even fighting meantime for a fresh distribution of spoil. The
new-comers wanted their share, and at the point of the bayonet urged
their demand. To make matters worse the negroes held a revel of
their own to celebrate the advent of their ‘Northern bred’rin.’ For
hours we could hear them dancing and shouting, and calling down all
manner of blessings on ‘Ole Mars’ Lincoln,’ until overcome by
excitement and the whiskey they had imbibed they fell exhausted into
a drunken sleep.
* * * * *
“It was about 3 o’clock in the afternoon, when the Colonel, followed
by some of the most desperate looking of his ruffians, rushed up to
Earle, and shaking his gun at him, exclaimed, in a voice quivering
with passion:
“‘Curse you! We won’t wait another moment on you to deliver up the
gold. Tell us where it is, or by G— I’ll shoot you down.’
“In a shorter time than I can relate it, the inhuman wretches
dragged my helpless brother beneath a large maple tree, and placing
a strong rope around his neck, prepared to execute their threat. Ah!
the agony of that moment! We read of the times that tried men’s
hearts, but where is the pen that can ever portray the depths of
suffering which have been fathomed by the hearts of Southern women
during the dark days of Secession!
“The rope was tightening, when one of the men exclaimed: ‘Where is
his wife! She must see him swing!’ And, as if in answer to his call,
Iris sprang forward and tightly grasped the rope.
“‘You dare not! You shall not kill him!’ she cried, her face
blanched to the dreadful whiteness of death.
“‘Who will stop us, you cursed Rebel?’ asked the Colonel, who of all
those brutal creatures seemed to me the most inhuman. ‘Here, men,
pull her off, and if she won’t keep her distance make her.’”
“Rudely they tore her hands from the rope, and held them firmly
despite her efforts to free herself. Then I saw the rope tighten
once more and my poor brother swing into mid-air. A fresh chorus of
shouts, mingled with a woman’s scream—a scream of intense relief and
deep, heartfelt thankfulness—called me back to the scene of
violence, where I found the work of death had been suddenly and
mercifully stayed!”
Ruffianism of a similar character is described by Mrs. Nora M. Canning,
of Macon, Ga. Her husband, who had been absent for some days, was
brought in on a bare-backed mule, escorted by a party of Northern
soldiers. Mrs. Canning says:
“I got my husband to his room as soon as possible, and found that he
was very faint, as I thought, from fatigue. Imagine my horror,
therefore, when he revived sufficiently to talk, to hear that the
fiends had taken him to the swamp and hanged him. He said that he
suspected no harm until he had gotten about two miles from the
house, when they stopped, and, taking him from the mule, said: ‘Now,
old man, you have got to tell us where your gold is hidden.’ He told
them he had no gold. They then took him to a tree which bent over
the path, tied a rope around his neck, threw it over a projecting
limb and drew him up until his feet were off the ground. He did not
quite lose consciousness when they let him down and said: ‘Now,
where is your gold?’ He told them the same story, whereupon one of
them cried: ‘We will make you tell another story before we are done
with you. So pull him up again boys!’ They raised him up again, and
that time, he said, he felt as if he were suffocating. They again
lowered him to the ground and cried out fiercely: ‘Now tell us where
that gold is or we will kill you, and your wife will never know what
has become of you.’ ‘I have told you the truth—I have no gold,’ he
again repeated, adding: ‘I am an old man and at your mercy. If you
want to kill me you have the power to do it, but I cannot die with a
lie upon my lips. I have no gold, I have a gold watch at the house,
but nothing else. One of them, who seemed to be the leader, said:
‘Swing the old Rebel up again; next time we will get all the truth
from him.’ They then lifted him up and let him fall with more force
than before. He heard a sound as of water rushing through his head,
and then a blindness came over him, and a dry choking sensation was
felt in his throat as he lost consciousness. The next thing he
remembered he was some distance from the place where he was hanged,
lying with his head down the hill near a stream of water, and one of
the men was bathing his face and another rubbing his hands. For some
time he was unable to speak. Then he heard one of the men say: ‘We
liked to have carried that game too far.’ When he was able to sit up
they placed him upon the mule and brought him to the house to get
his watch.”
Mrs. Henrietta E. Lee wrote to Gen. David Hunter a burning protest
against the burning of her house, together with the house of Col. A. R.
Boteler and Andrew Hunter in the lower valley of Virginia, and Governor
Letcher’s and the Virginia Military Institute at Lexington, together
with other acts of vandalism. In her letter she says:
“A Colonel of the Federal Army has stated that you deprived forty of
your officers of their commands because they refused to carry on
your malignant mischief. All honor to their names for this, at
least! They are men—they have human hearts and blush for such a
commander!”
“I ask, who that does not wish infamy and disgrace attached to him
forever would serve under you? Your name will stand on history’s
page as the Hunter of weak women and innocent children; the Hunter
to destroy defenceless villages and refined and beautiful homes, to
torture afresh the agonized hearts of widows; the Hunter of Africa’s
poor sons and daughters, to lure them on to ruin and death of soul
and body; the Hunter with the relentless heart of a wild beast, the
face of a fiend and the form of a man. Oh, Earth, behold the
monster!”
“Can I say, ‘God, forgive you?’ No prayer can be offered for you!
Were it possible for human lips to raise your name heavenward,
angels would thrust the foul thing back again, and demons claim
their own. The curses of thousands, the scorn of the manly and
upright, and the hatred of the true and honorable, will follow you
and yours through all time and brand your name with infamy!
“Again, I demand why you have burned my home? Answer, as you must
answer before the ‘Searcher of all hearts,’ why have you added this
cruel, wicked deed to your many crimes?”
Perhaps the best way to close this revolting chapter is by quoting from
the report of a Select Committee of the Confederate Congress, consisting
of one Senator from each of the thirteen States, and of which Senator C.
C. Clay, of Alabama, was Chairman. The Committee was raised, under a
resolution of the Senate, to collect and report evidences of the
outrages committed by the enemy upon the persons and property of our
citizens, in violation of the rules of civilized warfare and the rights
of humanity. In their report they say:
“That they have received statements of wrongs, injuries and
outrages committed by the enemy in only four States of the
Confederacy—Alabama, Arkansas, North Carolina and South
Carolina—and that these embrace only a small part of what has been
suffered by our citizens in these States. But those statements
show that our invaders have been utterly regardless of every
principle of lawful warfare, every precept of the Christian
religion, and every sentiment of enlightened humanity. They have
not spared even the memorials of our dead or suffer their remains
to rest undisturbed. They have robbed many persons of relics of
deceased parents, children or other relatives and friends, which
were invaluable to them and valueless to the robbers, merely to
torture the souls of our citizens and satisfy their own mean and
malevolent animosity. They have murdered peaceful and unoffending
citizens, and have seized and taken many of them far from their
families and homes, and incarcerated them in prisons of the United
States. To others they offered the choice of a prison, or an oath
of allegiance to the United States. They have rushed, by
regiments, battalions or companies, into our villages and robbed,
like banditti, both men and women, in their dwellings and on the
streets, of money, watches and other jewelry. Their soldiers have
indulged their brutal passions upon women, sometimes in open day
and public places, with impunity, if not by license of their
officers. They have not spared either age, sex or calling. Even
those unfortunates whom the mysterious providence of God has
bereft of reason, or of the faculty of speech, or the sense of
sight or hearing, have not escaped the demoniacal wrath of our
enemies.
“In conclusion the committee feel warranted in saying that the
conduct of the war, on the part of our enemies, has not exhibited
the moderation, the forbearance, the chivalrous courtesy, the
magnanimity or Christian charity which the spirit of the age
demands, and which the practice of civilized nations for several
centuries last past has generally illustrated. It has been a war
against property, both public and private; against both sexes and
against all classes of society; against the political, moral and
religious sentiment of our people; against their honor and their
public affection; against what has hitherto been deemed sacred,
inoffensive and exempt from hostility by all civilized nations. It
has been conducted so as to insult while they injured, to exhibit
towards us contempt as well as hatred. It has been waged as if they
wished never to have had peace with us, or expected us never to hold
in future any equality with them. Its prospective policy has not
been to restore the Union, or to have any future commerce or
intercourse with us as independent or friendly States. They disdain
to conciliate, and design to subjugate or exterminate our people.”
The Confederate States Congress adopted in December, 1863, an address to
the people, in which the objects of the war and the manner of conducting
it were set forth. The Committee say:
“Accompanied by every act of cruelty and rapine, the conduct of the
enemy has been destitute of that forbearance and magnanimity which
civilization and Christianity have introduced to mitigate the
asperities of war. Houses are pillaged and burned, churches are
defaced, towns are ransacked, clothing of women and infants is
stripped from their persons, jewelry and mementoes of the dead are
stolen, mills and implements of agriculture are destroyed, private
salt works are broken up, the introduction of medicines is
forbidden, means of subsistence are wantonly wasted to produce
beggary, prisoners are returned with contagious diseases, the last
morsel of food has been taken from families who were not allowed to
carry on a trade or branch of industry; a rigid and offensive
espionage has been introduced to ferret out disloyalty; persons have
been forced to choose between starvation of helpless children and
taking the oath of allegiance to a hated Government; the cartel for
exchange of prisoners has been suspended, and our unfortunate
soldiers subjected to the grossest indignities; the wounded at
Gettysburg were deprived of their nurses, and inhumanly left to
perish on the field; helpless women have been exposed to the most
cruel outrages and to that dishonor which is infinitely worse than
death; citizens have been murdered by the Butlers and McNeils and
Milroys, who are favorite generals of our enemies; refined and
delicate ladies have been seized, bound with cords, imprisoned,
guarded by negroes, and held as hostages for the return of
recaptured slaves; unoffending non-combatants have been banished or
dragged from their quiet homes, to be immured in filthy jails;
preaching the Gospel has been refused, except on condition of taking
the oath of allegiance; parents have been forbidden to name their
children in honor of ‘Rebel’ chiefs; property has been confiscated;
military Governors have been appointed for States, satraps for
provinces, and Haynaus for cities.
Well can we understand the burning lines of S. Teakle Wallis:
“From the far-off conquered cities
Comes the voice of a stifled wail,
And the shrieks and moans of the houseless
Ring out, like a dirge, on the gale!
“I’ve seen, from the smoking village,
Our mothers and daughters fly!
I’ve seen, where the little children
Sank down in the furrows, to die!
“On the banks of the battle-stained river
I stood, as the moonlight shone,
And it glared on the face of my brother,
As the sad wave swept him on!
“Where my home was glad, are ashes,
And horror and shame had been there;
For I found, on the fallen lintel,
This tress of my wife’s torn hair!
“With halter, and torch, and Bible,
And hymns, to the sound of the drum,
They preach the gospel of murder,
And pray for lust’s kingdom to come!”
The reports of the Confederate Committees were made long before the
blackest hours of the Confederacy—long before the “march to the sea.”
There is far more behind; more than can ever be told. Far be it from any
of us to indict a whole people, or condemn every Northern soldier. There
were, indeed, shining instances of kindness and even gentleness. But the
incongruous character of the elements of which the Northern army was
composed must be taken into account. It was not, perhaps, reasonable to
expect that they would behave in the South as the Confederate army
behaved in Pennsylvania. Doubtless the officers of the Northern army,
and many of the men as well, are heartily ashamed of the conduct of
their comrades. But this will not, and cannot, alter the fact. This fact
it is indispensable to mention. Some hint of the atrocities of the
blackguards and bullies in uniform must be given, or the record of “Our
Women in the War” will be partial and incomplete.
* * * * *
But if there were any doubt as to the power and influence of the women
of the Confederacy, that doubt would be set at rest by the full and
honorable recognition they received at the hands of the victorious
enemy. Long after Lee and Johnston and Kirby Smith had surrendered,
officers in the uniform of the United States Army were engaged in
seeking out and paroling the women in every city and town and hamlet in
the South.
The Government did not feel safe until the mothers and daughters and
wives of the Confederate soldiers had taken the oath of allegiance,
along with the rest of the devoted army that had fought the North for
four years. How to reach them in their strongholds, their homes, was the
first question, but it was soon solved. Communication with absent loved
ones, by mail or express, was cut off, and a woman or girl, of military
age, was not allowed to take a letter out of the post office until she
had sworn to cease the struggle so far as she was individually
concerned. In other cases, where the family supplies had been taken for
the use of the Federal soldiers, or had been wantonly destroyed, the
alternative was presented of seeing their little ones suffer from hunger
or of themselves accepting the hated obligation as a condition precedent
to obtaining food for them. It is not necessary to go far for the proof
of this assertion. With incredible blindness of perception—in almost
providential ignorance of the damning character of his work—a Northern
artist, the sculptor Rodgers, seized upon this novel feature of the
situation, when peace had been declared, and has perpetuated in one of
his familiar household groups the fact of the administration of the oath
by a Federal officer to a Southern woman—the barrel of Government
provisions, the empty basket, and leering negro boy, enjoying the
humiliation of his mistress, constituting the remaining elements of the
picture.
* * * * *
There is high satisfaction in the knowledge that the soldiers and
statesmen of the South were not unmindful of the services of the
Southern women, and freely gave expression to their appreciation of
their myriad acts of devotion. In the breast of every Confederate
soldier there was a feeling of gratitude which grew more intense from
campaign to campaign, and that can never be effaced. Nor was official
recognition ever wanting.
The Provisional Congress of the Confederate States placed on record the
thanks of the country to the women of the South for their works of
patriotism and public charity, and declared that the Government owed
them “a public acknowledgment of their faithfulness in the glorious work
of effecting our independence.”
President Davis in his message to Congress in January, 1863, spoke of
“our noble and devoted women, without whose sublime sacrifices our
success would have been impossible.”
Stonewall Jackson, the right arm of Lee, in a letter written in 1862 to
Mrs. Mary Tucker Magill, said: “Be assured that I feel a deep and
abiding interest in _our female soldiers_. They are patriots in the
truest sense of the word, and I more than admire them.”
Indeed, the narrative of the behavior of the Southern women is an
integral part of the history of the war itself, and, whenever it shall
be worthily written, will form its most touching and inspiring chapter.
George Cary Eggleston, in “_A Rebel’s Recollections_,” which was
published some years ago, gives an admirable exposition of the constancy
of our women. “They could hardly,” he says, “have been more desperately
in earnest than their husbands and brothers and sons were in the
prosecution of the war, but with their woman-natures they gave
themselves wholly to the cause, and, having loved it heartily when it
gave promise of a sturdy life, they almost worship it now that they have
strewn its bier with funeral flowers. To doubt its righteousness, or to
falter in their loyalty to it while it lived, would have been treason
and infidelity; to do the like now that it is dead would be to them
little less than sacrilege. * * * When they lost a husband, or son, or a
brother, they held the loss as only an additional reason for faithful
adherence to the cause. Having made such a sacrifice to that which was
almost a religion to them, they had, if possible, less thought than ever
of proving unfaithful to it. * * But if the cheerfulness of the women
during the war was remarkable, what shall we say of the way in which
they met its final failure, and the poverty that came with it? The end
of the war completed the ruin which its progress had wrought. * * * * *
Everybody was poor except the speculators who had fattened upon the
necessities of the women and children; and so poverty was essential to
anything like good repute. The want of means became a jest, and nobody
mourned over it, while all were laboring to repair their wasted fortunes
as they best could. And all this was due to the unconquerable
cheerfulness of the Southern women. The men came home moody, worn out,
discouraged, and but for the influence of woman’s cheerfulness the
Southern States might have fallen into a lethargy from which they could
not have recovered for generations. Such prosperity as they have since
achieved is largely due to the courage and spirit of their noble women.”
* * * * *
Permit me now to say a few words concerning the part played by
Marylanders, and particularly by Baltimoreans, in the war between the
States. It is a subject on which every “Old Rebel” delights to dwell. It
makes your fair city inconceivably dear to the peoples of what were the
Confederate States.
Of the gallant soldiers you gave to the Southern Confederacy—who, as
their historian tells us, “struck the first blow in Baltimore and the
last in Virginia”—it is sufficient to say, in the words of Mr. Davis,
that “the world will accord to them peculiar credit, as it has always
done to those who leave their hearthstones to fight for principle in the
land of others.” Assuredly the names of Elzey, of Ridgeley Brown, of
Gilmore, of Dorsey, of Winder, of Archer, of Herbert, of Johnson, are
gladly kept in glorious remembrance, as is the name of every Marylander,
officer or private, who, under the Stars and Bars, helped to give us
victory and shared with us defeat.
To them, and of them, can well be spoken such words as Shakespeare’s
Harry said on the eve of the battle of Agincourt:
He that outlives this day and comes safe home,
Will stand on tip-toe when this day is nam’d.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly, on the vigil, feast his neighbors:
Then will he strip his sleeve, and show his scars,
And say, These wounds I had on Crispian’s day.
Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words,
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be, in their flowing cups, freshly remember’d.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we, in it, shall be remembered;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
And gentlemen in England now abed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap while any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.
Here to-night is a Marylander whom I may mention for the reason that,
while in command of the Maryland Line, in 1864, he led a small squadron
of men in pursuit of a brigade of Kilpatrick’s cavalry, and, when
attacked in the rear by a column outnumbering his force by seven to one,
turned upon the enemy and brought off twice as many prisoners as the
number of men in his own command, besides inflicting a severe loss in
killed and wounded. Well may it be written that “no exploit of the war,
on either side, exceeds this for skill, daring and cold courage.” In
token of admiration of his services, Gen. Wade Hampton, of South
Carolina, presented to Gen. Bradley T. Johnson, the hero of the day, a
sabre, which was the fellow of that which he had worn and used himself,
on many a hard-fought field. Later still, Gen. Lee fitly described Gen.
Johnson as “bold and intelligent, ardent and true.”
There was another—the beau-ideal of gentleness and bravery. Though
almost a stranger, he cared for me day after day with exquisite patience
and gentleness, during the disability caused by a wound I received at
Mechanicsville. It was easy, indeed, to love him, for he had the
simplicity of the child, the faithfulness of the woman, the chivalrous
valor of the knight of old. On the field at Gettysburg he poured out for
us his blood. He is in my thought of thoughts to-night—William H.
Murray, of Company A, 2d Maryland regiment, who is well described as
“the most gallant spirit that fought and died for the South.”
* * * * *