TWO MISSISSIPPI GIRLS HOLD YANKEES AT PISTOL POINT
[In Richmond Enquirer, July 22, 1862, page 3.]
A Memphis correspondent of the Appeal, in referring to the bad treatment of citizens by the Federal soldiers, related the following:
The most unmanly and brutal act that I know of is their treatment of two Misses Coe. Levin Coe, their brother, was at home, discharged from the army. They surrounded the house before the family knew they were on the place. Fortunately young Coe had gone fishing, and two of his sisters escaped to the garden and ran to warn him not to come home. The Yankees saw the way they went, and followed them, but the sisters outran them and gave their brother the information of their coming. They came up with the ladies at a house in the vicinity of the creek, and attempted to arrest them, but they were both armed and dared the six big, strapping Yankees to lay their hands on them. One would 234 say to another, “She’s got a pistol; take it away from her.” And she, a weak woman, stood at bay and told them to touch her at their peril. And the craven wretches dared not do it. At last, to get them from the neighborhood of their brother, they agreed to go to headquarters with them. It was then noon, and these girls had run two miles, and then these scoundrels marched them off on foot four miles to town. At every step they tried to get their pistols from them, threatening them with instant death if they did not give them up. Three times they placed their pistols at the girls’ hearts with them cocked and their fingers on the trigger, telling them they would kill them. Each time the girls replied, “Shoot; I can shoot as quick as you can.” And they never did give them up until their brother-in-law came up with them and told them to do so, and he gave himself up in their place. Levin Coe escaped.