The Yankees took special delight in killing dogs, many an innocent cur having to atone with his life for the sins committed by bloodhounds used in hunting down negroes, conscripts, and escaped Yankee prisoners.
Sherman’s field-orders show that it was not his intention to permit indiscriminate destruction and plundering.[[17]] Yet these orders appear to have been interpreted by his men very liberally. A regiment, was usually sent ahead with instructions to guard private dwellings; but as soon as the guards were removed, a legion of stragglers and negroes rushed in to pillage; and I am convinced that in some cases even the guards pilfered industriously.
Wilson’s men, when they seized fresh horses for their use, turned the jaded ones loose in the country. Sherman’s army-corps acted on a different principle. The deliberate aim seemed to be to leave no stock whatever in the line of march. Whenever fresh horses were taken, the used-up animals were shot. Such also was the fate of horses and mules found in the country, and not deemed worth taking. The best herds of cattle were driven off; inferior herds were slaughtered in the fields, and left. A company of soldiers would shoot down a drove of hogs, cut out the hind-quarters, and abandon what remained.
“The Federal army generally behaved very well in this State,” said a Confederate officer. “I don’t think there was ever an army in the world that would have behaved better, on a similar expedition, in an enemy’s country. Our army certainly wouldn’t. The destruction of railroads, mills, and gin-houses, if designed to cripple us, was perfectly justifiable.
“But you did have as mean a set of stragglers following your army as ever broke jail. I’ll do you the credit to say, though, that there were more foreigners than Yankees among them.
“A lot of these rascals came to my house, and just about turned it inside out. They wouldn’t wait for my wife to give them the keys of the bureau, but smashed in the drawers with the butts of their muskets, and emptied them.
“My sister, living near me, gave her plate and valuables, locked up in a trunk, to a negro, who took it and hid it in the woods. Then, to avoid suspicion, he joined the Yankees, and was gone with ’em several days. She felt great anxiety about the trunk, until one morning he came home, by the way of the woods, grinning, with the trunk on his shoulder.
“My wife did like my sister. She gave her money and plate to a negro, who hid it; but he didn’t get off so well as the other darkey. The Yankees suspected him, and threatened to hang him if he didn’t give it up. They got the rope around his neck, and actually did string him up, till they found he would die sooner than tell, when they let him down again.
“Your fellows hung several men in my neighborhood, to make ’em tell where their money was. Some gave it up after a little hanging; but I know one man who went to the limb three times, and saved his money, and his life too. Another man had three hundred dollars in gold hid in his garden. He is very fat; weighs, I suppose, two hundred and fifty pounds. He held out till they got the rope around his neck, then he caved in. ‘I’m dogged,’ says he, ‘if I’m going to risk my weight on a rope around my neck, just for a little money!’”
An old gentleman in Putnam County, near Eatonton, related the following:—