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.
| 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."
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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 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.