Campfire and Battlefield / An Illustrated History of the Campaigns and Conflicts of the Great Civil War

by Rossiter Johnson; Selden Connor; John Brown Gordon; Henry W. B. Howard; O. O. Howard; John Tyler Morgan; John Clark Ridpath

BRIGADIER-GENERAL JOHN S. PRESTON, C. S. A. (In charge of the Bureau of Conscription.)	BRIGADIER-GENERAL JOHN H. WINDER, C. S. A. (Superintendent of Prisons.)
SAMUEL COOPER, C. S. A. (Adjutant and Inspector-General.)	MAJOR-GENERAL S. B. MAXEY, C. S. A. (Superintendent of Indian Affairs.)

"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. 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 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.

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 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?"