Today in History:

583 Series I Volume LI-II Serial 108 - Supplements Part II

Page 583 Chapter LXIII. CORRESPONDENCE, ETC.- CONFEDERATE.

jailors to watch and insult them in the privacy of their cells. They have placed the press of the country wherever their power extends under censorship, and in numerous cases prohibites the circulation of papers, broken, up their forms, and scattered their types to the wind. They were restrained from infringing the right of the people of one of the States still in their Union, and nuted and baited those in others who have presumed to keep their own arms against their mandate. They were expressly prohibited from quartering soldiers in any house without the consent of the owner, and not even in time of war but in a manner to be prescribed by law. They have not only thus quartered them, but they have instigated their soldiers, when so quartered, to plunder themof every valuable, and wantonly to destroy what their cupidity could not carry away. They have not only shot down helpless owners, who ought to have been reverenced for their age and sex, but have consumed the owners and their dwellings in one undistinguished conflagration. And when they have professed to pay for property illegally obtained, they have paid the owners inpresented money which they have previously criminally counterfeited and debased.

With this catalogue of violations of solemn constitutional obligations, well may we say they keep no faith and pervert truth, justice, and right. When in the history of civilized nations has it been known that non-combatants, plain citizens, engaged only in farming pursuits were imprisoned for having shown allegiance to their own State laws? When has it been known that wives and pure and spotless maindens have been violated by soldiers without an effort on the part of their officers to pursue the perpetrators with the vengeance of the law? What civilized nation would not blush to conceal its own flag, the emblem of its nationality and honor, and hoist on the battle-field the flag of its enemy, in order to decoy that enemy into a murderous fire, and then glory in the meanness of the deception and the cowardice of the act? What ancient or modern nation ever used a flag of truce to decoy an enemy in battle other than the United States of America? Let history record the disgrace and brand the infamy upon their brow for all time to come. What ancient or modern nation would openly fire upon a public hospital, in which the sick, the wounded, and the dying are being cared for by the generous and the kind-hearted, the surgeon, and the Sister of Charity? We brand it as a crime upon the United States, and call upon the historian to record it against them. They were required to guarantee to every State a republican form of government. Wherever their armies have obtained a foothold they have established a military government, and appointed military staraps and provost-marshals to execute laws never sanctioned by the people or the Government which they created, and have executed arbitrary power, enforcing it by bayonets and at the mouth of the cannon; these military rulers issuing proclamations indulting to the people, unknown to civilization, and brutally disgraceful, compelling obedience by presenting the alternative of submission or starvation; and by their mere military order causing some of our most patriotic citizens to be ignominiously hung upon a charge of treason, without trial and without law! Can any people be expected to submit to such wrongs? Will the people of Virginia tamely submit to such tyranny? If such acts are perpetrated while they have but partial control, what may we not expect when the demons have full sway and authority? Citizens of Virginia, the State appeals to you to add to your many noble exertions for the cause in which we are engaged this one effort to redeemour fair State from the hand of the oppressor. Make up the force now called for, and be prompt inyour action.


Page 583 Chapter LXIII. CORRESPONDENCE, ETC.- CONFEDERATE.