YANKEE NOBILITY
ACCUSATION: "The North was the righteous good guys."
"Yes, I recollect seeing the Yankees in Winnsboro. They ransacked most of the houses, in search of money, jewelry, silverware, and portable articles of value. Afterward, they set fire to houses of the most prominent people, and committed sacrilege in burning St. John's Episcopal Church on Sunday. They laughingly said they did so because many of the members had the family name, Davis, spelled the same as President Jefferson Davis of the Confederate States."
Thomas Madden Cathcart, Winnsboro, S. C., October 10th, 1940
American Life Histories: Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940
Washington Sunday Jan'y 11th 1863
There is a great deal of growling among the shirking officers and soldiers about the War. They are "tired of fighting for the Nigger." I think Mr Lincoln intended to give the Rebels a hard blow by his Proclamation of freedom, careing less about abolishing Slavery than crushing the Rebellion. Interested and short sighted men declare it is all for the abolition of Slavery.
Washington during the Civil War: The Diary of Horatio Nelson Taft, 1861-1865
Library of Congress
"It has repeatedly come to my knowledge, on the Mississippi, and recently Colonel Beckwith, my chief commissary, reported officially that his negro cattle drivers and gangs for unloading cars were stampeded and broken up by recruiting officers who actually used their authority to carry them off by a species of force."
Major General W T Sherman, USA - June 21, 1864
Official Records, Series 1, Volume 39, Part 2, Page 132
Female College
Huntsville, Ala., Tuesday, June 18 [1867]
To the Editor of the New York Times:
My attention has been called to an article in your paper of
3lst ult., in which, replying to some remarks of the Richmond Enquirer in regard to the treatment of prisoners, it said: "Nobody on either side ever pretended for a moment that rebel prisoners ever died in our hands or even seriously suffered for lack of food or clothing or shelter. No such charge has been made."
Will you then permit such charges to be made through your
columns? I was captured in October, 1863, and spent six months in Camp Morton. In March, 1864, I was removed to Fort Delaware, where I remained until June, 1865. The winter of 1863-4 is well known to have been intensely severe.
Many rebel prisoners, to my own knowledge, spent that winter without a blanket, and the scant and ragged summer clothing worn when captured. The barracks were the old cattle sheds used when the prison was a fair ground, and open enough for the winter winds to sweep through freely. Scores of the men in the dead of winter slept in these sheds, upon the bare ground without covering, huddling together like hogs to keep from freezing.
It is well known to hundreds now living that several died, actually frozen to death, while large numbers were so badly frostbitten as to be lamed for Life.
During the larger portion of the time the hospital arrangements were shamefully deficient, and by many of the surgeons and attendants the sick were not only grossly neglected but most inhumanly treated.
Men barely able to crawl through weariness from insufficient food and disease consequent upon exposure, were forced, in the severest winter weather, to stand at roll call for two and often three or more hours in line, like soldiers on dress parade, and cursed like brutes or beaten over the heads with sabres or clubs, and sometimes shot at for moving a little to keep from freezing.
In several instances prisoners were shot on most the frivolous pretexts. A quiet orderly man, an Englishman named Coats, belonging to my division was murdered in cold blood by a private of the Invalid Corps named Baker, who was a guard.
Instead of being tried and punished, Baker, though a private, was sent next morning to take charge, as Sergeant, of our division, in which position he heaped upon the defenseless men every indignity that so inhuman a wretch could devise.
At the very time that such a outcry was raised about the mortality among Northern soldiers in Southern prisons, the inmates of Camp Morton knew the mortaity then in proportion to the number of men to be several percent greater. At Fort Delaware our barracks were more comfortable, but the rations were miserably insufficient, and prisoners who could not obtain money from friends with which to procure extra supplies from the suttlers suffered the pangs of hunger day and night, and reduced to skeletons, and eaten up by scurvy from scantly and unwholesome food fell ready victims to disease, and died by the hundreds.
At the close of the war, of about seven thousand men in one pen, fully one-half, if not three-fourths, were but walking skeletons, hundreds of them ruined for life with scurvy.
It was a daily occurrence for large numbers of men to be beaten over the head with bludgeons, or kept for hours tied up by the thumbs in the most agonizing torture. A Dutch Lieutenant, Deitz, in charge of our pen, was for weeks, in the habit of coming in with a large cowhide whip and lashing the men most unmerciful -- in one instance cutting a gash in the face of an Alabamian named Pardue, in which your finger could have been laid.
It was no uncommon thing for the guards, upon the slightest pretext to fire into the quarters in which were 300 or 400 men, and several prisoners were needlessly and recklessly killed by them.
The above, and the half has not been told are plain, unexaggerated facts, which can be substantiated by most unquestionable testimony, and for the truth of which I pledge my character and reputation as a minister of the gospel. I request the insertion of this as an act of justice.
J. G. Wilson
President of Huntsville Female College
The Alton (Illinois) Daily Democrat, 1862:
'NOTICE TO THE 'FREE NEGROES.' -- I hereby give public notice to all free negroes who have arrived here from a foreign State within the past two months, or may hereafter come into the city of Alton with the intention of being residents thereof, that they are allowed the space of thirty days to remove; and, upon failure to leave the city, will, after that period, be proceeded against by the undersigned, as by law directed. The penalty is a heavy fine, to liquidate which the law-officer is compelled to offer all free negroes arrested at public auction, unless the fine and all costs of suit are promptly paid. I hope the authorities will spare the necessity of putting the above law in execution. All railroad companies and steamboats are also forbidden to land free negroes within the city under penalty of the law. No additional notice will be given. Suits will POSITIVELY be instituted against all offenders.
May 27, 1862
JAMES W. DAVIS,
Prosecuting Attorney Alton-City Court"
"I would most respectfully recommend that this case be dealt with as follows:
1. That Lieutenant-Colonel Benedict be dishonorably dismissed the service for whipping with his own hands two negro drummers. It appears from evidence here that this is not the first time Lieutenant-Colonel Benedict has found it necessary, in his own judgment, to raise his hands in violence against soldiers.
2. That at least three of the ringleaders, in the use of fire-arms and in inciting disturbance in the late affair, be shot in the presence of this garrison; that the remaining leaders be sent to Ship Island for hard labor during life; that a military commission decide who shall be so executed and so transported. If this action is taken immediately I believe it will have the greatest effect on the discipline of the negro soldiers of this department...In regard to this whole matter of riot and mutiny, if the commanding general will give me authority to act, I will undertake to find and execute the proper persons with the promptness the case deserves."
- Brigadier General Willaim Dwight, USA - December 15, 1863
- OFFICIAL RECORDS: Series 1, Vol 26, Part 1, Page 861
"It is implied that the soldiers are to be paid as much as white soldiers. How legislators can imagine we can raise troops, as a permanent thing, at $7 a month I cannot see. The man must have $2 for himself, and he cannot support his family on the other $5. Hence the great number of desertion in this department. The black soldiers deserted by the score..."
- General William Birney, USA - April 12, 1864
- OFFICIAL RECORDS: Series 3, Vol 4, Part 1, Pages 226-227
New York Herald
Washington, Dec. 8, 1861
Communication with Cabinet members, and leading statesmen in the Senate and House must convince every one who is unbiased that the view held on the slavery question by the bulk of sincere Union men here, is nearly identical with that which has been so ably put forward in the columns of the Herald. Wherever there is unrestrained expression of opinion, regardless of popular claptrap, and pro-slavery and anti-slavery cant, the subject of the nigger is set aside, for future consideration, as of the smallest practical importance at the present moment. What it may later become, circumstances and the developments of the war will determine; but none ought to fail to perceive that the ipse dizit of politicians, demagogues and fanatics will not materially affect the issue. The President, his principal advisers, and patriotic individuals generally, connected with the government, have but one thought, one anxiety, namely, the restoration as speedily as may be of the integrity of the Union, and the suppression of the unholy rebellion which is convulsing the country.
