May 13, 1863, Galveston Weekly News
Under this impressive head the Philadelphia Sunday Mercury publishes the following extract from a letter of a staff officer in one of the brigades of Sherman’s Division of the army of the Southwest. It is written in camp on the Tallahatchie river, and the writer, says the Mercury, was “decidedly opposed to, and used all his influence against what he considered the absurd and suicidal policy of protecting rebel property.” The letter says:
I believe the time has come when I am ashamed to acknowledge that I belong to the Union party. Of all the disgraceful proceedings that I ever witnessed, I think what I have seen on this march caps the climax. Two-thirds of Sherman’s army is composed of new troops from Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin, and they have come down here with the intention of burning and destroying, and well are they carrying out their intentions. The whole line of our march is one continued scene of destruction. Private dwellings burned, women and children driven out of their houses, and even the clothes stripped from their backs, to say nothing of acts committed by the soldiery which would almost make the blackest-hearted libertine blush for shame. This very day I have witnessed scenes from which I turn with loathing and disgust. True, stringent orders have been issued against these excesses, but I fear they will do no good. The only sure remedy is for General Sherman to shoot about a dozen of these infernal rascals in the presence of his whole division, but whether he will resort to any such stringent measure remains to be seen. I have always blamed Union Generals for guarding rebel property, but I now see the necessity of it. Not so much to save the property, but our own safety demands it. Three weeks of such unbridled license would ruin our army.
I tell you the truth when I say we are about as mean a mob as ever walked the face of the earth. It is perfectly frightful. If I lived in this country, I never would lay down my arms while a “Yankee” remained on the soil. I do not blame Southerners for being secessionists now. I could relate many things that would be laughable if they were not so horribly disgraceful. For instance, imagine two privates in an elegant carriage, belonging to some wealthy Southern nabob, with a splendid span of horses riding in state along the road we are marching over, with a negro coachman holding the reins in all the style of an English nobleman, and then two small drummer boys going it at a two-forty pace, in an elegant buggy, with a fast horse, and the buggy loaded with a strange medly of household furniture and kitchen utensils, from an elegant parlor mirror to a pair of fire dogs, all of which they have “cramped” from some fine house, which from sheer wantonness they have rifled and destroyed. Hundred of such scenes are constantly occurring along the line of our march, as ridiculous and absurd, as they are a burning shame to the army of the Union.