War Crimes Against Southern Civilians Read online

  A more serious matter was Milroy's use of what were known as "Jessie Scouts," Union soldiers dressed as Confederates. They would go to the doors of Winchester homes at night, begging for something to eat or a place to stay. Those who offered to help a man they thought a fellow Confederate faced arrest or exile. Mr. and Mrs. Lloyd Logan discovered the true identity of a "Jessie Scout" and ejected him unceremoniously from their home. The family was immediately exiled, not allowed to pack clothing or possessions. A Logan daughter, though ill, was even forced to leave her medicine behind.'

  Milroy employed detectives clad in civilian clothing to spy on the people, eager to "report what the women talk about or if the children play with Confederate flags," recorded diarist Cornelia McDonald. One young schoolteacher, in a note to a friend, expressed an opinion critical of the general. She was taken several miles outside Winchester and simply dropped by the side of the road to fend for herself. Her school was closed.' Milroy's undercover agents also would loiter around stores, on the lookout for anyone attempting to make a purchase without a permit.

  Smuggling food through Union lines became for some the only way to survive, as did an illegal trade with individual soldiers occupying Winchester." Firewood was in short supply that winter, so Federal troops demolished every outlying fence and wooden building for that purpose." Several residences in town and buildings such as Winchester Academy and the Quaker church were also converted into fuel."' When one woman went to Milroy's headquarters to beg for feed for her livestock, he began screaming at her. "You all brought on this devilish rebellion and ought to be crushed and deserve to starve with the cows!" Despite the fact that a declaration of loyalty to the Union would bring relief, not a single person took the oath under Milroy.

  Winchester was not the only town to feel the wrath of the occupier. Berryville, Strasburg, and Front Royal were repeatedly raided. Arrests were made, and Milroy's troops robbed the "disloyal" and destroyed their property. "The way of the transgressor is hard," the general explained to his wife. "If they could not afford to renounce treason they must suffer on as they need expect no favor.""

  When word reached Winchester of the death of Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, ladies created black crepe rosette badges and wore them on the shoulder of their dresses in tribute to the fallen Southern general. Diarist Laura Lee recorded that one lady was accosted by a soldier who said that the mourning symbol "was an insult to their soldiers and must come off, and he put out his hand and tore it off her dress." Women were threatened with arrest and exile should the display continue, but one African-American lady would not be deterred. She wore the badge in public and was ordered by Federals to leave Winchester and not come back.12

  On March 10, 1863, Milroy was promoted to major general, a commission that was to date from the previous November 29, 13 a date-of-rank coinciding with-and arguably in explicit recognition of-those draconian assessments that first brought him to prominence.

  In mid-June, at the Second Battle of Winchester, Milroy and his men were routed by Confederates under Lt. Gen. Richard S. Ewell. With the Confederate flag again raised over Winchester, "citizens seemed perfectly wild with joy, many old ladies and gentlemen rushing out on their porches in their night clothes," wrote a soldier, "while children and young girls shouted and hurrahed until their strength failed them.""

  Chapter 11

  "Swamp Angel"

  The Shelling of Charleston

  On August 21, 1863, Maj. Gen. Quincy Gillmore, commanding Federal forces besieging Charleston, demanded that if defenders did not immediately abandon Morris Island and Fort Sumter-amounting to a suicidal withdrawal-he would open fire on the city. Even before Confederate general Beauregard received the note, two-hundred-pound, eight-inchdiameter shells began arcing toward the city from a distance of four miles. The first exploded in the early-morning darkness, destroying a house on Pinckney Street.

  "Among nations not barbarous," protested Beauregard, "the usage of war prescribes that when a city is about to be attacked, timely notice shall be given by the attacking commander, in order that non-combatants may have an opportunity for withdrawing beyond its limits." Crossing the lines under a flag of truce, the British consul attempted to make his own complaint to Gillmore but was rebuffed. The bombardment of Charleston would continue for another year and a half.

  The first projectiles were fired from a huge, iron Parrott gun mounted on a framework of logs floating on the marsh just inland from Morris Island. Dubbed the "Swamp Angel," this rifled behemoth burst after discharging but thirty-six rounds, its powder charge having been dangerously increased. Soon a Federal battery of four guns was under construction on a tiny piece of dry ground surrounded by marsh called Black Island. Firing on the city began with regularity in November and increased dramatically after the first of the year. Assisted by additional artillery, during one nine-day period in January no fewer than 1,500 shells fell on the city. Later, a single gun nearby threw 4,253 missiles into Charleston before it burst.

  The initial target was the steeple of St. Michael's Church, and though that house of worship was often hit, most projectiles exploded randomly in the lower section of the city. Incendiary shells proved defective, but high-explosive rounds started fires too. When Federals spotted smoke, they made it difficult for those attempting to extinguish the flames by quickly throwing in more shells. Once, the engine of the Phoenix Company exploded under a direct hit. The free blacks who made up Charleston's force of firefighters struggled heroically to protect their city and its people.

  From the first night of the shelling, many residents began moving beyond range of the guns-some abandoning the city altogether. It is not known how many civilians were killed or injured, but many near misses were remembered. Newspapers reported a shell piercing the roof of a home, passing through a bed where three children slept, then exploding on the next floor. Miraculously, no one was hurt.' Forest Gibbs, a free black man, was resting after work in his Tradd Street home when an iron projectile smashed through one wall and out the other, leaving him and his family terrified but uninjured.'

  On Christmas Day 1863, William Knighton, eighty-three, and his sister-in-law were sitting in front of the hearth in his home when a shell came crashing through the roof. His leg was shot off below the knee, and a fragment of the same projectile crushed his sister-in-law's foot. Within a week both had died from their wounds. The Christmas Day shelling of Charleston was the heaviest thus far, making it obvious that the bombardment had no military purpose, but was meant to strike terror into the civilian population. Gillmore admitted as much. "No military results of great value were ever expected," he told his superiors, though "the results were not only highly interesting and novel, but very instructive."

  In the fall of 1864 it came to the attention of Federals that about six hundred Union prisoners of war were in Charleston. They were held at several locations and, compared to their compatriots at other Southern prisoner-of-war camps, lived in a degree of comfort that they well appreciated. In retaliation, for exposing these men to their own bombardment, Federals placed a like number of Southern prisoners on Morris Island, where they were subject to being hit by Confederate fire. Rather than allow this to continue, the Confederate captors transferred their Federal prisoners to inland prisons safe from the shells that continued to rain down on Charleston's women and children.'

  Northern editors were delighted with news of the destruction, one reporting that "block by block of that city is being reduced to ashes."' Charleston native Henry Timrod, writing in the Daily South Carolinian, admitted that noncombatants who chose to flee the bombardment had been able to.

  But that which proves the ineffable meanness of the enemy, is, not that he has done these things, but that he has done them without the slightest compunction, and gloated over the supposed sufferings of the defenceless inhabitants.... [T]he Yankee commander, and his whole nation with him, exult in the ruin which they imagine they have been able to accomplish upon terms so cheap.'

 
When Federals became convinced that the area south of Broad Street was thoroughly demolished, gunners shifted their aim to the steeple of St. Philip's Church. That structure received at least ten direct hits, forcing the congregation to join others worshiping out of range. Finally, the Second Presbyterian Church above Calhoun Street, the extreme distance that could be reached by Union guns, was targeted.' Unexploded (but potentially deadly) rounds were still being unearthed in that vicinity more than a century later.

  During the course of the Union shelling, from August 1863 to February 1865, as many as twenty-two thousand projectiles fell on the city.'

  "Should you capture Charleston," wrote U.S. Army chief of staff Henry Halleck to Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman in December 1864, "I hope that by some accident the place may be destroyed, and if a little salt should be sown upon its site it may prevent the growth of future crops of nullification and secession." "I will bear in mind your hint as to Charleston," he replied. But as Sherman thought the city already wrecked by the shelling, and since he looked "upon Columbia as quite as bad" in regards to fostering rebellion, that general would, when the time came, turn his attention to South Carolina's capital."

  Chapter 12

  "I Intend to Take Everything"

  Banks Raids Louisiana

  By March 1863, Federal forces were besieging Confederates on the Mississippi River at Port Hudson, Louisiana. Soon, however, Maj. Gen. Nathaniel Banks turned his attention westward, launching a campaign in the Bayou Teche region. After taking Brashear City, Union troops in mid-April pushed back outnumbered Southern defenders at Fort Bisland and Irish Bend.

  Banks promised to protect civilians, but instructions to do so were almost entirely unenforced and ignored.' One of the first victims of the invasion was John M. Bateman, a planter who lived on the lower Atchafalaya River. Fretting for his own safety, the seventy year old had taken the oath of allegiance to the Union and now waved his papers and pleaded for protection as a loyal citizen of the United States. No matter. His home was thoroughly vandalized, windows and mirrors broken, tableware and china shattered. Whatever soldiers could find of value, virtually everything portable, was carried away.`

  French citizen Louis Francois Desire Arnaud tried to protect his home and property by displaying the flag of his native land, but to no avail. Yankee soldiers took everything that caught their eyes-including his wife's wedding bandsmashed the furniture and china, and even poisoned his well by throwing dead farm animals into it. After they left it took months of hard work to make repairs, and Arnaud planted a crop of corn and yams. When the Union army returned in the fall of the same year, the Frenchman was desperate to avoid further theft and destruction. He immediately went to military headquarters and swore an oath of allegiance to the United States. But when he returned home he found his crops being harvested by Federal foragers. Losing his temper, Arnaud began shouting at them and was soon bound, gagged, under arrest, and sent to a military stockade.'

  Men of the Twenty-first Indiana Infantry Regiment came ashore from a gunboat to raid the home of Dorsino Rentrop. The old man was gravely ill, and soon after the raiders departed he died. When Federals returned the following day, they arrested Rentrop's two grieving sons under the false assumption that they must be Confederate soldiers. The deceased Rentrop's grave was later broken into by Yankee robbers, forcing the family to disinter the body and return it to their home for protection. Soon both sons did indeed don Confederate uniforms."

  The Second Rhode Island Cavalry Regiment pillaged the home of Davisan Olivier. Troopers plundered his armoire and closets and shared among themselves the contents of his wallet. At the residence of Louise Fusilier a cavalry detachment dismounted, rushed through her front door, and began taking what they wanted. Her terrified gardener, an old man who spoke only French, was pistol-whipped by a sergeant who knocked him to the ground before going through his pockets. Mr. and Mrs. Antoine Goulas were both robbed at gunpoint and saw their infant's clothing and bedding stolen as well. A party of Federal officers grabbed watches and jewelry from the family of Joseph Frere before breaking open bureaus and armoires in search of apparel.'

  One woman peeked through a window as the invaders marched by. She was startled "when, suddenly, as if by magic the whole plantation was covered with men."

  In one place, excited troopers were firing into the flock of sheep; in another, officers and men were in pursuit of the boys' ponies; and in another, a crowd were in excited chase of the work animals....

  They penetrated under the house into the out-building, and went into the garden, stripping it in a moment of all its vegetables, and trenching the ground with their bayonets in search of buried treasures.

  John Lyons, former steamboat captain, was now a planter living on the upper Atchafalaya. A band of soldiers led by a disgruntled Unionist arrived at his home in the middle of the night and murdered him.'

  Federal brigadier general William Dwight, Jr. confessed the crimes of his men, decrying their lack of discipline and the "utter incompetency of regimental officers." Dwight described depredations committed as the army marched from Indian Village to New Iberia.

  The scenes of disorder and pillage on these two days' march were disgraceful to civilized war. Houses were entered and all in them destroyed in the most wanton manner. Ladies were frightened into delivering their jewels and valuables into the hands of the soldiers by threats of violence toward their husbands. Negro women were ravished in the presence of white women and children.

  Two miles from Jeanerette an elderly man named Say, though he spoke only French, begged for protection. The nearby home of his married daughter had already "been sacked even to the destruction of his granddaughter's toys," said one Federal officer. Though he was promised a guard, "the whole plantation rang for the rest of the evening with the cackling of chickens and geese, the squealing of pigs, and the lowering of cattle," continued the officer. "The plundering went on under our noses while an order was being composed to forbid it." The guilty soldiers were admonished with a "lecture" and sent on their way.

  Dasincourt Borel, living near New Iberia, lost everything to the Federal marauders, then had the audacity to complain in person to the commanding general. He at least wanted his one horse returned. "It is the only means of support I have left me," he told Banks, "and if I do not get it, I cannot support my family. My children will starve." "The horse is no more your property than the rest," replied Banks. "Louisiana is mine. I intend to take everything.""

  The Catholic church in New Iberia was plundered as troops danced in priestly robes. The men and boys of that town were forced at bayonet point to labor for fifteen days on earthwork defenses, by order of Brig. Gen. Stephen Burbridge.9

  It was in New Iberia that smallpox made its appearance in the invading army. Local physicians begged for vaccines that they might inoculate those unprotected among the civilian population. Their medical provisions were in short supply. At St. Martinville, soldiers of the 114th New York Infantry Regiment broke into the drugstore belonging to Eugene Duchamp, stealing or destroying all the medicines and medical instruments. Dr. Sabatier, a St. Martinville physician, swore that the vaccine eventually given him by Federal authorities was poisonous or contaminated, since in hundreds of patients it caused terrible infections that took months to treat.'

  At Fausse Pointe, fifty-two-year-old Pierre Alexandre Vuillemot was robbed and his house plundered. He heard his wife crying for help and ran to her assistance, finding that a soldier had injured her finger in biting and then wrenching a ring from it. Another stole her ear pendants, tearing away the end of an ear in the process. As they left with their plunder, one Yankee fired his pistol at Mr. Vuillemot and at his home but fortunately in his haste hit no one. The homeowner was himself later arrested for having attempted to "assault" a Union officer.

  A band of Yankees surrounded the residence of Cesair Deblank and his wife, "and employing every means that ingenuity could devise to inspire terror," one reported, "drew from the aged couple
their hoarded wealth." Mrs. Deblank, emotionally overcome by the invasion of her home, died soon afterward. Narcisse Thibodeau, almost eighty years of age, was dragged from his Breaux Bridge home. Yankees beat him with sticks until he told them where his money was hidden. David F. Sandoz, living near St. Martinville, was robbed by one party of Federal troops. Then another band arrived in the night to demand money. When told he had none, they said they would search his ransacked house and shoot him if they found any. "You may search," replied Sandoz, "and I will abide the consequences." Mrs. Sandoz was threatened by cocked pistols placed against her head but stood as firmly as her husband until the thieves finally gave up."

  Fr. Ange Marie Jan, Catholic priest in St. Martinville, was beaten by Federal troops-kicked and struck with the flat side of their sabers. Months later, after that army fell back, St. Martinville became for a time neutral territory between Union and Confederate lines. One Sabbath morning, after services at the Catholic church, civilian worshipers gathered on the streets to socialize. For no apparent reason, Yankee soldiers on the opposite bank of the Teche suddenly began firing rifle volleys into the town. One old man, Alexandre Wiltz, fell mortally wounded. Miraculously, no one else was hit.

  A resident of Vermilionville described the invasion of his neighborhood.