Page:Confederate Cause and Conduct.djvu/125

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
History Committee, Grand Camp, C. V.
103

with the North on the question of maintaining the Union, were shocked and disgusted at the methods pursued by it to accomplish that result. These have written and spoken about these methods, both of what they thought and of what they knew, and we have only gathered up some of this testimony in support of the justice of our cause, and of the course pursued by us to maintain it. Surely, the North cannot complain if we rest our case upon their testimony. We have done this almost exclusively, both in this and in former reports. The history contained in these reports, then, is not only that made, but also that written by Northern men.

As we have said, many of these were brave and true men, and one of them wrote that the acts committed by some of their commanders and comrades were enough to make him "ashamed of the flag that waved over him as he went into battle." Is it surprising that such was the case? It is said that General Hunter had to deprive forty of his commissioned officers of their commands before he could find one to carry into execution his infamous orders.

We have drawn this contrast, then, between the way the war was conducted by the North and the way it was conducted by the South, for many good reasons, but especially to show that the Confederate soldiers never made war on defenceless women and children, whilst the Federal soldiers did, and that this was done with the sanction of some of their most noted leaders, some of whom, as we have seen, shared in the fruits of the depredations committed on these defenceless people. In doing this, we believe we have done only what was just to ourselves and our children.

It must be remembered, too, that a large number of persons at the North still delight to speak of that war as a "Rebellion" and of us as "Rebels" and "Traitors." We have shown by the testimony of their own people, not only that they rebelled against, but overthrew the Constitution to male war on us, and that when they did go to war, they violated every rule they had laid down for the government of their armies, and waged it with a savage cruelty unknown in the history of civilization.