Page:Confederate Cause and Conduct.djvu/114

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92
Official Reports of the

our men, and he replied by shooting and wounding this man, who, in turn, fired and killed Meigs. One of the men with Meigs was captured and the other escaped. It was for this perfectly justifiable conduct in war that Sheridan says he ordered all the houses of private citizens within an area of five miles to be burned.

(See proof of facts of this occurrence, to the satisfaction of Lieutenant Meigs' father, 9th South. His. Society Papers, page 77.)


BUTLER'S ORDER


Butler's infamous order No. 28, directing that any lady of New Orleans who should "by word, gesture or movement insult or show contempt for any officer or soldier of the United States, she shall be regarded and treated as a woman of the town, plying her avocation," not only infuriated the people of the South and caused the author to be "outlawed" by our government, and denominated the "beast," but Lord Palmerson, in the British House of Commons, "took occasion to be astonished to blush and to proclaim his deepest indignation at the tenor of that order."

(2 Greely, p.100.)

But we are sick of these recitals, and must conclude our report, already longer than we intended it should be. We therefore only allude to the orders found on the person of Dahlgren, to burn, sack and destroy the city of Eichmond, to "kill Jeff. Davis and his Cabinet on the spot," &c.

The infamous deeds of General Edward A. Wild, both in Virginia and Georgia, and that of Colonel John McNiel in Missouri, some of which can be found set forth in the first volume of the Southern Historical Papers, at pages 326 and 232, are shocking and disgraceful beyond description.

Now contrast with all these orders and all this conduct on the part of the Federal officers and soldiers, the address of General Early to the people of York, Pa., when our army invaded that State in the Gettysburg campaign; or, better still, the order of General Robert E. Lee to his army on that march. We will let that order speak for itself. Here it is: