The majority of these rogues were Northern men, who, if they had any political principles at all, were Federals. The fact was, however, that they did not care the toss of a button which side won, so long as they were able to make money out of the contest. The war, to them, was a grand opportunity for driving all manner of schemes for their individual profit, and the longer it was likely to last, the better they were pleased, giving no thought whatever to the enormous destruction of life and property that was going on, or to the incalculable misery that was caused to thousands of people, all over the land, every day it was waged.
Demoralizations of Warfare.
I presume that such villanies as it will now be my task to relate are the inevitable accompaniment of every great armed conflict; and if it could be clearly understood that warfare, no matter for what just causes it may be undertaken, inevitably breeds corruption, in its most aggravating forms, and that the longer it lasts, the more does demoralization spread among all classes of society, right thinking people would be apt to hesitate more than they do about encouraging appeals to arms for the settlement of national and international differences.
I doubt whether a good many of the people of the North who supported the Federal government in its efforts to conquer the South, under the belief that their cause was a just one, and worth making sacrifices for, had any adequate idea of the rascality, in high quarters and low quarters, that was one of the results of the war. We read about certain scandalous doings in the newspapers; but, apart from the fact that many of the worst rascalities of the period never were brought to light, it was impossible for the good, patriotic people who contributed their money and goods, and who prayed, day and night, for the success of the Federal cause, to understand the infamies that were being practised around them, as I, who was in some sort the confederate of the villains, and who consequently was able to study the situation from the inside, could not help doing.
Had these infamies been confined to a comparatively few obscure men in the large cities they would have been bad enough, and would have been sufficiently demoralizing in their influences to make it a subject for profound regret that opportunities for their practice should have been afforded.
