“The children owned a pretty little pet, a grey hound . . . Gathering up a stone, one of the soldiers watched his moment, and approaching the group where they were at play, suddenly dashed out the brains of the little dog, at the very feet of the children.”
William Gilmore Simms, Columbia, South Carolina, 1865
“We were determined that no dogs should escape, be it a cur, a rat dog, or bloodhound; we exterminated all. The dogs are easily killed. All we had to do was bayonet them.”
Col. Oscar Jackson, Sixty-third Ohio Volunteers, 7 March 1865
“It was pitiful to see the poor, half-starved cur go up to the men with almost melancholy countenance, as much to say: “I have seen better days but now am starving. Just let me go along, and I will be a good, dutiful dog.” Sometimes he gets a kick or a bullet for his confidence . . . As for the general run of these animals, they were relentlessly shot down.”
David Conyngham, reporter, New York Herald, February 1865
Homage to the Hounds
“You suffered too.
It was war on dogs as well –
On every living thing it seems:
Ages of mutual friendship
All are betrayed
In one fire-breathing
Dragon day.”
(Poems from Scorched Earth, James Everett Kibler, Charleston Press, 2001, page 5)