Circa1865

Sir Samuel W. Baker (1821-1893) was a British explorer and naturalist who spent several years in Africa in the mid-1870s, and helped convince the French-educated Khedive Ismail to eliminate the slave trafficking in his Egyptian and Sudan domain. Though the khedive was no doubt involved in the human trafficking which flourished in his land, he allowed Baker a free hand in suppressing local governors’ whose wealth depended greatly on enslaving and selling their own people.

Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com

The African Slave Trade

“Sir Samuel W. Baker had been distinguished for his explorations in Central Africa; and his representations of the evil effects produced by the slave trade on a country rich in soil and well-peopled induced the khedive of Egypt to fit out an expedition to put a stop to this nefarious business and give protection to the inhabitants, whom he claimed to be his subjects, from the ravages of slave-traders.

Companies of brigands had been formed that absolutely depopulated the country by driving away those they did not enslave. One of these traders had twenty-five thousand Arabs under pay, engaged in this inhuman traffic. And it was estimated that fifteen thousand of the khedives subjects were engaged in this business. Each trader occupied a special district, and with his band of armed men kept the population in submission. It was estimated that fifty thousand Negroes were annually captured by land pirates.

The khedive determined to put a stop to this, and [in the mid-1870s] organized an expedition for that purpose and put Mr. Baker at the head of it with supreme power, even that over life and death. He knew that there would be more or less fighting, for Soudan, the home of the slave-trader, would be wholly opposed to the attempt to break up their business.

April 20^th, just below the junction of the Bahr-Giraffe with the White Nile, the expedition came in sight of one of the governors’ vessels of this district, and, watching it through powerful telescopes, notices suspicious movements on board . . . Baker sent his aide-de-camp to visit the vessels lying near. The result was the discovery of a gang of slaves. Mr. Baker then requested to be shown around the encampment on shore.

To his horror, he found mass of slaves squatted on the ground – many of the women secured by ropes around the neck, and amid the filthy fetid mass, not only children but infants. Altogether, on the boats and on shore were found one hundred and fifty-five slaves.

Though this territory was not within Baker’s jurisdiction, as fixed by the khedive, yet he insisted on the liberation of the slaves. The governor rebelled at first, but finally on being threatened with the wrath of the khedive, yielded; and the naked, astonished crowd of slaves departed with loud discordant yells of rejoicing to their distant homes.

[Another boat of the governor was boarded] and there seemed an awkward smell about the cargo . . . the planks which boarded up the forecastle and the stern were broken down, and there was a mass of humanity exposed, boys, girls and women closely packed like herrings in a barrel, who under threats had remained perfectly silent until thus discovered.”

(Stanley and Livingstone in Africa, J.T. Headley, Spencer Press, 1937, excerpts, pp. 110-111; 120)

The term “Copperhead” is commonly used to describe a pro-South Northerner during the War Between the States, though it is more accurately defined as Northern critics of Lincoln who opposed his unwarranted seizure of power and war against Americans in the South. In early May, 1863, Ohio politician Clement Vallandigham was arrested for referring to the president as “King Lincoln” and criticizing his policies. As he was deported to the South by Lincoln, Vallandigham declared himself loyal to the United States and encouraged Southern authorities to return to Union with the Northern States. In his “Limits of Dissent, Clement Vallandigham and the Civil War,” historian Frank L. Klement wrote then of “nationalist historians” who resist criticism of Lincoln and avoid critical analysis of Lincoln’s administration.

Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com

“A Republican Smear Campaign”

“Klement saw it as no laughing matter the way Vallandigham and other outspoken northern critics of the Lincoln administration were treated by the Northern government during the conflict, and by historians afterward.

To the very end of his career, Klement remained firmly entrenched in his belief that the alleged Copperhead threat in the North during the Civil War was little more than a Republican smear campaign, a smoke screen that the Northern government used to discredit harmless civilians who strongly opposed the Lincoln administration’s seemingly blatant disregard for civil liberties.

He took aim at those historians who for years had spat venom at any critic of the Lincoln administration . . . [and stated that] the academic world clung too tightly to the work of scholars who chose to further inflate the Lincoln legend. In 1952 Klement told the historical community that “nationalism as a force and apotheosis as a process have tempted writers to laud Abraham Lincoln and to denounce his enemies.”

In a reflective mood forty-two years later, his message remained unchanged . . . “Nationalist historians really praise that which has happened and glorify that which has happened. When you deal with Lincoln’s critics and the Copperheads and Democratic politicians, you’re going down a road that is not appreciated by nationalist historians.”

Rather than that of a Northerner who sympathized with the South during the Civil War, the definition of a Copperhead should, he believed, be changed to simply “a Democratic critic of the Lincoln administration,” which supported his contention that Copperheads were sectionalists by nature, not necessarily pro-Southern.

Mark E. Neely, Jr . . . recently prophesied that the reigning interpretations of the Civil War years are on the verge of breaking down “or at least of very considerable revision . . .” The new wave of revisionism . . . also extends into the areas relating to Lincoln’s Democratic critics. Klement anticipated this trend in 1984 when he alluded to himself in the third person by writing that “revisionists have challenged the contentions of earlier historians who believed the Civil War to be ordained, inevitable, and irrepressible.”

(The Limits of Dissent, Clement L. Vallandigham & the Civil War, Frank L. Klement, Fordham University Press, 1998, excerpt from preface)

Lincoln’s only attempt at including a Southerner in his cabinet was sounding out North Carolinian and Congressman John Gilmer, who was “wary, mistrustful of Lincoln and reluctant to ally himself with an administration” opposed to the interests of his State and section. Conservatives feared that should Gilmer not accept, Lincoln would select radical hard-liner Montgomery Blair and add fuel to the sectional fire.

Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com

Convincing Southerners of Republican Hostility

“[Far from Fort Sumter] the president-elect was still at work composing his cabinet . . . [and] the impossibly tangled party considerations that continued to vex him. As [President James] Buchanan’s advisors planned their reinforcement expedition . . . Lincoln was committing the first major blunder of his administration. It began on Sunday, December 30 . . . when he met with that “greatest of Pennsylvania wirepullers,” Simon Cameron, about a place in the cabinet.

[Lincoln] knew it would be a controversial appointment. For one thing, Cameron’s easy movements from the [Democrats] to the Know Nothings to the Republicans had gained him a reputation as an unprincipled opportunist.

More damaging was the taint of corruption that surrounded him. Known to his critics as “the Great Winnebago Chief” for his mishandling of Indian funds in the 1830s, Cameron was also charged with manipulation elections and legislatures through bribery. Yet so many recommendations poured into Springfield that Lincoln could hardly see how not to appoint him.

It was one of the first important choices Lincoln had made for himself since the election, and he immediately had cause to regret foregoing his usual process of passing his decisions by [Lyman] Trumbull and [Hannibal] Hamlin . . . word of the selection [of Cameron] provoked a flood of outraged letters and visits from Republican leaders.

Displaying an indecision that was characteristic in those early months, Lincoln immediately reversed himself . . . [and] addressed a short, private note to Cameron rescinding his offer . . . [but] the imbroglio . . . exploded into what one historian has called “a mighty battle of Republican factions.” For the next several weeks Republican managers throughout the North appeared considerably more concerned with the patronage than with secession.

Placing [Salmon P.] Chase at the head of the Treasury Department [would reconcile] the powerful New York radicals to [William] Seward’s appointment [as Secretary of State].

[But] Lincoln was aware of the predicament of Southern unionists and the damage Republican rigidity [against compromise] might do to their cause. Nominating Chase, a long-acknowledged leader of the radicals, would give secessionists a powerful weapon in their fight to convince Southerners of Republican hostility.”

(Lincoln and the Decision for War, the Northern Response to Secession, Russell McClintock, UNC Press, 2008, excerpts pp. 123-125)

At war’s end, Southern Unionists who looked in vain for Northern compromise to avert war rightly expected fair treatment at Washington. They were disappointed as Radical policy was treatment of the South as “conquered territory to be plundered and exploited.” General Robert E. Lee had been swept along with Virginia in 1861 and viewed the Old South as dear as what existed in 1865. He wrote that “Never, for a moment, have I regretted my course in joining the Confederacy . . . If it were to do over again, I would do just as I did before.”

Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com

“Who Then is Responsible for the War?”

“Occasionally someone from the North would write and ask the General’s opinion about Southern affairs. [A former Illinois] Captain, having expressed feelings of kindness and friendship, asked General Lee to set forth the reasons which influenced him to take part with the Confederate States.

Lee replied that he had no other guide and no other object than the defense of those principles of American liberty upon which the constitutions of the several States were originally founded. “Unless they are strictly observed,” he added, “I fear there will be an end to republican government in this country.”

In this letter Lee showed a grasp of the situation. He felt he had no influence in national affairs and whatever was done must be accomplished by those who controlled the councils of the country. Only the Northern people themselves could exercise a beneficial influence.

[Lee did not view the right of secession as legitimate, and] admitted that the Southern people generally believed in the right, but, as for himself, he did not. [British historian Herbert C. Saunders wrote after interviewing Lee that] “This right he told me he always held a constitutional right . . . As to the policy of Secession on the part of the South, he was at first distinctly opposed to it and not until Lincoln issued a proclamation for 75,000 men to invade the South, which he deemed so clearly unconstitutional, that he had then no longer any doubt what course his loyalty to the Constitution and to his State required him to take.”

[A few months later], Lord Acton, wrote Lee and asked his opinion on the questions at issue. The General’s answer is comprehensive and abounds in historical references . . . It calls attention to the [secession] attitude of New England in 1814 and to the Harford Convention.

“The South has contended only for the supremacy of the Constitution,” the Acton letter reads, “and the just administration of the laws made in pursuance of it. Virginia, to the last, made great effort to save the Union, and urged harmony and compromise.” After quoting [Stephen A.] Douglas, to the effect that the Southern members would have accepted the Crittenden Compromise, in order to avert civil strife, but that the Republican party refused this offer, the letter asks, “Who then is responsible for the war?”

(Robert E. Lee, a Biography, Robert W. Winston, William Morrow & Company, 1934, excerpts pp. 390-394)

Theodore Roosevelt was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1905 for brokering the peace treaty between Japan and Russia. Like many progressive Americans, TR saw modernizing Japan as a role model for what was viewed a backward Korea, and Japan was given a free hand in colonizing its neighbor, a trade-off as the United States had colonized the Philippines. In 1904, future South Korean president Syngman Rhee was in the United States where he remained until returning to Korea in 1945, hailed by the US as a “resistance hero,” and installed as proconsul. He infuriated Koreans in his new role by relying upon Korean collaborators with the Japanese and using similar repressive policies as the previous occupiers. Despite US support for his roundly corrupt regime, he was deposed in 1961 and exiled to Hawaii.

Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com

Establishing Modern, Free Government in Korea

“Syngman Rhee, returning from the United States a resistance hero, was elected president of the First Republic and in 1948, following three-year tutelage under the US military government on the finer points of democratic governance, formed the first modern government in Korea by Koreans.

[With his American-manufactured] heroic status as the “father of the nation,” Rhee was actually a politician without a political ideology and a governor without a governing program. Hence, whenever he encountered opposition to his policies he was habitually inclined to rely on physical violence and political manipulation rather than persuasion or competition on ideological grounds . . . the Rhee administration from start to finish a one-man regime with enormous power concentrated in his hands alone.

He carried on with politics surrounded by those who were personally loyal to him rather than those chosen for objective qualifications. Elevate by his sycophants to a virtual deity, Rhee was essentially isolated from the ongoing affairs of his subordinates. Charitably, “at best he was a traditional “monarch.”

Under Rhee, Korea remained a repressive society, aided by a 300,000-man police apparatus. Corruption and incompetence characterized the regime’s national bureaucracy [and] the police force was at the center of continuing social and political oppression. Elections during his regime continued to be scandalized with rigging, violence and bribery – the final one of which resulted in the 1960 student uprising that toppled his government.

The press was harassed and often closed down for anti-Rhee tendencies. A few of his political opponents were assassinated or executed, or died rather inexplicably.

Rhee’s ability to stay in power rested to some extent on his effective control of the military . . . [and] the military served Rhee well as a source of electoral votes and political funds. High-ranking officers were pressured into “delivering” their units to Rhee and his Liberal party. Since the military was spending roughly $400 million in aid from the United States, Rhee’s political machine relied heavily on the loyalty of the military to shore up his sagging political fortunes.

In its determination to win [reelection] at any cost [in 1960], however, the Liberal party supporting Rhee . . . apparently went overboard. Two weeks or so before the election a fantastic array of election rigging plans devised by the Liberal party was exposed by the press. The secret plans included producing ghost votes, stuffing ballot boxes, bribing voters with money and merchandise, using physical violence on opponents, openly casting ballots under supervision, and so on.

The opposition Democratic party . . . appealed to the Central Election Committee for safeguarding [voting] mechanisms. Predictably, this appeal fell on deaf ears.”

(Marching Orders, the Role of the Military in South Korea’s “Economic Miracle,” 1961-1971, Jon Huer, Greenwood Press, 1989, excerpts pp. 11-14)

Once the American States in the South were subdued and martial law instituted, the occupation forces wreaked havoc among the slowly-adjusting population, both white and black. At an 1866 Fourth of July observance in Atlanta, a resident wrote that “the occasion was observed only by the black population. They had a grand procession [though] a lot of drunken Yankee soldiers . . . attacked them, and there was a general row. No one was killed, but more than twenty shots were fired, and many were injured. There is a bitter feeling between the Negroes and the Yankees . . .”

Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com

North Must Fall Under the Same Rule

“On April 30, 1865, news was received in Georgia through a dispatch from General (Joseph E.] Johnston to Governor [Joseph] Brown that hostilities against the United States had ceased. From Savannah and Macon as centers, military occupation was extended over the whole State during April, May and June.

Frequent broils occurred between soldiers and citizens, between Negroes and white soldiers and citizens and between white people and [US] colored troops. Garrisons where colored troops were established were centers for disturbance. And Negro soldiers everywhere, had a bad influence on the freedmen of the neighborhood, encouraging them in idleness and arousing in them a feeling of distrust or hostility to their white employers.

Discontent among the Federal soldiers themselves did not make matters more comfortable. White volunteers were restive, thought they ought to be immediately mustered out, and regular soldiers did not get along with colored troops.

General [Ulysses S.] Grant, after his tour of inspection in the South, reported to President [Andrew] Johnson, December 18, 1865, that the presence of black troops, lately slaves, demoralized labor by their advice and by furnishing resorts for freedmen for miles around, whereas white troops generally excited no opposition. Negro troops had to be kept in large enough numbers for their own defense.

Conditions were represented thus by a distinguished Georgian [N.G. Foster] in a letter to General Sherman on May 10:

“ . . . Almost daily our houses are entered and pilfered, and we meet at every turn the air or derision and defiance. Many of the farms were left overcrowded with helpless women and children, with a few old men. Now the [US] commander’s cavalry squads, stationed at various points in the country, permit the Negroes to take the plough stock from the farmer and swarm into their camps, and lounge about, abandoning all labor – Surely, whatever may be the final destiny of this people, they ought to be required to make a support – And the Negro girls for miles and miles are gathered to the [Federal] camps and debauched.

It is surely is not the wish of those persons who aim at an equality of colors to begin the experiment with a whole race of whores . . .

I have not conversed with a [Southern] soldier who had returned, that does not express a prefect willingness to abide the issue. They say they made the fight and were overpowered, and they submit. Nothing will again disturb the people but a sense of injustice . . . [but] No people who descended from Revolutionary fathers can be kept tamely in a state of subjugation. And if it becomes necessary to establish a military despotism [in the] South, any man with half an idea must see that the North must eventually fall under the same rule.”

(Reconstruction in Georgia, Economic, Social, Political, 1865-1872, C. Mildred Thompson, Columbia University, 1915, excerpts, pp. 132; 136-139)

The war was the result of a revolution in American politics as the Whigs disintegrated after the election of 1852 and the Democrats came apart in 1860 – resulting in the loss of the national spirit in the parties and the onset of purely political sectional opinion. The pattern of support for the new Republican Party in 1856 was a map of greater New England and new States colonized by the descendants of Puritan migration. Author David Hackett Fischer (below) writes of Lincoln: “On his father’s side, Lincoln was descended from New England Puritans who had intermarried with Pennsylvania Quakers and migrated to Appalachia and the Ohio Valley. He represented every regional components of the Republican coalition.”

Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com

Resisting New England’s Cultural Imperialism

“In defense of their different cultures, the two sections also fought differently. The armies of the North were at first very much like those of Fairfax in the English Civil War; gradually they became another New model Army, ruthless, methodical and efficient. The Army of Northern Virginia, important parts of it at least, consciously modeled itself upon the beau sabreurs of Prince Rupert. At the same time, the Confederate armies of the southwest marched into battle behind the cross of St. Andrew, and called themselves “Southrons” on the model of their border ancestors.

The events of the war itself radically transformed Northern attitudes toward Southern folkways. As casualty lists grew longer Northern war aims changed from an intention merely to resist the expansion of Southern culture to a determination to transform it. As this attitude spread through the Northern States the Civil War became a cultural revolution.

After the War . . . The Republican coalition dominated national politics by its electoral majorities in the north, and by military occupation in the South. Radical reconstruction was an attempt to impose by force the cultures of New England and the midlands upon the coastal and highland South. The Southern States were compelled to accept Yankee constitutions and Yankee judges, Yankee politics and Yankee politicians, Yankee schools and Yankee schoolma’ams, Yankee capitalists and a Yankee labor system.

The cultural revolution continued in some parts of the South until 1876. It succeeded for a time in modifying many Southern institutions . . . with the exception of slavery itself, most effects lasted only as long as they were supported by Northern bayonets. As long as the old folkways survived in the South, it was inevitable that the material and institutional order of Southern life would rapidly revive when Yankee soldiers went home.

After the elections of 1876 . . . Union troops were withdrawn. Yankee school systems were abolished; Yankee schoolma’ams were shipped back to New England; Yankee constitutions were rewritten. Despite talk of a “new South” after 1876, young Southerners (both white and black) continued to learn the old folkways.”

(Albion’s Seed, Four British Folkways in America, David Hackett Fischer, Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 860-863)

On May 29, 1865, President Andrew Johnson issued his North Carolina Proclamation which made no provision for the extension of the vote to freedmen, and only those who voted before May 20, 1861 and who had taken the amnesty oath to the US government could take part in the constitutional convention. This enraged Radical Republicans and their supporters who saw permanent political hegemony over the South through black voters herded to the polls with Republican ballots in hand. Political opportunists rather than statesmen reigned in the North – led by Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner –all who had little if any understanding of the intent of the Framers and their Constitution, or the proper orbits of States and the federal agent of strictly limited powers they had created in 1789.

Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com

Ensuring Northern Political Hegemony

“At the time when the North Carolina Proclamation was issued, only six States in the North and West had granted suffrage to Negroes. Even in New York colored voters were required to own $250 worth of property as a condition of being permitted to register [to vote]. Lincoln had recognized provisional governments in Arkansas and Louisiana from which Negroes had been excluded as voters.

Logically, therefore, Johnson’s position [of following Lincoln’s example] was sound, and in conformity with the principle of States’ Rights in which he so ardently believed. His great mistake was in omitting to take into consideration the temper of the people of the North, who feared with some reason that the Southern States would return to Congress the same type of men they had elected before the War.

Such men, and their allies, the Northern and Western Democrats, might form a coalition strong enough to undo what the War had accomplished [for the Republican Party]. The enfranchisement of the Negro, for which they showed little enthusiasm at first, might at least change the balance of power in the South, and enable good Union men to be returned to Congress.

The Constitution of the United States had made no provision for secession . . . Johnson . . . had come to the conclusion that the Union had never been dissolved [and that secession] had been unconstitutional and ineffective. Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania had repeatedly urged that the South be treated as a conquered nation. Charles Sumner [thought] the seceded States had “committed suicide” and no longer existed as legally organized governments. He had declared that it would be contrary to the Constitution to readmit these States on their prewar basis.

The right of the Negro to suffrage had in his opinion been won in the War, and to exclude them as voters in the South would be a betrayal of their cause and of the principles for which the war had been fought.”

(The Uncivil War: Washington During the Reconstruction, 1865-1878, James H. Whyte, Twayne Publishers, 1958, excerpts, pp. 45-47)

American political theorist and historian Russell Kirk wrote that the Framers of the United States Constitution were gentlemen-politicians rather than philosophers, “whose perceptions of the human condition came from the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer.” Kirk contrasted these learned men who fought to preserve their British heritage with the arrogant French revolutionaries who were drunk on theories and revenge, who opened the way for a self-appointed emperor. The men of America’s natural aristocracy governed the Republic from 1775 to 1825 — their Republic afterward frayed and was pulling apart by 1830. By 1850, constituent States were speaking loudly of withdrawal, and by 1861 it had unraveled completely with an American dictator enthroned.

Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com

The Men of America’s Natural Aristocracy

“Sometimes the Constitution of the United States is commended as if it had been created out of whole cloth, overnight, from the glowing imagination of the Framers. That notion is far from the truth. Sometimes the Framers themselves are spoken of with the veneration like that accorded to the Hebrew prophets or the mystical founders of Greek cities. But actually the Constitution grew out of centuries of practical experience on either side of the Atlantic, rather than springing from ingenious fine-spun innovating theory.

Truly the Constitution is a bundle of compromises among interests and classes: a principal merit of the Framers was their ready recognition of this electable fact. As Burke said of government generally, it is a contrivance of human wisdom to supply human wants. In the sagacious words of Daniel Boorstin, “The American future was never to be contained in a theory.”

The politicians who framed the Constitution were not an elite of theorists, but an assembly of governors, in the old signification of that word “governor.” They were representatives of a class, in every former colony, that had exercised authority almost from the early years of British settlement in North America; they were drawn from a natural aristocracy.

Experience, education, and wealth, passed on from generation to generation of Americans, tended to develop a continuity of public influence within leading families; while the relatively broad franchises that came to pass in most colonies nevertheless gave provincial and local government a democratic cast.

Broadly speaking, it was the body of men familiar with America’s provincial and local governments who made both the Revolution and the Constitution. This was a class that, far from intending any subversion of the social and moral order in America, took alarm at Shay’s Rebellion and so forged a strong Constitution.

Long participation in provincial and local public affairs shaped this American natural aristocracy; while the French revolutionaries, for the most part, were men previously excluded from any effective exercise of power, and so naïve in great questions of political policy.”

(The Essential Russell Kirk, Selected Essays, George A. Panichas, editor, ISI Books, 2007, excerpts, pp. 452-453)

The infamous “Wilson Raid” into Alabama and the burning of Tuscaloosa in early April 1865 had no impact whatsoever on the outcome of the war, as by March the Southern Confederacy had been all but overrun and Lee was exhausted in Virginia. Opposing Wilson’s 14,000 well-armed and equipped troopers were Nathan Bedford Forrest’s ill-equipped and scattered cavalry numbering 5,000.

Chaplain Basil Manly of Alabama was the brother of Charles Manly, the last Whig governor of North Carolina and serving 1849 to 1851. The cruel act of destroying barns and farm implements as well as killing or carrying away livestock was intended to hasten the onset of starvation among Southern civilians.

Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com

The Twilight of the Confederacy

“In the spring of 1865, the Yankees returned to Alabama. By this point, not even the South’s most feared cavalryman, Nathan Bedford Forrest, could stop the 14,000 Federal horsemen under Major General James H. Wilson. As Forrest tried to stay between the Yankees and Selma, Wilson ordered one of his subordinates . . . to take the city of Tuscaloosa, to divert some of the Confederates 6,000 troops.

[The enemy’s] 2,000 cavalrymen swept aside the few militiamen who tried to stop them, captured the town and, while pillaging the area “burned the buildings used for public purposes at the university,” including the library, from which only a few items were saved.

The Yankees also “took away all the horse and mules they could find. They camped in our streets, that night, and next morning they proceeded to burn the foundry and factory, the miter sheds, and the bridge across the river.”

The Federals left the city just ahead of the Confederate cavalry sent to intercept them, having successfully diverted Forrest, who was soon defeated by the twenty-seven-year-old Wilson. Wilson’s victory over the notorious Forrest would have made him a hero two years earlier, but was simply a mop-up operation in the spring of 1865.

On May 23^, a “body of Yankees under Col. Marsh, which have been here about a week, took their departure. The soldiers “took all the good horses and mules they could get; without compensation. Corn, meat, etc., they took from private parties, at pleasure . . .” The Northern troops were said “to be from Illinois,” and [Basil] Manly had heard that “they took a Negro out, just before they left, who had stolen a [Northern] captain’s horse, etc., and shot him.”

In the spring of 1866, [North Carolina] Governor [Charles] Manly [1795-1871] wrote to a family friend, describing what had happened the year before. His plantation, Ingleside, [near Raleigh], to which he retired in the late 1850s, was destroyed by “Sherman’s Devils.” Coming onto the property, the Yankee troops “tore the House all to pieces, broke down the plastering and ceiling, all the doors and windows, stole all the furniture, all my books and papers and the old grain omnibus with all its contents – took every mule, horse, cow, sheep and poultry, all my corn fodder and hay, burnt up fences and destroyed [my] farming tools.”

Worse still, “a great part of this villainy was perpetrated after the surrender” of the Confederacy, but, as Governor Manly complained, “no redress could be obtained.”

(Chaplain of the Confederacy, Basil Manly and Baptist Life in the Old South, A. James Fuller, LSU Press, 2000, excerpts, pp. 304-306)