Martyria Part 17

XIX.

When General Stoneman made his attempt to rescue the prisoners, Winder issued the order No. 13, which stamps the brute with infamy beyond redemption. In this order, which has been preserved, Winder commanded the officers in charge of the artillery to open their batteries, loaded with grape-shot, as soon as the Federals approached within seven miles, and to continue the slaughter until every prisoner was exterminated. Similar threats were made all along the line of the prison stockades in North Carolina and in Virginia. "Was the prison mined," said Colonel Farnsworth to Turner, the jailer of Libby Prison, "when General Kilpatrick approached Richmond to attempt to rescue the prisoners?" "Yes," was the brutal reply; "and I would have blown you all to Hades before I would have suffered you to be rescued." Twelve hundred men blown into atoms at one explosion!

Thirty thousand men to be torn into shreds by the iron bullets of the cannon! Contrast the orders of these chivalric men with that of Aboukere, the chief of a reputed barbarous horde of Bedouins of the desert:--

"Warriors of Islam! attend a moment, and listen well to the precepts which I am about to promulge to you for observation in times of war. Fight with bravery and loyalty. Never use artifice or perfidy towards your enemies.

Do not mutilate the fallen. Do not slay the aged, nor the children, nor the women. You will find upon your route men living in solitude, in meditation, in the adoration of G.o.d: do them no injury, give them no offence."

In which are the evidences the most positive of a fraternal religion and an advanced civilization?

XX.

Even women and young girls came from distances to view the spectacle. They climbed the parapets of the earthworks, and gloated and made merry over the scene of suffering. They threw crusts of bread over the palisades to see the starving wretches struggle for the morsel of life.

They even reviled the condition of the dying. This surpa.s.ses the ferocity, the depravity, the wickedness of gladiatorial times. "The fury of women when once excited," says the French historian, "soon rises to profanation and excess." When the love of humanity vanishes from our b.r.e.a.s.t.s, it is the death of nature.

There were, however, a few n.o.ble exceptions to those strange acts of delight in cruelty; and the deeds of kindness of a few women in other parts of the South s.h.i.+ne with increased brilliancy from the terrible contrast.

XXI.

Several of the papers of the South openly and unhesitatingly approved of the methods of their prison depletion, and gloated over the fearful dest.i.tution and mortality.

The Macon "Telegraph and Confederate," only the day before the surrender of the city to the Federal forces, justified the atrocities at Andersonville; and the Richmond "Examiner" exclaimed, "Let the Yankee prisoners be put where the cold weather and scant fare will thin them out in accordance with the laws of nature." There were, however, n.o.ble exceptions to the general exhibition of ferocity; and several officers of the rebel army did declare that the condition of affairs at Andersonville was a "reproach to them as a nation."

The author, who served for five years in the Federal armies of Virginia, of the South, and the South-west, and whose opportunities for observation and inquiry were extensive, does not believe General Lee to be implicated in these outrages. It is true that Lee might have openly and boldly protested against the barbarities, and gained thereby the admiration and the blessing of mankind; but he knew full well that the remonstrance would have fallen upon the cold ear of the implacable executive with no more effect and weight than when the snow-flake falls upon the Alps.

The Virginian struggled to hold his own against the selfish and jealous ambition of the remorseless Mississippian.

To have partic.i.p.ated in the revolting cabal of cruelty, there was required the baseness of political intrigue, and to this depth the soldier never sank.

XXII.

To charge an entire people with barbarity, because its rulers sanction crime, and a vile and venal press applaud the motives and the deeds, should not be maintained without long deliberation. "History has the right of suspecting without evidence, but never of accusing without proof." The rank and file of the rebel army were drawn from the cla.s.ses of poor whites, who were essentially rural in their populations, and who possessed some trace of the morals and the natural sentiments of generosity that belong to people who cultivate the earth. Although their instincts were modified by the contact of slave labor, they never sank so low in the social scale--to that level of the vile populace of the Roman or medieval times, when the crimes of the emperors were applauded. These men on the battle-field exhibited feelings of humanity; and it was only under the direction of their leaders that they became unkind and ferocious.

It was the leaders who were responsible for the crimes of the sedition; and what of humanity could be expected from men degenerated in blood? What of n.o.ble intelligence could be looked for from mental faculties long since degraded? What evidence of a Christian spirit could be hoped for from men who had openly perverted or denied all the divine precepts, upon which revolve the well-being of the human race? "If we had triumphed," says one of its apostles, at this late day of forgiveness and repentance--"if we had triumphed, I should have favored stripping them naked. Pardon! They might have appealed for pardon, but I would have seen them d.a.m.ned before I would have granted it!"

When Suwarrow forced his way by the sword into the heart of Poland, dividing the realm, devastating the land, and destroying mult.i.tudes of people, he offered blasphemous thanks to Heaven for victories obtained over men fighting in the sacred cause of liberty, and for all the human heart holds dear.

XXIII.

To judge correctly of the magnitudes of these immolations, these crimes, history must wait for a calmer period, when prejudice shall have relaxed its hold upon the understanding, and when time shall have rolled up its acc.u.mulated materials of accusation and denial, of proof and exoneration.

At present we can form some idea of their designs, and the degree of the implacability of their souls, from the evidence already placed before us, as we measure inaccessible heights by the awful shadows which they project.

Pity appears to have been with them only a vain, fleeting emotion, if the soul was disturbed at all; and whenever an act of humanity was displayed, there seems to have been the secret motive of gain at work. In defining the natural sentiments of pity, they would have declared them the illusions of the imagination.

The brutalizing scenes of Slavery had modified and affected their natural feelings, as the gladiatorial combats and exposures of the Christians to the attacks of infuriated wild beasts had inspired the vile populace of Rome with the love of blood and cruelty.

When these men, with sonorous rhetoric, proclaimed themselves as the guiding minds of the republic, the patrons, the judges of the correct ideas and principles of civilization,--when they arrogated to themselves the appearance of the wisdom of Lacedaemon with the politeness of Athens,--they forgot or despised those cardinal virtues of society, "justice and truth--these are the first duties of man; humanity, country--these his first affections."

XXIV.

"I fear," writes the rebel War Clerk, observing from his secure position in the war office, "I fear this government in future times will be denounced as a cabal of bandits and outlaws, making and executing the most despotic decrees."

Whether this system of the reduction of prisoners was devised by the executive, or his immediate advisers, time may reveal. But of this we may remain positive, that the crime belongs to that little faction of Breckinridge Democrats who ruled the Confederacy as they pleased, and of which Davis was the recognized leader. Wirz was only the De Vargas and Winder the Alva of the arranged system. Neither is there any doubt that the power of affording relief was clearly within the control of the executive. This power was not withheld from want of audacity, for the man who dared place in power, in spite of remonstrance, men who jeopardized the existence of the Confederacy, and who openly disgraced its honor, certainly had sufficient courage to perform a common act of humanity, and relieve the sufferings of tortured prisoners, if such had been his inclination.

No; there was a system, and "systems are brutal forces." "What are your laws and theories," said Danton, brutally, to Gensonne, "when the only law is to triumph, and the sole theory for the nation is the theory of existence."--"Give a man power of doing what he pleases with impunity, you extinguish his fear, and consequently overturn in him one of the great pillars of morality. This, too, we find confirmed by matter of fact. How many hopeful heirs-apparent to grand empires, when in possession of them, have become such monsters of l.u.s.t and cruelty as are a reproach to human nature!"--"Ambition brings to men dissimulation, perfidy, the art of feigning the language and sentiments which lay at the bottom of the heart; of measuring their hate and their friends.h.i.+p only by their interests and circ.u.mstances; and above all, the perfidious science of composing their features, rather than correct and govern their principles."

The wills of bad men are their laws, and brute strength their logic.

XXV.

It is only distance in time that separates and distinguishes the Caligulas of history, the early, medieval, and present periods. History exhibits the first as the undisguised monster of atrocity. The last, overshadowed by the mantle of the law, stands but partially revealed.

To the perverted imaginations of the first the senate presented no force of resistance. To the petulant asperity, the abuse of power of the last, the doubtful liberties of the people imposed certain restrictions, which led to the resort of narrow and malignant minds--secrecy and concealment.

Nature had not cast him in the mould of those statesmen who sacrifice all personal feelings for the public good, and who willingly yield up their lives to advance the n.o.ble work of true civilization. Obstinacy with him was firmness; cunning, depth; resistance to humane feelings, resolution.

Envy, hatred, murmurs, were braved with inflexible determination when pursuing his plans of favoritism, or defending his tools of oppression and cruelty against the voice of nature and outraged liberty.

There are some men who appear to be destined for the instruction of the world, as the abettors and satellites of despotism, who cannot or who do not recognize the difference between interest or conscience; who desire to debase mankind, that they may appear above the common level of humanity, conscious of their incapability of lifting themselves up by virtue and by n.o.bility of action.

This man was the incarnation of the spirit of Slavery; he could have exclaimed, with Barnave, "Perish the colonies rather than a principle."

This man was, for the time being, the entire incorporation of the sedition--its principles, its pa.s.sions, its impulses, its cruelties.

"There are abysses which we dare not sound, and characters we desire not to fathom, for fear of finding in them too great darkness, too much horror."

This man, so calm, so dignified, so wise in his exterior, could not find sufficient generosity in his soul, although the representative of five millions of men, to say to these armies of suffering prisoners, * * *

_indignus Caesaris irae_--unworthy of the anger of Caesar.

XXVI.

What have the wretches to offer in atonement for these outrages upon nature, these violations of the spirit and majesty of the law, from which they now claim protection?

Will the blood of these living monsters expiate the martyrdom of the host of dead heroes? No!

Will it give ease or bring congratulation to the broken and aching hearts who yet revere the memory of the thirty thousand victims? Never!

The divine spirit of liberty would protest against the defilement of her sacred altars with the foul blood of such filthy and depraved sacrifices.

Let the gates of the prison open, and these men stand forth to the full gaze of offended mankind, a.s.sa.s.sins and murderers as they are.

Vengeance does not belong to the human race.