The Cass County Republican. [volume] (Dowagiac, Mich.) 18??-1880, 1862-07-17
Rebel Atrocities.

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Hon. b. F. Wade, of Ohio.
The discoveries therein made, by
men under oath, of the atrocities of
the rebels towards the wounded on the
field of battle, the prisoners in their
hands, and upon the bodies of the Fed.
erals dead within their lines, would sur
pass all belief of having been commit
ted by men in the nineteenth century,
were they not proved beyond doubt,
by credible witnesses, under the solemn
sanction of an oath.
1t appears by this report, that on the
battle field of Bull Run, the wounded,
were in many instances bayoneted and
shot. One, Louis Francis, (who,
strange to say, arrived to testify before
the committee,) after being wounded
in the knee, and lying upon the ground
helpless was bayoneted, fourteen times !!
Graves were opened, and heads of
dead Federal officers and soldiers taken
therefrom, to obtain the skulls for punch
bowls, and skin and thigh bones for
drum sticks and to make finger rings,
and other articles of use and ornament.
Prisoners were treated with the utmost
cruelty and barbarity.
After setting forth the facts, the Com
mittee say:
Every step of this monstrous treason
has been marked by violence and
crime. No transgression has been too
great, no wrong to startling, for its
leaders. They disregard the sanctity
of the oaths they had taken to support
the Constitution; they repudiated all
their obligations to the people of the
free States; they deceived and be-
trayed their own fellow citizens, and
crowded their armies with forced lew
les; they drove from their midst all
who wonld not yield to their despOt-
ism, or filled their prison with men
who would not enlist under their flag.
They have now crowned the rebellion
by the perpetration of deeds scarcely
known even to savage warfare. The
Investigations of your committee have
established this fact, beyond controver-
sy. The witnesses called before us
were men of undoubted veracity and
character. Some of them occupy high
positions in the army, and others high
positions in civil life. Differing in po-
litical sentiments, their evidence pre-.
Sents remarkable concurrence of
opinion and of Judgment. Our fellow
countrymen, heretofore sufficiently i'm
pressed by the generosity aud forbear-
ance of the government of the United
States, and by the barbarous character
of the crusade against it, will be shocked
by the statements of these unimpeach-
ed and unimpeachable witnesses and
foreign nations must, with one accord,
however they have hesitated hereto
fore, consign to lasting odinm the au-
thors of crimes which, in all their de-
tails, exceed the worst excuses of the
Sepoys of India.
Inhumanity to the living has been
the leading trait of the rebel leaders :;
but it was reserved for your committee
to disclose as concerted system their
insults to the women, and then mutila-
tion and Dissertation of the gallant
dead. Our soldiers taken prisoners i'm
honorable battle have been subjected
to the most shameful treatment. All
considerations that inspire chivalric
emotion and generous considerations
for brave men have been disYegarded.
1t is almost beyond belief that the men
fighting in such cause as ours, and
sustained 10y government which in
the midst of violence and treacIIery,
has given repeated exGdeuces of it's
Indulgence, should have'been subjected
to treatment never before resorted to
by one foreign nation in conflict with
another.
All the courtesies of professional and
civil life seem to have been discarded.
Gen. Beauregard himself, who OH a
very recent occasion boasted that he
had been controlled by human feelings
after the battle of Bull Run, coolly pro-
posed to hold Gen. Ricketts, as hos
tage for one of the murderous priva-
teers, and the rebel surgeons disdained
intercourse and communication with
our own surgeons taken in honorable
battle.
The outrage upon the dead will re-
vive the recOllections of the cruellies
to which savage tribes subject their
prisoners. They were buried in many
cases naked, with their faces down
ward; they were LETT to decay in the
open air; their bones were carried off
as trophies, sometimes, as the testimo-
ny proves, to be used as personal adorn-
ments, and one witness deliberately
AYERS that the head of cne of the most
gallant officers was cut off by seces-
sionist to be turned into a drinking cup
on the occasion of his marriage. Mon
strous as this revelation may appear to
be. your committee have been Informed
that during the last two weeks the skull
of a Union soldier has been exhibited
in the office of the Sergeant at arms of
the House Of Representatives, which
had been converted to such purpose,
and which had been found on the per.
son of one of the rebel prisoners taken
in a recent conflict. The testimony of
Gov. Sprague, of Rhode Island, is
most interesting. 1t confirms the worst
reports against the rebel soldiers and
conclnsively proves that the body of
one of the bravest officers in the volun-
teer servive was burned. He does not
hesitate to add that this hyena desecra.
ton of the henored corpse, was because
the rebels believed it to be the body of