The central Presbyterian. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1856-1908, 1865-10-19
Devastation by our Army.
BY REV. J. NJ. STEVENSON, D. D.,
Secretary Am. Tract Society.


Secretary Am. Tract Society
BEAUFORT, N. c., 1865.
In reporting what see and hear in
the South, leaving your readers to draw
their own conclusions, | should say more
of the devastations of the Federal ar
mics.
A distinction should be made among
our own armies. Fremont's, Hunter S,
Sherman's, and the negro troops, are
spoken of as the most fearful in their
ravages. do not speak of ordinary
foraging in an enemy's country, for the
purpose of living as you pass through
it, nor of taking horses and mules to
supply the place of those falling out by
exhaustion; this is right, necessary, in
the system Of warfare we have been com
PEELED to wage. Nor of the wholesale
destruction of public property, railroads,
mills, canals, &C.; this is also justified
by the laws of civilized warfare. Nor of
the burning of houses from which shots
had been fired upon our advancing
troops this is perhaps necessity. Nor
even of the wholesale destruction of
every thing which could be destroyed in
the Shenandoah valley by Sheridan, I'M
der command of superior; this was an
exceptional case, and may have been
from the peculiar location of that valley,
as the gate of entrance to the North,
and from the deceitful character of its
people-a military necessity. Let these
pass unquestioned.
But there is another class of devasta-
tons widely different from these, which
have been perpetrated to an extent of
which the North has little conception.
These may be classified, as first, detber-
ate and systematic robbery for the sake OF
qain. Thousands of soldiers have gath
cred by violence hundreds of dollars
each, some of them thousands, by sheer
robbery. When they come to house
where an old man may be found whom
the most rigid CONSUMPTION had not taken,
they assume that he has gold or silver
hidden. and demand it. If he gives up
the treasure cheerfully he escapes per-
sonal violence. If he denies the posses
sion of treasure and they believe him, he
escapes. If they do not believe him
they resort to violent means to compel
its surrender. With rope they will
hang him until he is nearly gone, then
let him down and demand the money
and this is repeated until he or they give
up. Again, they will compel man to
"double quick" for one, two, three
miles, until he sinks from pure exhaus-
ton, and then Areaten him with death
unless he reye the hiding place of his
riches. A. y prepare the torch,
and threatens burn his house and all 1t
contains, unle. the money is forthcom-
ing.
This robbery extends to other valua-
bles in addition.to money. Plate, silver
spoons, silk dresses, elegant articles OF
the toilet, pistols, indeed whatever the
soldier can take away and hopes to sell
these arc gathered up and carried off to
the extent sometimes of loading wag-
on from one mansion. "What is done
with these?" How many of them final
" reach the North "by hook or by
crook" 1 will not affirm; some through
the soldiers mail, some wrapped up in
the baggage of furloughed officers, some
passed through the hands of the regular
official, having the permit of the govern
ment.
A second form of devastation prac-
tised by some of our soldiers, consisted
in the want0n destruction Of property
which they could not use or carry array.
OF this | have the evidence of sight in
some cases, of undoubtcd testimony in
others. Pianos cut to pieces with axes,
elegant sofas broken and the fragments
scattered about the grounds, paintings
and engravings pierced with bayonets or
slashed with swords, rosewood centre
tables, chairs, &C., broken to pieces and
burned for fuel in cooking the food taken
from the cellar or meat house-these are
subjects of bitter complaint from hun
dreds of non-combatants, many OF them
undoubted true original Union men,
but would our soldiers wantonly de-
stroy property of Union men,? Not
surely because they were Union men.
But the claim of being such was often
made untruly, and was therefore general
ly disbelieved by the soldier. If the
claim were well founded, then the bold
ness and persistency with which it would
be urged was taken as an offence, and the
weaker party generally lost his money
and had his property destroyed. The
amount of property thus destroyed du-
ring the last year of the rebellion no one
can tell. l have heard it estimated at
hundreds of millions.
This robbery and wanton waste were
specially trying to the people, not only
because contrary to right and the laws Of
war, but because it completed their utter
and almost hopeless impoverishment.-
The depth of their losses and present
want can hardly be overstated. In the
proclamation of freedom to the slaves,
their laborers, they lost what at the low.
est figures they valued at two thousand
millions of dollars. This might have
been borne if the able bodied men of the
white families had been at home to take
the place of the released or absent idle
freedmen, but they had been drawn into
the war, many of them by merciles'
CONSUMPTION, and were now dead or hope
lessly disabled for valuable labor on the
farm. Further, four years of exhausting
war had reduced the entire people to the
barest necessities of life,-ladies of former
waolth declared n me that thew had lived