The weekly North-Carolina standard. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 186?-1869, 1867-04-10

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prevent any kindly relations being formed
witt, the people or any influence gained over
them by men of character and Justice the
suspension of the ha6cas corpus placed under
military control the persons of those whose
age, sex or condition exempted them from
CONSUMPTION. Prisons, kept in the most
loathsome condition, were established IN
Richmond and in other localities. 10 over
awe the struggling Union sentiment OF our
people. the one at Salisbury was set up and
made the scence of horrors, at the recolec-
tion of which the blood still runs cold
Hundreds of our private citizens, exempt
from CONSUMPTION, were there, and at Castle
Thunder in Richmond, incarcerated upon
mere suspicion of Unionism, and met their
death by starvation and other indescribable 4
cruelties
But the failing resources of the Conteder-
acy would not allow the expense OF sufficient
prison accommodation for as many victims
as was necessary to suppress the struggling
Unionism of North Carolina. The rest was
left to the neighborhood scouts and author
lied bands of guerrilla robbers, not only I'M
restrained but encouraged in lawless violence
and outrage to suspected Unionists, their
wives anu CIllluiCil LII ACLiOtO PioSSS, NP''A
the public highways, in the humble dwell
ings of the poor and around the family
hearth, from which the husband and father
had been dragged in chains to the army and
prison. or driven to the mountain caves and
forests, scenes were enacted that can never
be described, and, if told, would not be
credited as possible in Christian age. For
the crime of not betraying husbands and
sons to death, the virtues and claims of wo-
manhood were set at naught. Mothers were
taken from helpless infants, and kept for
weeks, in outhouses and pens in the woods,
at the mercy and disposal of depraved and
brutal men, until, in some instances, their
breasts burst with the accumulation of milk
which the merciful God of nature had provi
ded for their starving infants at home. In
Randolph county the thumbs of poor wo-
man were put under the rails of fence, apd
two soldiers seated themselves upon it, until,
screaming with pain, she disclosed the place
of he: husbands concealment and consigned
him to death. And this was done in pres
ence of her two little children. This state
ment of particular instances is made upon
the authority of public representations in
the newspapers, at the time and since, and
upon the authority of private gentlemen in
whose locality they occurred. And there has
been no contradiction or extenuation, except
that the victims were untrue to the Confed-
eracy" The Polk county murders, the
" Laurel massacre" the horrible murder, by
guerrillas, of Thaddeus Cox, and his wife
and children, in Pasquotank, and the shock
ing atrocities in Buncombe, Haywood, Ashe,
Wilkes and Allegheny, are but isolated in
stances of what was done in almost every
county. They can be truthfully multiplied
by hundreds. These things were done by
authorized parties, in uniform and under Of
icers Add to all this the want and mourn
ing that sat in every humble household, and
even then but an inadequate conception cal,
be formed of the terrible condition to which
we were reduced
"Reminiscences were sent to the State and
Confederate authorities. and representations
of mahy of these facts ought to be, and prob
ably are on file in the Executive office at
Raleigh. We have not heard that any of
the perpetrators have been brought to trial
or punishment But on the contrary. the
present Legislature of the State has been
swift to pass an act of general amnesty and
pardon in order to screen them from all fu-
ture investigation. 1t would have been far
more proper and more conducive to the flu
ture peace and welfare of the country, had
the Legislature instituted in each county
commission to take affidavits respecting the
occurrences in it, to be published in vol
ume and preserved among the public arch
ives, as perpetual warning to posterity.-
Such record would certainly serve as
guide to future Legislatures in making Just
Determinations in such acts of amnesty as
good policy may from time to time require.
The untimely haste of Legislators to draw
curtain over it all, leaves room tor suspicion
that the purpose was not only to secure the
guilty from punishment but more especially
to save the instigators and leaders of the re-
belion from the disgrace to which the truth
might expose them before the tribunal of
mankind.
These things are brought to mind, not for
purposes of elimination, but to be used in
discussing our present condition, and the
motives that now actuate the conduct of
some men among US.
The open and deliberate preparation for
the rebellion was clearly treason, and would
have been checked by punishment as such
in any other form of government than that
of the United States, before it eliminated in
bloody and destructive war. In mon
archy, absolute or limited, where oppression
becomes intolerable, treason leading to revo-
luton is extenuated and even justified, ifcon-
Quoted with humanity and Justice for the
purpose of securing liberty and right. For,
In such forms Of government, revolution is
generally the only resort against oppression
and tyranny. But in a free republic, the bal.
lot-box, written constitution, and the courts
OF law are fe-guards rendering the neces-
sity for revolution next to impossible. Even
should wrong and oppression exist, until
these peaceful remedies have been exhausted.
treason in republic is the highest of crimes
| 1t can be nothing less than the plotting of
wicked and ambitious men against the liber-
ties of the people and the peace and welfare
| of their country.
| But, during the initiatory proceedings
leading to the late rebellion, it seemed to be
supposed that the spirit and theory of repub-
lican government forbade interference with
the free action of citizens until it assumed
the form OF an actual levying of war. And
even then, 1t was-strenuously commended that
the theory OF State sovereignty rendered. it
| unlawful for the Federal government to re-
sort to coerclye measures against States in
actual rebellion, or to raise an arm in defence
OF its own existence Had such theory
been acquiesced in, the future of the Ameri-
can States would have been continual dlsin-
tegration and the setting up of petty con-
federacies, leading to intestine feuds and
bloody wars between them, until, from ne
cessity, the people would have submitted,
as choice of evils, to consolidated des-
potism and the complete subversion of re-
publican liberty.
But, however great the turpitude of inau-
| gurating the late rebellion. without wronos