Memphis daily appeal. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1847-1886, 1867-03-30
&c rCnnNnREI.Ism OF wAR.

THNE
All armies contain a large per cehIAse
Of seouudrels; and it is astonishing no"
War DEVELOPS the vicious u Nllaln
o,s p-ronensities Of men. Those, for eA-
amnle. will pilIage and steal, even from
those Of their own side, who hao away
before imagined themselves to be honest
men. To burn houses, plumber libraries
rob women of their jewelry, kill in cold
blood and commit other ~peccadiilos, be-
come the daily smusemeDts OF heroes
fighting for the holy cause Of freedom
and the best government the world ever
saw. It is quite safe to say thar nIty
thousand men, Of the Union armies 10
the late war. we're as guilty Of larceny as
auv thiefin the prisons and penitentia-
rias of New York, thousands OF arson,
and hundreds of murder and rape. II Is
left TO God alone to punish these bis
cresnts. enrolled among the heroes.
Who that endured the four horrid years
of war ia the South will ever be freed
from its hideous and loathsome recollec-
lions?
Neither do Governments and their
officials always scOrn to resort to igHo-
minious practices, to employ spies and
braves, and open private letters. A cor
respondent of the New York World, in
1855, stated that the agents Of Mrs. HAIR
DrSeE. better known as BELLE BOYD,
in the United States, while her husband
was experiencing at Fort Delaware the
'humanities' OF the government OF
SEWARD, had senther bills Of eXchange
on Northern Bankers, to the amount OF
eight hundred pounds sterling or nearly
ten thousand dollars in greenbacksi OF
which she never received a single SOU"
"Her letters have been opened here" he
said. and the drafts extracted before go
ing on to her, and this is the reasOn she
is in distress" One would like to know
into whose pockets the money went.
When the same lady was imprisoned
in the city Of Washington, in 1862, if she
looked through her barred window at
the Northern troops marching the street,
no sooner would they perceive her,
than they INDUCED in coarse jests, vul-
gar expressions, and the vilest slang Of
the brothel, made still more coarse, vul-
gar and indecent by the throwing off Of
the little restraint which civilized so
ciety places upon the most abandoned
prostitutes and their companions" ''The
officers Of the troops passing by permitted
the soldiers thus to insult 8 female, and
participated with the soldiers in uttering
the most vulgar language and indecent
illusions to the imprisoned woman
witfoUt having the renlOt idea Of bCho she
JCas, or Of Ubdt she aUaS accused. 1t was
enough for them that she was a defence
less woman to insult and outrage ner by
such language IS they would not dare to
apply on the public streets to an aban-
doned woman who had her liberty"
The whole world has heard OF the hOr-
rors OF Andersonville. There were $4,000
prisoners there, to guard whom few men
could be spared, and the Confederate
Government had little with which to
feed them. There coUld be excuses
made for soHle of their hsrdships. Were
the Northern prisons a credit to a Gov
eminent that did not need to use severi-
ties to prevent danger of resistance or
escape, and could not plead a rant Of
means to make its prisoners comfortable
The truth as to these prisons cannot be
wholly suppressed. "That horrible hole
known as Forrest Hole, filed with every
thing that was Infamous, low and de-
graded, p 1.-THE last Ditch" " the most
fearful realization Of a prison" situated
IN Georgetown, neal the City Of Wash
ington, was q model Yankee prison for
Confederates and Suspects. "In a space
little nor than seventy-five feet square
were crowded together over five hun
dred dirty, ragged and fifty wretehes, Of
all conditions and colours, who had been
immured there for many months, with
the consoling remark, "Your case will
be attended to-" A Eettre de caehet, like
that Of the age of LOUIS XIV, consigned
them to its filth and misery, and the
processes Of the Inguisition served the
Secretary Of State, for precedents.
4" The place literally swarmed with YER
min, the air was corrupt, and vile with
odours disgusting and nauseating in the
extreme"
At Fort Delaware, in the beginning Of
January, 1865, in the Virginia division
Of the " Private Barracks" where thir-
teen hundred privates were confined, "a
place in which a decent farmer in Eng
land would not have permitted his pigs
10 live" the reproduction, on a large
SCALE of the hog-holes in which, thirty
years ago, we have known men conine
their insane fathers, without fire, in
mid-winter, lin Fort Delaware, we saw.
in December 1864 and January 1865. the
prisoners slept upon the naked floor,
with no covering whatever to shield
them from the marrow-chilling cold.
They slept as the dogs sleep, half
waking, half-sleeping. The places
where the prisoners were kept there,
were called "pens," and they deserved
the name; for they were nothing more.
The North could not plead that she had
been 80 ravaged and desOlated that she
cOeld not not keep comfortable the pris-
she had taken. She was not con-
to husband every morsel Of
food, that her own soldiers might not
starve, and her cause and all be lost for {
want Of men. Any one who ever was
at a Northern cattle-show can ]
portray to himself the places in
at Fort Delaware by those in
generated under Leares dc cdchet or as
prisoners Of war. "These habitatlons, q
boarded and roughly put together, very r
reminded one Of the old-fash- L
farmhouse barns, where, in the r
llden Tine the cattle shivered and {
nosned during the cold nights of the in t
clement winter. Officially, and by e
courtesy, they were denominated sbar. y
.ncks,i as SEWARD and STANTON are %
onfcially and by courtesy -denomipated 81
Statesmen Q
In the privRtes' barracks were crowded a
.ogether, in their misery, some nine or h
thousand soldiers from almost every u
legiment and command in the Southern h
J~onfederacy. No Miss CLARA BARTON D
las gone to look up their graves; and il d
nc had, no-register Vas Kept, as at An
l~ersonuile, Whore they uere 6su4 Il. 1t v
not considered worth the trouble to Il
designate the graves of rebels by num- II
though Miss CLARA BARTON could d,
IDENTIFY thirteen thousand graves at
Andersonville. ei
Years ago, when Gov. SCOTT, Of Ken NJ
neky, was in Washington, he told = A,
rendering audience Of the beech forests ~
D his State, where the trees stood 40 n
lose together that a man could hardly II
,ueeze between them and Of the huge =,
X, which, with antiers I've feet in n,