Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1868-07-11
Holy Horror Of II. @.
grom thu Nav York World

II
The holy horror of the Tribune over
the late loot" in Abyssinia, where
Napier's soldiers are said to have stolen
mule loads of books and pictures, and
even to have carried away the censers
aud chalices Of churches, inspired that
shocked journal TO utter an entirely new
conundrum, to wit:
Having done their best to reduce
Abyssinia to heathenism, these Christian
conquerors have the grace to keep their
plunder in their pockets until they are
out Of the country Do the annals Of
war furnish another instance of such
delicate rapacityY 2
We should say that they did. For in
stance the cart loads of books stolen from
Southern libraries during the war, the
plate, pictures, pianos, baby linen, and
spoils generally, we're for long while
surrep reptitiously shown only to loil friends
in New England as rebel trophies. The
mere robbery Of libraries; the stealing OF
com mmunion services from churches; the
theft of the silver candelabra from the
altar Of the Jesuits' Church of the I'm
maculate Conception in New Orleans
when Butler was commandant; the sack.
ing of private houses and the general
turning up in ten States Of the soil oi
kitchen gardens in Wild search for re-
bellious silver teapots-these are minor
matters, mere trihes, in comparison with
such outrages as the burning of churches
| in Columbia and Atlanta. 1t was re-
ported in the late Protestant Episcopal
Convention of South Carolina that no
less than fifteen churches of that one
denomination were burAed In that
State during the war; indeed, church
buring was as much passion with the
vagabonds and bummers of the army as
it was at the North some years ago, when
what is now called the Radical party was
known as the native American party, of
which Colfax was prominent member.
The historian of the American conflict,
in appealing for precedents which rival
the recent loot in Abyssinia can find in
the late war "to restore the Union ="
wholesale instances of robbery and
plunder, the like Of which are not to be
found among the annals of the Fejees, or
head hunters of Borneo. The sack of
the magnificent State Library at Baton
Rouge, lJOulolaud, huu ihc Jul mug VI
the splendid building to cover the theft,
the plunder of Arlington and the gen.
eral lot of family relics which were heir
looms from Washington the theits and
robberes which marked the whole
march of the army throughout the
South, are unparalleled in any history
of civilized or barbarous nations, We
need not name single individual loyal
Lazarus who went South expressly to
deplete the pockets and plate corsets of
the disloyal Dives. His name might be
Butler; it might be Dow; it might be
Jones' in all probability it was name
of some such sort. The brigadiers who
wont to the war beggars and came home
millionaires may be counted by hun
dreds. With these men loot" was a
synouyme for loyalty, and their "patriot-
ism was plunder. The Tribune knows
as we'll as we do that the Wholesale thefts
of certain loil Generals at the South
during the war are only family paralleled
by the loot in Abyssinia, and are only
equaled by the Wholesale plunder of the
peace patriots whose super.loyalty man
ifests itself in the astounding Radical
defalcations and robberies which now
almost daily develop in Washington.