Daily Observations from The Civil War

Sunday, May 7.—This is one of the gloomiest days I have spent since the war. The enemy have offered a reward of one hundred thousand dollars for the apprehension of our president. There are also rewards offered for many others of our leading men.

I do hope and pray that Davis will get off. I am so afraid that some of our men will be tempted to betray him for the love of gain. If they should, it will be no more than others have done before them. Wallace was betrayed by one of his own countrymen; Charles I likewise. Some of our people are condemning Davis’s administration. I have even heard him called a despot. If his detractors could see themselves in the proper light, perhaps they would hear a voice whispering, “He that is without sin, let him cast the first stone.”

If Davis has committed errors, they have been, as even those who condemn him say, errors of judgment, for a truer patriot never lived. Can his defamers say the same?

Davis did not bring on secession, but accepted it, like many others, as the issue of a people’s decision, and did what he felt was his duty when he found the rights of his country imperiled.

“War, war to the knife, be enthralled or ye die,

Was the echo that woke in his land!

But it was not his voice that promoted the cry,

Nor his madness that kindled the brand.

He raised not his arm, he defied not his foes,

While a leaf of the olive remained;

Till, goaded by insult, his spirit arose

Like a long baited lion unchained.”

The reward is offered on the plea that he was accessory to the murder of Lincoln, but we all know that not even the enemy believe that. They only make this a plea so as to capture him, should he get to a foreign country. The placards, when put up here, were immediately torn down by some of the citizens.

Since my arrival here I have been told that some time after the armistice a report was brought to town that a large army of the enemy were advancing on it. The citizens, forming themselves in a body, went and met them some few miles from the town, and informed them of the armistice. Instead of the enemy remaining where they were, they marched right in.

The general commanding this army, and indeed nearly all of the officers and men, made a boast, which, I think, were it known, would be scorned and condemned by their own people, as well as by us. They said, had it not been for the armistice, Newnan would have been laid in ashes; and the General had some half-dozen ladies’ names written down, whom he intended making examples of, by punishing most ignominiously, in revenge for some ill-natured remarks they had made to the prisoners who were captured near here last year. I believe one of the ladies committed the unpardonable sin of refusing some of them apples and water. She was a refugee, and had lost her all by some of these men, so it was not much wonder if she was embittered against them. Another cause of complaint was, that a man, or some men, living a few miles from here, had hunted some of them with blood-hounds, and I know that this is false. I am certain these are all their wrongs, unless I add Generals Roddy and Wheeler having the daring to rout the whole command who came here with the kind intentions then, so we thought, of laying Newnan in ashes, before the terrible wrongs, I have just narrated had been committed.

I visited the wounded prisoners, and they all spoke highly of their treatment. I was told of one lady, Mrs. Dr. ——, who, when the well prisoners passed her house, abused them. Some of us were shocked to think she could so far forget herself, as a lady and a Christian, to insult the helpless. But when we remembered that this lady and her children had been left in the world without shelter or food— these vandals having robbed her and set fire to her house, she being compelled to stand by, looking helplessly on the destruction, without even the liberty of remonstrating—when we thought of this, we concluded that perhaps, had we been like treated, we might have done the same.

Have the northern people really become such arbiters of all things, that every woman who makes use of the only weapon she has, when wronged beyond human endurance, is to be punished with degradation worse than that which even Haynau visited on the unhappy Hungarians; and for this terrible offense is a whole town to be laid in ashes? I believe, notwithstanding all the woe and inhumanity perpetrated on our unfortunate people by the enemy, that there is still manhood enough among them to condemn this officer to whom they have intrusted their honor.

Those things may do in barbarous lands, but they ill become the boasted descendants of the great and good men who were the followers of the immortal Washington.

This general kept his men in the place till many a lady’s wardrobe was lessened, and many a little trinket stolen. Mrs. Myers gave me a description of one band who came to her house. They took every thing they could carry away. After they left she sat down in despair, where a door hid her, when in walked a Dutchman, who commenced turning over what few things had been left in her drawers and trunks. Seeing her, he said, “Madam, they have treated you very badly.” He meant himself, for nothing was left for him. She answered, “Yes; what do you want?” He begged her for some clothes, saying he was badly in want of them. She told him she had none, or else he should have them, for his politeness in asking.