Wow!
You were actually *there*?
[I’ll give you a dollar if you go to Frederick and yell that in the public square]....:)
Apocryphal or not, it typified the treatment offered by Southern troops, as a whole.
Here’s something *not* apocryphal:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown_%28abolitionist%29
From the Pottawatomie massacre to poor Heyward Shepherd, ol’ Crazy Eyes Brown was a terrorist without conscience.
Or is this more typical?
WAR DEPARTMENT, C.S.A,
Richmond,
November 22, 1861.
John Letcher,
Governor of Virginia:
SIR:
Will not your convention do something to protect your own people against atrocious crimes committed on their persons and property? There are in the Army, unfortunately, some desperate characters - men gathered from the outskirts and purlieus of large cities - who take advantage of the absence of the civil authorities to commit crimes, even murder, rape, and highway robbery, on the peaceful citizens in the neighborhood of the armies. For these offenses the punishment should be inflicted by the civil authorities (...) There are murderers now in insecure custody at Manassas who cannot be tried for want of a court there, and who will escape the just penalty of their crimes. The crimes committed by these men are not military offenses. If a soldier, rambling through the country, murders a farmer or violates the honor of his wife or daughter, courts-martial cannot properly take cognizance of the offense, nor is it allowable to establish military commissions or tribunals in our own country. I appeal to Virginia legislators for protection to Virginians, and this appeal will, I know, be responded to by prompt and efficient action.
I am, very respectfully,
your obedient servant,
J.P. Bemjamin,
Secretary of War