[Colonel Kangaroo]

Thanks for the info. I've been reading the South Carolina book beyond the Sherman stories. It really gives a feel for the mind of SC in those days. There really was a gap between the passion for the CSA found in SC and the Upper South that I;m more familiar with. Those Palmetto Staters were true believers.

I think Wheeler in the Carter incident displayed the effects of many months as a cavalry commander in the Civil War. I doubt something like that would have been allowed to happen in in 1861, but by this time the man was probably physically and mentally weary and had become hardened to the actions of the criminals acting in the wake of the raid. It might even be suggested that Wheeler here was a small scale version of Sherman as he was by the time he reached Columbia.

Both Hurlburt and Simms had part of the story to tell. I guess the thing to avoid is to focus only on one of the stories and to pretend the other didn't exist.

Always enjoy what you write. They loght a match on things to consider and that's why it ususally takes me a day or two to ponder the issue before I respond.

[rustbucket]

War can bring out the worst in some people and the best in others. In addition to East Tennessee, there were problems for Unionists in parts of Texas. There were atrocities on both sides in Missouri and Kansas.

I bought a hard copy of the following book by David Power Conyngham, Sherman's March Through the South. Thanks to Google the book is online at the above link. The author was a war correspondent, and I was curious whether his observations about Sherman's march through South Carolina had made it to his paper during the war (I still don't know).

The first chapter of this book relates the situation in East Tennessee as described to the author by others. Interestingly on page 16, it says the following, "The father [a Unionist] returned home to find his house burned down, the body of his wife in ashes, and his outraged daughter a maniac." I had seen the term "outraged" in connection with women many times in documents of the time and not until this thread did I confirm what it really meant back then.

It did make some women "maniacs." Here is another woman who was described as a maniac. From the Official Records [Link]: "About the 14th ultimo, at a place called Hutt's Store, near the center of Westmoreland County, some of the negro troops went to the house of Private George, of Ninth Virginia Cavalry, and committed a rape upon his wife, who had just been confined with a babe only six weeks old. She is now almost a maniac, and begs that some one will kill her." The next page of the Official Records shows that that particular case made it all the way up to Robert E Lee and the Confederate Secretary of War.