Our Headquarters were moved to the left, and back of the
Anderson house. We rode, in the morning, over, and staid some time at the
house, one of the best I have seen in Virginia. It was a quite large place,
built with a nest of out-houses in the southern style. They have a queer way of
building on one thing after another, the great point being to have a separate
shed or out-house for every purpose, and then a lot more sheds and outhouses
for the negroes. You will find a carpenter's shop, a kindly man in
conversation, despite his terrible looks. . . . The waggoners and train rabble
and stragglers have committed great outrages in the rear of this army. Some of
the generals, particularly Birney and Barlow, have punished pillagers in a way
they will not forget; and they will be shot if they do not stop outrages on the
inhabitants. The proper way to stop the grosser acts is to hang the
perpetrators by the road where the troops pass, and put a placard on their
breasts. I think I would do it myself, if I caught any of them. All this
proceeds from one thing — the uncertainty of the death penalty through the
false merciful policy of the President. It came to be a notorious thing that no
one could be executed but poor friendless wretches, who had none to intercede
for them; so that the blood of deserters that was shed was all in vain — there
was no certainty in punishment, and certainty is the essence of all punishment.
Now we reap the disadvantage in a new form. People must learn that war is a
thing of life or death: if a man won't go to the front he must be shot; but our
people can't make up their minds to it; it is repulsive to the forms of
thought, even of most of the officers, who willingly expose their own lives,
but will shrink from shooting down a skulker.
SOURCE: George R. Agassiz, Editor, Meade’s
Headquarters, 1863-1865: Letters of Colonel Theodore Lyman from the Wilderness
to Appomattox, p. 115-7
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