Saturday, March 11, 2017

Diary of Lieutenant-Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes: Friday, August 1, 1862

A good little drill. Mr. Landcraft, one of the three slaveholders of Monroe County who were true to the Union, and a Mrs. Roberts were arrested and brought into my camp in obedience to orders from headquarters. Mrs. Roberts is a ladylike woman; her husband, a Secesh, is a prisoner at Raleigh. Mrs. Roberts and her uncle, Mr. Landcraft, came over New River and passed into our lines, the pickets admitting them, without proper passes. If this is the whole offense, the arrest is on most insufficient and frivolous grounds. In the case of Mrs. Roberts, who has a nursing child at home, it is as cruel as it is unnecessary. I shall do my best to get them out of the trouble. These needless persecutions of old men and of women, I am ashamed of.

SOURCE: Charles Richard Williams, editor, Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Volume 2, p. 314-5

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