A Diabolical Murder

The Leavenworth Bulletin, contains an account of one of the most fiendish instances of rebel crime that has marked their diabolical deeds during the war.

While the army was near Bentonville, Arkansas, last Spring, a secession young woman often visited the camp, and made herself very agreeable to the officers. A Lieutenant in the Second Indiana battery, named Masterson, became charmed with her, and she pretended to respond to the passion she had created. Their relations became quite intimate, and on occasion she invited him to visit her at the house of her uncle. He unsuspectingly availed himself of the opportunity to spend an afternoon in her society. Having been with her about two hours, she went to the window and raised it, and at the same moment twelve guerillas appeared and fired upon him. He fell dead in the house, and was carried off to a mill-pond and his body thrown into the water. Some four days after, the body floated to the shore, and was buried by an old man, and his son. After the lapse of four weeks the body was found, disinterred and identified by the comrades of the unfortunate Lieutenant. The day after the commission of the foul deed, the following note was found under the pillow of the young woman, written, apparently, on the eve of a flight in the night time, to escape the search that followed the next day:

My Dear Uncle and Aunt:

I have succeeded. My beauty which you have always told me was not worth a fig in life, has to-day accomplished as much as the patriot General in our glorious Confederacy. I am content to offer my beauty, virtue, even life itself, upon my country's altar. My bleeding country demands the sacrifice, willingly I obey!  I cannot visit your house any more until this war closes, which I pray God may be soon, but when it does stop, I hope to come and receive the blessings of you both on the head of  Your

Tomphina.

–        Published in The Union Sentinel, Osceola, Iowa, Saturday, January 10, 1863, p. 1

NOTE:  This is a reconstructed article.  This article was caught in the binding of the newspaper.  Consequently the first few words of each line are missing from the microfilmed newspaper article.  I have done an internet search and found one transcription of the article which ran in the Nashville Daily Union, December 23, 1862, page 2, column 2.  There are differences between the transcription and what was visible in the Union Sentinel article.  Where differences occurred I deferred to the Union Sentinel article.  I have not yet checked the Nashville Daily Union.