Rebel Terrorism In East Tennessee

Banishment of women and Children by the Secesh Authorities.

From The Nashville Union, 23d.

The following Proclamation recently issued by the rebel authorities in East Tennessee, is a reproach to humanity itself:

TO THE DISAFFECTED PEOPLE OF EAST TENNESSEE.

Headquarters Department East Tenn.,}

Office Provost Marshall, April 23d, 1862.}

The undersigned, in executing martial law in this Department, assures those interested, who have fled to the enemy’s lines, and who are actually in the army, that he will welcome their return to their homes and families; they are offered amnesty and protection if they come to lay down their arms, and act as loyal citizens within thirty days, given them by Major General E. Kirby Smith, to do so.  At the end of that time those failing to return to their homes and accept the amnesty thus offered and provided for and protect their wives and children in East Tennessee, will have them sent to their care in Kentucky, or beyond the Confederate States lines, at their own expense.  All that leave after this date with the knowledge of the above facts, their families will be sent immediately after them.  The women and children must be taken care of by husbands and fathers, either in east Tennessee or in the Lincoln Government.

W. M. CHURCHWELL,

Colonel and Provost Marshal.

Now we present a special instance of the operations of this diabolical order, which signally illustrates its more than savage inhumanity:

Headquarters Department East Tenn.,}

Office Provost Marshal, April 21, 1862.}

MRS. MAYNARD, Knoxville:

Madam.  By order of Major General E. Kirby Smith, I am directed respectfully to require that yourself and family pass beyond the Confederate States lines in thirty-six hours from this date.

Passports will be granted you at this office.

Very respectfully,

W. M. CHURCHWELL,

Colonel and Provost Marshal.

But is this case even the worst?  Far from it.  We have just learned of a still more atrocious exhibition of the fiendish spirit of the rebellion.  The wife of Governor Johnson, wasted by the ravages of consumption, and confined to a couch of bodily pain and mental torture, was very recently made the object of rebel insolence and cruelty.  A woman, an invalid, separated from her husband, and surrounded by relentless enemies, what heart would not have commiserated her condition?  What manly form would not have extended a generous protection?  Yet, while thus sundered from her husband and suffering with bodily affliction she received a message similar to the one sent to Mrs. Maynard! – The cruel barbarities of Clayerhouse, the persecutor of the Scottish Covenanters, never reached a greater depth of brutal malignity than this deed of Colonel W. M. Churchwell, of the rebel army at Knoxville.  Fortunately some one was sagacious enough to suggest that this inhumanity to a sick lady on account of her husband’s loyalty would injure the Confederate cause, and the order was countermanded.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, May 31, 1862, p. 2