New York, August 2, 1863.
My Dear General,
— Doubtless you agree with me that now, the Mississippi being cleared, we shall
have prowling assassins along its banks, firing on passengers from behind the
levees. You share, I know, my opinion, expressed in my Guerilla pamphlet,
regarding these lawless prowlers. Will it not be well to state distinctly, in a
general order, that they must be treated as outlaws? Or would a proclamation
touching this point —and the selling or massacring of our colored soldiers, as
well as the breaking of the parole — be better? I cannot judge of this from a
distance, but it reads very oddly that a rebel officer who has broken his
parole was among the prisoners that recently arrived at Washington, as all the
newspapers had it. I hope it is not true; and if not true, Government should
semi-officially contradict it. That Government has too much to do, would be no
answer. Napoleon even wrote occasionally articles for the “Moniteur.” . . . I have pointed out a most important
military position, near my house, in case of repeated riot. It is the highly
elevated crossing of Fourth Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street. It has been
adopted. Did I tell you that I, too, patrolled for three nights during that
infamous, fiendish, and rascally riot. To be sure, wholly unprotected as we
were, our patrolling was hardly for any other purpose than to take away in time
our wives and children. The one good feature in this riot was that no blank
cartridges were fired. The handful of troops we had — invalids and full combatants,
as well as the police — behaved well, I believe, and did what was possible. My
son Hamilton was in the midst of it during the whole time with his invalids. .
. .
SOURCE: Thomas Sergeant Perry, Editor, The Life and
Letters of Francis Lieber, p. 335-6
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