Headquarters Second Mass. Inf'y,
RoBeRTSVille, S. C, January 31, 1865.
Since my last letter we have pushed farther into this
miserable, rebellious State of South Carolina. We came very slowly, as we had
to cut our way for the first ten miles through continuous rebel obstructions;
but after that distance, the enemy evidently began to think it was no use
trying to stop us, and the fallen trees became fewer and further apart. As we
marched on from Purysburg, we gradually got out of the swamps and into rich
plantations showing signs of the wealth of their old owners. Just think of
single fields comprising at least one thousand acres. In the centre or in some
part of each one of these great fields, would stand the universal cotton press
and cotton gin. The planters' houses were rather better than the average
through Georgia, but none of them were what we should call more than second or
third class houses in the North; generally they stand half a mile or a mile
back from the road, at the end of a perfectly straight, narrow avenue, in fact,
nothing more than a cart path.
The most of them are surrounded by magnificent old live oaks
and cypress trees, draped all over with the gray Spanish moss which gives to
the deserted mansions a very sombre, funereal appearance. In rear of the houses
are the rows of negro quarters, and the various outbuildings required on large
plantations. So far, on this march, I have seen only one white male inhabitant
and very few negroes. Every place is deserted; the valuables and most of the
provisions are carried off; but I went into one house where there were rooms
full of fine furniture, a fine piano, marble-topped tables, etc.; there was a
valuable library in one room, of four or five thousand volumes. I saw a well
bound copy of Motley's Dutch Republic, and a good set of Carlyle's works. This
property is, of course, so much stuff strewn along the wayside. Unless there
happens to be a halt near by, no one is allowed to leave the column to take
anything; but stragglers, wagon-train men, and the various odds and ends that
always accompany an army on the march, pick up whatever they want or think they
want, and scatter about and destroy the rest, and by the time the last of a
column five or six miles long gets by, the house is entirely gutted; in nine
cases out of ten, before night all that is left to show where the rich,
aristocratic, chivalrous, slave-holding South Carolinian lived, is a heap of
smoldering ashes.
On principle, of course, such a system of loose destruction
is all wrong and demoralizing; but, as I said before, it is never done openly
by the soldiers, for every decent officer will take care that none of his men
leave the ranks on a march. But there is no precedent which requires guards to
be placed over abandoned property in an enemy's country. Sooner or later, of
course, as we advanced and occupied all of the country, it would be taken, and
I would rather see it burned than to have it seized and sent North by any of
the sharks who follow in the rear of a conquering army. Pity for these
inhabitants, I have none. In the first place, they are rebels, and I am almost
prepared to agree with Sherman that a rebel has no rights, not even the right
to live except by our permission.
They have rebelled against a Government they never once
felt; they lived down here like so many lords and princes; each planter was at
the head of a little aristocracy in which hardly a law touched him. This didn't
content these people; they wanted “their rights,” and now they are getting
them. After long deliberation, they plunged into a war in order to gratify
their aristocratic aspirations for a Government of their own, and to indulge in
their insane hatred for us Yankee mud-sills. The days of the rebellion are
coming to an end very fast; even its lying press cannot keep up its courage
much longer. For a year they have met with a series of reverses sufficient to
break the spirit of the proudest nation, and this next spring will see a
combination of movements which must destroy their only remaining bulwark, Lee's
army, and then the bubble will burst; and I believe that we shall find that
Jeff Davis and other leading Confederates will be abused and hated by men of
their own section of country more than they will by the Northerners.
No, I might pity individual cases brought before me, but I
believe that this terrible example is needed in this country, as a warning to
those men in all time to come who may cherish rebellious thoughts; I believe it
is necessary in order to show the strength of this Government and thoroughly to
subdue these people. I would rather campaign it until I am fifty years old than
to make any terms with rebels while they bear arms. We can conquer a peace, and
it is our duty to do it.
This little, deserted town of Robertville we reached two
days ago; our whole left wing is close by. We shall fill up again with
supplies, and in about two days strike into the country. Barnwell, Branchville,
Augusta, Columbia, and Charleston are all threatened. I hope the rebels know as
little as we do which one is in the most immediate danger of a visit. Wheeler's
cavalry is all around us, but as yet no infantry. A regiment of his command
tried to stop our coming into this town. The Third Wisconsin, without firing a
shot, charged them, broke them all to pieces, and lost only three men.
SOURCE: Charles Fessenden Morse, Letters Written
During the Civil War, 1861-1865, p. 209
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