Several days after the evacuation we ventured to enter the
gates of our sweet little city, on errands of mercy, mingled with no little
curiosity to see the condition in which it had been left by its unwelcome and
turbulent visitors. The tall, broad-spreading shade-trees that lined the
streets had been felled and thrown across all the leading thoroughfares,
impeding travel so that our landau made many ineffectual attempts to thread its
way. At last I descended and walked the dusty, littered, shadeless streets from
square to square. Seeing the front door of the late Judge Morgan's house thrown
wide open, and knowing that his widow and daughters, after asking protection
for their property of the commanding general, had left before the battle, I
entered. No words can tell the scene that those deserted rooms presented. The
grand portraits, heirlooms of that aristocratic family, men of the
Revolutionary period, high-bred dames of a long-past generation in short
bodices, puffed sleeves, towering headdresses, and quaint golden chains — ancestors
long since dead, not only valuable as likenesses that could not be duplicated,
but acknowledged works of art — these portraits hung upon the walls, slashed by
swords clear across from side to side, stabbed and mutilated in every brutal
way! The contents of store-closets had been poured over the floors; molasses
and vinegar, and everything that defaces and stains, had been smeared over
walls and furniture. Up-stairs, armoires with mirror-doors had been
smashed in with heavy axes or hammers, and the dainty dresses of the young
ladies torn and crushed with studied, painstaking malignity, while china,
toilet articles, and bits of glass that ornamented the rooms were thrown upon
the beds and broken and ground into a mass of fragments; desks were wrenched
open, and the contents scattered not only through the house, but out upon the
streets, to be wafted in all directions; parts of their private letters as well
as letters from the desks of other violated homes, and family records torn from
numberless bibles, were found on the sidewalks of the town, and even on the public
roads beyond town limits!
Judge Morgan's was the only vacated house I entered. It was
enough: I was too heart-sick and indignant to seek another evidence of the
lengths to which a conquering army can go in pitiless, unmeaning destruction,
when nothing can result from such vandalism but hatred and revenge.
SOURCE: Eliza McHatton Ripley, From Flag to Flag: A Woman's Adventures and Experiences in the South
During the War, in Mexico and in Cuba, p. 49-50
