Diary of Sarah Morgan: Thursday, April 30, 1863

Was not the recollection of this day bitter enough to me already? I did not think it could be more so. Yet behold me crying as I have not cried for many and many a day. Not for Harry; I dare not cry for him. I feel a deathlike quiet when I think of him; a fear that even a deep-drawn breath would wake him in his grave. And as dearly as I love you, O Hal, I don't want you in this dreary world again. . . .

Talk of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes! Talk of Louis XIV! Of — pshaw! my head is in such a whirl that history gets all mixed up, and all parallels seem weak and moderate in comparison to this infamous outrage. To-day, thousands of families, from the most respectable down to the least, all who have had the firmness to register themselves enemies to the United States, are ordered to leave the city before the fifteenth of May. Think of the thousands, perfectly destitute, who can hardly afford to buy their daily bread even here, sent to the Confederacy, where it is neither to be earned nor bought, without money, friends, or a home. Hundreds have comfortable homes here, which will be confiscated to enrich those who drive them out. “It is an ill wind that blows no one good.” Such dismal faces as one meets everywhere! Each looks heartbroken. Homeless, friendless, beggars, is written in every eye. Brother's face is too unhappy to make it pleasant to look at him. True, he is safe; but hundreds of his friends are going forth destitute, leaving happy homes behind, not knowing where the crust of bread for famishing children is to come from to-morrow. He went to General Bowens and asked if it were possible that women and children were included in the order. Yes, he said; they should all go, and go in the Confederacy. They should not be allowed to go elsewhere. Penned up like sheep to starve! That's the idea! With the addition of forty thousand mouths to feed, they think they can invoke famine to their aid, seeing that their negro brothers don't help them much in the task of subjugating us.

Don't care who knows I smuggled in a dozen letters! Wish I had had more!

SOURCE: Sarah Morgan Dawson, A Confederate Girl's Diary, p. 387-9

Francis Lieber to Senator Charles Sumner, December 14, 1861

New York, December 14,1861.

As to that proposition to melt together the United States army and the volunteers, I wish to heaven I had the ear of some influential man in this matter. Nothing is more dangerous to modern civil liberty than a large democratic army; vide France. The traditional fear of standing armies, thoroughly founded in times past, when Louis XIV. and James II. were justly haunting the minds of upright men, must be changed into a fear of a large, thoroughly democratic army. In countries pervaded by an institutional spirit and system of self-government, — with a true, not nominal, representative national body, which keeps the army under its thumb as to size and appropriation, — the danger is not in the standing army, of itself. Look at England. Make our present large army a homogeneous, vast, democratic army; give it some suecesses; let some striking victory knit them well together, man to man, and to the general, — and every person versed in the analytical chemistry of history will tell you that a Bonaparte dictating after a Lodi is unavoidable. No congress, no parliament, can keep under an organized, vast, democratic army, especially when no sea intervenes. There is nothing so revolutionary as such an army. The sword is always arrogant. A soldier is writing this, — but a soldier who is a historian too, and a citizen, philosopher, and a man who is willing that this should be “hung out” after he is gone — as they used to hang out the proof-sheets in the early days of printing — for all that might choose to find errata. I stake my name to this. . . .

SOURCE: Thomas Sergeant Perry, Editor, The Life and Letters of Francis Lieber, p. 321

Lieutenant-Colonel Theodore Lyman to Elizabeth Russell Lyman, November 13, 1863

Headquarters Army Of Potomac

November 13, 1863

Here we continue to dwell in our pine wood, in grave content, consuming herds of cattle and car-loads of bread with much regularity. Yesterday, who should turn up but John Minor Botts,¹ the tough and unterrified. The Rebs treated him pretty badly this time, because he invited General Meade to dine; burnt his fences, shot his cattle and took all his corn and provisions, and finally arrested him and took him as far as Culpeper, but there concluded he was a hot potato and set him free. He was inclined to pitch into us, for not following sharper after the Rebs on Sunday morning, that is, the day after we forced the river. He said the first of their waggons did not pass his house till two at night and the rear of the column not till ten next morning; that the roads were choked with footmen, guns, cavalry and ambulances, all hurrying for the Rapid Ann. In good sooth I suppose that a shade more mercury in the feet of some of our officers might do no harm; but, on the other hand, it is to be noticed that we had excellent reason to expect, and believe, that they would not run, but only retire to the ridges near Brandy Station and there offer battle. In this case, the premature hurrying forward of a portion of the troops might well have ruined the day. All of which reminds me of Colonel Locke's remark: “If we were omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent, we might, with care, get a very pretty fight out of the Rebs!” As it was, what we did do was done as scientifically as any army in the world could have done it, and with a minimum loss of life. I do assure you that Rappahannock station was a position where thousands of men might have been destroyed, with no gain whatsoever, if managed by unskilful officers; and even Kelly's Ford was not without serious difficulties. I don't recollect whether I told you that the enemy had made preparations for nice winter quarters, and were hutting themselves and had made some capital corduroy roads against the mud season. In one hut was found a half-finished letter, from an officer to his wife, in which he said that the Yanks had gone into winter quarters, and that they were doing the same, so that he expected a nice quiet time for some months. Poor man! The Yanks made themselves very comfortable that same evening in his new cabin. Our future movements, or standing still, lie between the General and the weather. Meantime we have to pause a little, for there isn't a thing to eat in this broad land, and every pound of meat and quart of oats for tens of thousands of men and animals must come by a broken railroad from Alexandria.  . . . The Palatinate, during the wars of Louis XIV, could scarcely have looked so desolate as this country. The houses that have not been actually burnt usually look almost worse than those that have: so dreary are they with their windows without sashes, and their open doors, and their walls half stripped of boards. Hundreds of acres of stumps show where once good timber stood, and the arable fields are covered with weeds and blackberry vines, or with the desolate marks of old camps — the burnt spots, where the fires were, the trenches cut round the tents, and the poles, and old bones and tin pots that invariably lie about. . . .

As you walk about the country, you often see fragments of shell scattered around; for all this country has been fought over, back and forth, either in skirmishes or battles; and here and there, you come on a little ridge of earth, marked by a bit of board, on which is scrawled the name of the soldier, who lies where he fell, in this desert region. Our people are very different from the Europeans in their care for the dead, and mark each grave with its name; even in the heat of battle.

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¹ A Northern sympathizer, who had a plantation in those parts.

SOURCE: George R. Agassiz, Editor, Meade’s Headquarters, 1863-1865: Letters of Colonel Theodore Lyman from the Wilderness to Appomattox, p. 46-8

Rose O’Neal Greenhow to William H. Seward, November 17, 1861

Washington, November 17, 1861.

398, 16th Street.

HON. WM. H. SEWARD, SEC. OF STATE.

Sir, — For nearly three months I have been confined a close prisoner, shut out from air and exercise, and denied all communion with family and friends.

“Patience is said to be a great virtue,” and I have practised it to my utmost capacity of endurance.

I am told, sir, that upon your ipse dixit the fate of citizens depends, and that the sign-manual of the ministers of Louis XIV. and XV. was not more potential in their day than that of the Secretary of State in 1861.

I therefore most respectfully submit that on Friday, August 23rd, without warrant or other show of authority, I was arrested by the detective police, and my house taken in charge by them: that all my private letters and papers of a life-time were read and examined by them: that every law of decency was violated in the search of my house and person, and by the surveillance over me.

We read in history that the poor Marie Antoinette had a paper torn from her bosom by lawless hands, and that even a change of linen had to be effected in sight of her brutal captors. It is my sad experience to record even more revolting outrages than that, for during the first days of my imprisonment, whatever necessity forced me to seek my chamber, a detective stood sentinel at the open door. And thus, for a period of seven days, I, with my little child, was placed absolutely at the mercy of men without character or responsibility; that during the first evening a portion of those men became brutally drunk, and boasted in my hearing of the nice times they expected to have with the female prisoners, and that rude violence was used towards a servant girl during that first evening. For any show of decorum afterwards practised towards me I was indebted to the detective called Captain Dennis.

In the careful analysis of my papers I deny the existence of a line that I had not a perfect right to have written or to have received. Freedom of speech and of opinion is the birthright of Americans, guaranteed to us by our charter of liberty — the Constitution of the United States. I have exercised my prerogative, and have openly avowed my sentiments. During the political struggle I opposed your Republican party with every instinct of self-preservation. I believed your success a virtual nullification of the Constitution, and that it would entail upon us all the direful consequences which have ensued. These sentiments have doubtless been found recorded among my papers, and I hold them as rather a proud record of my sagacity.

I must be permitted to quote from a letter of yours, in regard to “Russell of the London Times,” which you conclude with these admirable words: “Individual errors of opinion may be tolerated, so long as good sense is left to combat them.”

By way of illustrating theory and practice, here am I — a prisoner in sight of the executive mansion — in sight of the Capitol, where the proud statesmen of our land have sung their pagans to the blessings of our free institutions. Comment is idle. Freedom of speech, freedom of thought, every right pertaining to the citizen, has been suspended by what, I suppose, the President calls a “military necessity.” A blow has been struck by this total disregard of all civil rights against the present system of government far greater in its effects than the severance of the Southern States. The people have been taught to contemn the supremacy of the law, to which all have hitherto bowed, and to look to the military power for protection against its decrees. A military spirit has been developed which will only be subordinate to a military dictatorship. Read history, and you will find that the causes which bring about a revolution rarely predominate at its close, and no people have ever returned to the point from which they started. Even should the Southern States be subdued, and forced back into the Union (which I regard as impossible, with a full knowledge of their resources), a different form of government will be found needful to meet the new developments of national character. There is no class of society, no branch of industry, which this change has not reached, and the dull plodding methodical habits of the past can never be resumed.

You have held me, sir, to a man's accountability, and I therefore claim the right to speak on subjects usually considered beyond a woman's ken, and which you may class as “errors of opinion.” I offer no excuse for this long digression, as a three months’ imprisonment, without formula of law, gives me authority for occupying even the precious moments of a Secretary of State.

My object is to call your attention to the fact, that during this long imprisonment I am yet ignorant of the causes of my arrest; that my house has been seized and converted into a prison by the Government; that the valuable furniture it contained has been abused and destroyed; that during some period of my imprisonment I have suffered greatly for want of proper and sufficient food. Also, I have to complain that more recently a woman of bad character —  recognised as having been seen in the streets of Chicago as such, by several of the guard — calling herself Mrs. Onderdunk, was placed here in my house in a room adjoining mine.

In making this exposition, I have no object of appeal to your sympathies. If the justice of my complaint and a decent regard for the world’s opinion do not move you, I should but waste time to claim your attention on any other score.

I may, however, recall to your mind that but a little while since you were quite as much proscribed by public sentiment here, for the opinions and principles you held, as I am now for mine.

I could easily have escaped arrest, having had timely warning. I thought it possible that your statesmanship might prevent such a proclamation of weakness to the world as even the fragment of a once great Government turning its arms against the breasts of women and children. You have the power, sir, and may still further abuse it. You may prostrate the physical strength, by confinement in close rooms and insufficient food. You may subject me to harsher, ruder treatment than I have already received; but you cannot imprison the soul. Every cause worthy of success has had its martyrs. The words of the heroine Corday are applicable here: “C’est le crime qui fait la honte, et non pas l’échafaud.” My sufferings will afford a significant lesson to the women of the South, that sex or condition is no bulwark against the surging billows of the “irrepressible conflict.”

The “iron heel” of power may keep down, but it cannot crush out, the spirit of resistance in a people armed for the defence of their rights; and I tell you now, sir, that you are standing over a crater whose smothered fires in a moment may burst forth.

It is your boast that thirty-three bristling fortifications surround Washington. The fortifications of Paris did not protect Louis Philippe when his hour had come.

In conclusion, I respectfully ask your attention to this my protest, and have the honour to be, &c,

&c, &c,

ROSE O'N. Geeenhow.

SOURCE: Rose O'Neal Greenhow, My Imprisonment and the First Year of Abolition rule at Washington, p. 118-24