Hillsborough (NC) Recorder
July 31, 1861
Page 2
A YANKEE EDITOR
COMDEMNS THE OUTRAGES COMMITTED
BY LINCOLN TROOPS
In
the editorial correspondence of the N. Y. Times, written from Fortress Monroe,
Va., on the 4th of July, by Hon. Henry J. Raymond, its editor,
speaking of the village
of Hampton which has been
abandoned to the Hessians, he says:
“It
is a very pretty country town, with a fine hotel looking out upon the river, a
good military school, three or four churches, etc. I procured a boat and crossed over to the
“deserted village.” Of the 2,000 or
2,500 inhabitants of this town, not twenty-five remained. The rest took all the valuables they could
carry away, packed the rest in boxes, locked the doors, and fled. It was the most melancholy picture I had ever
seen. Our soldiers had come over, broken open the houses, rifled the boxes, carried off
tables, chairs, sofas and whatever else they could make useful, and wantonly
destroyed what they could not take away.
Passing through the deserted streets, I saw through an open door a woman
sweeping a little shop. She said she had
left town with the rest, but thought she would come back to look after the few
things she had left. They had all
disappeared. The house had been broken
open and everything in it carried away.
This is the general story throughout the town. I heard of three or four of our men who went
into a house where there were only an old man and his wife, and when the latter
refused to tell them where they left their money, they broke open the bureau
and took $26 which they found there. In
another instance a gang of men went into a house occupied by a lady, a relative
of Commodore Barron, who had packed up the family pictures and other relics and
put them away. They broke open the
boxes, threw the contents out into the street, and completely stripped the
house. At another house, after taking
away what they wanted, they emptied jars of sweetmeats which they poured into
the river. At the house of Mrs. Cary,
they smashed to pieces all the glassware they could find, much of which was
very valuable. Passing through the
village I came to the old church, said to be the oldest now standing in this
country. It stands a little back from
the road, and is surrounded by the graveyard; just in the rear of it, and close
to the walls, was the freshly-made grave of a child, with a slight wooden frame
around it to protect it from desecration.
Some of our troops had placed an iron rod across the frame, upon which they
had hung a kettle over a fire, built upon the grave.
I
could give scores and hundreds of instances of similar outrages. Is it surprising that the people here look
upon us as vandals and barbarians? By
any possible process could we contrive to make them more bitterly and
relentlessly hostile toward the Union than in
this way. General Butler, of course,
disapproves all this—but that is not enough.
He should have issued a proclamation as soon as he arrived, inviting the
citizens to remain at home, and assuring them of the perfect protection of
their lives and property. And then every
violation of private rights—every instance of theft or plunder—should
have been punished with a rigor which would have effectually prevented a
repetition of the act. If some officer
of the regular army—such as man as General Wood, for example—had been here, we
should have had none of these disgraces.
If the citizens had remained at home, their property would have been
much safer. But they were afraid to do
so, and not without reason. One of our
Colonels one night arrested and brought into the fort, a whole family—including
an old lady and three or four small children, on the charge that they were
displaying signal-lights for the rebels.
It turned out that they kept a light burning on account of a sick child. How could anyone feel safe when exposed to
such outrages?”
[Transcribed by Sharon Strout]
