Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/484

446 of private property, the arrests of noncombatants, orders of banishment against peaceful farmers, confiscation bills designed to ruin the entire South, and many other acts which the message stigmatized as contrary to the usages of civilized warfare. The President also called the attention of Congress to the unchecked forgeries by citizens of the United States of the moneyed obligations of the Confederacy, suggesting that the United States civil government and the military officers must have knowledge of these crimes since the invading armies are found to be supplied with the spurious currency. Two generals, says the message, are arming the trained slaves for warfare against the citizens of the Confederacy, and the message points plainly to General Butler as one who &quot; has been found of instincts so brutal as to invite the violence of his soldiery against the women of a captured city.

In considering these acts the message states that remonstrances made to the commander-in-chief of the United States armies had been evaded and that retaliation in kind in many cases is not only impracticable, but, as was remarked in an earlier message, &quot; under no excess of provocation could our noble hearted defenders be driven to wreak vengeance on unarmed men, on women or on children. Yet stern and exemplary punishment can and must be meted out to the murderers and felons who, disgracing the profession of arms, seek to make of public war the occasion for the commission of the most monstrous crimes. The criticism that had been made on conscription had impaired the efficiency of the law, and in view of the necessity of harmonious action the President called on Congress to devise means for establishing that co-operation of the States and the Confederate States which was indispensable to success, declaring it to be his pleasure and duty to aid in measures that would reconcile a just care for the public defense with a proper deference for the most scrupulous susceptibilities of the State authorities.