Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 14.djvu/216

 210 Southern Historical Society Papers.

always believed, but never actually knew, our brigadier himself — all arrested for a (ew palings of an ornamental fence taken under such circumstances ! And then to be told that there was no discipline in our army !

The other instance to which I allude, is one that I recall of the winter of 1 863-' 64. I had been detailed as judge-advocate of a general court-martial, and was quartered at a farm-house, around which our division was encamped, and I remember while there being struck with the fact that the poultry were safely walking about the farm-yard, which was enclosed by a worm-fence only, not a rail from which was taken, while our men had to bring their wood from aj considerable distance.

What greater proof of the discipline of any army could be given than was by ours in the Pennsylvania campaign, where property was protected even, though we had such great provocation for retaliation ? Even the fanatical Doubleday, the historian of Gettysburg in the Scribner series, admits that we paid for whatever we took; but com- plains that we paid for it in Confederate currency — as if we had an}' other. He tells as a good joke tl.at General Jenkins, while at Cham- bersburg, having had some horses stolen, called upon the city autho- rities to pay him their full value. "They did so," he says, "without a murmur, m Confederate curre?icy.'^*

If the conduct of troops in an invading army is any test of disci- pline, let us compare two incidents.

A Northern correspondent thus describes the conduct of the Fed- eral troops on taking possession of Athens, Alabama:

"The citizens had their houses and stores broken open and robbed of everything valuable, and what was too unwieldy to be transported easily, broken or otherwise ruined ; safes were forced open and rifled of thousands, of dollars; wives and mothers insulted, and husbands and fathers arrested, if they dared to murmur; horses and negroes taken in large numbers; ladies robbed of all their wearing apparel except what they had on — in a word,, every outrage was committed and every excess indulged in that ever was heard of, by a most savage and brutal soldiery, towards a defenceless and alarmed population. This is an everlasting disgrace, that can never be wiped, from the page of history."!

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 * ' Chancellorsville and Gettysburg."— Doubleday, page 96.

+ Marginalia by Personne, army correspondent of the Charleston Courier^ page 45 It should be mentioned that the officer in command. Colonel John fj. Turchin, was arrested, tried, and cashiered by a court-martial, of which General Garfield was president. He was, however, immediately appointed Brigadier-General by President Lincoln.— Records War of Rebellion, VoL XVI, page 273-'8.