FEBRUARY 27, 1865:
General Wade Hampton C.S.A. responds hotly to a letter received
from General William Tecumseh Sherman U.S.A., accusing Hampton of “murdering”
Sherman’s wide-ranging bummers in South Carolina. Hampton accuses Sherman of
waging war on women, children, and the starving. Despite the evident rage of
both men, the gentlemanly tone of Hampton’s letter makes it a true artifact of
a vanished time:
HEADQUARTERS IN THE
FIELD, Feb. 27, 1865.
Maj.-Gen. W.T. Sherman,
U.S. Army:
GENERAL:
Your communication of
the 24th inst. reached me to-day. In it you state that it has been officially
reported that your foraging parties were "murdered" after capture,
and you go on to say that you had "ordered a similar number of prisoners
in our hands to be disposed of in like manner. That is to say, you have ordered
a number of Confederate soldiers to be "murdered."
You characterize your
order in proper terms, for the public voice even in your own country, where it
seldom dares to express itself in vindication of truth, honor or justice, will
surely agree with you in pronouncing you guilty of murder, if your order is
carried out.
Before dismissing this portion
of your letter, I beg to assure you that for every soldier of mine
"murdered" by you, I shall have executed at once two of yours,
giving. In all cases, preference to any officers who may be in my hands.
In reference to the
statement you make regarding the death of your foragers. I have only to say
that I know nothing of it; that no orders given by me authorize the killing of
prisoners after capture, and that I do not believe that my men killed any of
yours except under circumstances in which it was perfectly legitimate and
proper they should kill them.
It is a part of the
system of thieves whom you designate as foragers, to fire the dwellings of
those citizens whom they have robbed.
To check this inhuman
system which is justly execrated by every civilized nation, I have directed my
men to shoot down all of your men who are caught burning houses. This order
shall remain in force as long as you disgrace the profession of arms by
allowing your men to destroy private dwellings.
You say that I cannot,
of course, question your right to forage on the country. "It is a right as
old as history." I do not. Sir, question this right. But there is a right
older even than this, and one more inalienable -- the right that every man has
to defend his borne, and to protect those that are dependent upon him. And from
my heart I wish that every old man and boy in my country who can fire a gun,
would shoot down, as he would a wild beast, the men who are desolating their
land, burning their houses and insulting their women.
You are particular in
defining and claiming "war rights." May I ask if you enumerate among
them the right to fire upon a defenceless city, without notice; to burn that
city to the ground after it had been surrendered by the authorities, who claimed,
though in vain, that protection which is always accorded in civilized warfare
to non-combatants; to fire the dwelling-houses of citizens, after robbing them,
and to perpetrate even darker crimes than these -- crimes too black to be
mentioned?
You have permitted, if
you have not ordered, the commission of these offences against humanity and the
rules of war. You fired into the city of Columbia without a word of warning,
After its surrender by the Mayor, who demanded protection of private property,
you laid the whole city in ashes, leaving amid its ruins thousands of old men
and helpless women and children, who are likely to perish of starvation and
exposure. Your line of march can be traced by the lurid light of burning
houses, and in more than one household there is an agony far more bitter than
that of death.
The Indian scalped his
victim, regardless of sex or age, but, with all his barbarity, he always
respected the persons of his female captives. Your soldiers, more savage than
the Indian, insult those whose natural protectors are absent.
In conclusion, I have
only to request that whenever you have any of my men "disposed of,"
or "murdered," for the terms appear to be synonymous with you, you
will let me hear of it, in order that I may know what action to take in the
matter In the meantime I shall hold fifty-six of your men as hostages for those
whom you have ordered to be executed.
I am yours. &c.,
WADE HAMPTON
Lieutenant General.
