April 1, 1865
From the Richmond Daily Dispatch April 1, 1865:
Saturday Morning…april 1, 1865.
The occasional execution of a Confederate officer (alleged to be a spy) in the Northern cities affords the masses at home an opportunity of seeing the death-struggles of a rebel, which could in no other way be gratified. It is not enough to read in the newspapers of killing the scoundrels, “way down South,” but, by this new process, every man at home can have the banquet served up at his own table, and feast his own delicate senses upon the luxury. A nice young man, son of one of the “F. F. V.’s,” if possible, in the morning of his existence, with a calm, determined face and a refined intellectual cast of features (as some of the newspapers describe it), hung up like a dog upon some trumpery charge, is a tit-bit for the million which each man can roll, like a sweet morsel, under his tongue. General Dix, who is entitled to the chief credit of bringing home to all classes of Northern society this cheap and popular luxury, must be considered a public benefactor. He may have borrowed the idea from the Roman Emperors, who used to entertain the Roman populace with the spectacle of captive enemies brought from distant climes, and put to death before the eyes of the assembled multitudes. But the Romans were barbarous, and compelled the miserable prisoners to fight each other, or to fight wild beasts, and to perish sword in hand, whereas General Dix works them off in the scientific and humane method of Newgate, and gives the public a fine political and moral lesson, calculated to invigorate their patriotism and refine their hearts.
General Dix, who now occupies a position in the administration of Federal justice like that of Mr. Dennis, in Barnaby Rudge,–that is to say, chief hangman of that Government, –gave no promise in his former life of the peculiar eminence which he has now attained. …
In reading the record of such crimes against God and humanity as the enemy have perpetrated in this war, one is tempted to wonder that the thunders of Divine justice do not descend at once from the Heavens and crush the guilty perpetrators in the very commission of their wickedness. We do not complain of the “horrors of war,” as war is conducted by civilized nations, under the recognized principle that each belligerent is to fight in his country’s cause with all his strength, but that any annoyance, suffering and slaughter by which no ultimate advantage can be gained is a useless piece of barbarity.–But we appeal to the civilized world, we humbly appeal to that Great Tribunal at which all men must one day appear and render an account of the deeds done in the body, that the deliberate system of robbery, rapine, murder, starvation and burning, now carried on against this people, is not war, but a gigantic crime against humanity and against God.
Our readers will recollect the scene in Columbia, where four thousand people were turned out of doors amidst roaring flames, and the communion vessels of a church were plundered and used in their orgies by drunken soldiers, blaspheming, as they drank, the name of Jesus Christ; and the later scene, in Winnsboro’, where, as the church was burning, they sang blasphemous songs to the organ amid the sea of fire. Men wonder, when they read such accounts, that Heaven itself does not interpose, and, by some signal interposition of its vengeance, mark its sense of the crime. But that is not God’s ordinary mode of dealing with man. …
But as nations have no hereafter, and must hence be punished here for their wickedness; and as the North, in the re-election of Mr. Lincoln, has deliberately sanctioned his mode of conducting this war, those of its people who have any belief in a God cannot look to the future of their country without some dismal forebodings. …
We know how, in their impenetrable armor of self-complacency and atheism, they scoff at such a prediction. But what is now a prediction will as surely be come history as the sun rises to- morrow. There is, there must be, a just Governor of the Universe. Before Him we lay our cause. It may be His will that we perish by murderous hands, and if it be, we bow with reverence and adoration. But from our desolate homes, our churches defiled, and our bloody graves, there goes up which Heaven will hear and will not disregard.
Some of our contemporaries publish a statement that General Sherman, in conversation with a lady in Fayetteville, said that if the results of his late visitation of the South did not restore its people to loyalty, he should, on his next invasion, burn every house to the ground, and if that did not work a cure he would put all the inhabitants to death, without regard to age or sex.
If anything were necessary to render his next visitation a rather more difficult one than the last, this timely announcement has secured that result. He never could have advanced far into Georgia if the inhabitants had laid waste the country before him as he traveled. …
It really seems as if the mode of conducting this war had been shaped for no other purpose than to render a restoration of the old Union impossible. Suppose that a policy had been adopted of conducting the war according to the usages of civilized people; that the Federal armies had contented themselves with fighting Confederate armies, and taking every military advantage for putting down “the rebellion,” but at the same time had respected private property; had neither burned dwelling-houses nor mills; had interfered in no way with any peaceful non-combatant; had permitted no outrages to men nor insults to women, but had relied solely upon their superior military strength, and the skill of their generals, and the valor of their troops, to end the war! We do not say this would have satisfied the malignity of the people; but if the object of the war was the restoration of the Union, would not this have been the most efficient means? Is it not obvious either that the war was intended for no such purpose, or that whatever was intended, the mode of conducting it could have no other effect than to render such an event impossible? After what has occurred for four long years, the future unity of America is a dream of maniacs. Subjugated we may be, or even exterminated, but the worshippers of the Old Union have shivered into irreparable fragments the object of their idolatry. …
The executed Confederate officer was Robert Cobb Kennedy, “the only person captured and convicted in the 1864 Confederate plot to burn down New York City”. In a HistoryNet report General Dix said at the trial of Captain Kennedy:
The attempt to set fire to the city of New York is one of the great atrocities of the age. There is nothing in the annals of barbarism which evinces greater vindictiveness. It was not a mere attempt to destroy the city, but to set fire to crowded hotels and places of public resort, in order to secure the greatest possible destruction of human life.
I am beating a dead horse, but I do want to mention that one of the Dispatch constants over the past four years has been the Runaways section. 150 years ago today was no different:
Runaways.
Ran Away, on Thursday, March22, a negro boy, named Colin. He is about twelve or thirteen years of age; about four feetten inches high; dark brown color, and has a small scar under the left jaw, caused by scrofula. A reward will be paid to any one the may arrest and deliver him to me, or put him in jail, so that he can be recovered.
George W. Gary,
No. 21 Pearl (or Fourteenth) street.
Ran Away from the subscriber, on the 13th of February, a Negro man, named Robert. Said negro is about forty years of age, and a dark mulatto. Had on, when he left, a brown slouch hat and a brown army overcoat; and is believed to have gone to his home, in Goochland, at Mrs. John Allan’s. I will give one hundred dollars Reward if returned to me, beyond Battery No. 8, or put in jail so that I can get him.
Thomas Bruton.
Henrico county, March25, 1865.
