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The rebel despotism in Georgia.

Mr. J. Harford, a refugee from Atlanta, Georgia, sends to the Nashville Union the following account of the sufferings of the people of Georgia under the rebel rule:

When this war commenced I was engaged in the dry-goods business; have subsequently kept a diningsaloon, with a license for the sale of liquors. In Atlanta citizens are compelled to obey military rules which they do not recognize as law, and which rules even that government (through Alexander A. Stephens) pronounced to be illegal, arbitrary, and unjust, yet for refusing to obey which I have been seven times imprisoned — my property forcibly carried away without compensation. My family thus robbed, I was sent into another State for trial, and there imprisoned in Chattanooga to satisfy the malice of the military authorities in Atlanta, whose acts of despotism caused the death of peaceable citizens, and murdered even the babe in my wife's arms. During my imprisonment my family became sick, one of my children died, and my wife's recovery was for some time regarded as hopeless. Sir, these are facts which many respectable citizens of Atlanta can corroborate.

For defending the character of Michael Myers, a respectable citizen, who was arrested on suspicion of Union principles — and when visited by his friends on the following day, was found senseless, with a fracture in his skull about three inches long, from the effects of which he died in less than forty-eight hours from the time of his arrest — I was again made to suffer. Having dared to call for an investigation into the cause of his death, and accusing the provost-guards of at least some knowledge of his murder, has been, I well believe, the indirect cause of my repeated arrests, until deprived of all that could constitute a home. I was then, as if in mockery of my situation, called on to defend my home from “ Yankee ” invasion too — regardless of the certificates of two eminent doctors, proving my exemption from military service. These conscript officers have endeavored to force me to fight for their benign government. Military law having ignored all civil law, left me no means of redress. My wife, therefore wrote an appeal to the military authorities, but the newspapers of Atlanta refused to publish it, stating that it was too personal.

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