Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 2.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

[175] write me often, always addressing me as “Dear cousin.” Their letters cheer and gladden me, greatly relieving the tedious monotony of prison life. Many of the prisoners receive letters from ladies in the North, whom they never saw, claiming to be “sisters,” “cousins” and “aunts,” offering to send supplies, if permitted. These noble women seek by this means to show their sympathy for us and our beloved cause. God will abundantly reward these gentle ministers of love and charity, who thus seek to do good to us who are “sick and in prison.” The papers are full of the presidential election contest between Lincoln and McClellan. While I prefer it, I have no hopes of the latter's election. The Southern people respect him as a true soldier and gentleman, who, while conducting his army through Southern territory, always bore in mind the rules of civilized warfare, and restrained his soldiers from acts of depredation and lawlessness. Yet his humane mode of war does not suit the Christian (?) North as well as the barbarous style of the barn-burner Sheridan and his robber followers. Sheridan laid the lovely Valley of Virginia to waste, and, according to his official report, burned 2,000 barns filled with wheat and hay, 70 mills stored with flour and grain, and drove off or killed 7,000 cattle and sheep, besides a number of horses. The axe and torch finished what the sword had left. For this vandalism he was promoted, while the humane McClellan was dismissed from his command. Such is Yankee civilization, humanity and christianity! The gentleman and scientific soldier is removed from power and disgraced, while the ruffian, robber, house and mill-burner and cattle thief is given higher office, lauded to the skies and made a hero of. It is matter of sincere congratulation that our chivalrous Southern leaders, Lee, Jackson, Stuart, Hampton, Rodes and others, are made of far different material from that which makes up the bloody butcher Grant, the bummer Sherman, the barn-burner Sheridan, the mulatto-women-lover Custer, and the degraded Beast Butler.