A Retaliatory measure.
Now you would like to know if the men whom I have described justified the burning of your town, in their individual capacity, irrespective of the orders from headquarters, under which they acted.
I must say to you frankly that they did, and I never heard one dissenting voice.
And why did we justify so harsh a measure?
Simply because we had long come to the conclusion that it was time for us to burn something in the enemy's country.
In the campaign of the preceding year, when our whole army had passed through your richest section of country, where the peaceful homes and fruitful fields only made the contrast with what he had left the more significant, many a man whose home was in ruins chafed under the orders from
General Lee, which forbade him to touch them, but the orders were obeyed, and we left the homes and fields as we found them, the ordinary wear and tear of an army of occupation alone excepted.
We had so often before our eyes the reverse of this wherever your army swept through
Virginia, that we were thoroughly convinced of the justice of a stern retaliation.
It is no pleasure to me to have to recall the scenes of those days, nor do I do so in any spirit of vindictiveness, but I simply tell the truth in justification of an act which
Mr. Hoke claims was without justification.
We had followed
Kilpatrick (I think it was), in his raid through
Madison,
Greene and other counties, and had seen the cattle shot or hamstrung in the barnyards, the
agricultural implements burned, the
feather beds and clothing of the women and children cut in shreds in mere wantonness, farmhouse after farmhouse stripped of every particle of provisions, private carriages cut and broken up, and women in tears lamenting all this.
I do not put down here anything that I did not see myself.
We had seen a thousand ruined homes in
Clark,
Jefferson and
Frederick counties—barns and houses burned and private property destroyed—but we had no knowledge that this was done by ‘official orders.’
At last when the
[
156]
official order came openly from
General Hunter, and the burning and done thereunder, and when our orders of retalliation came they met with the approbation, as I have said, of every man who crossed the
Potomac to execute them.
Of course we had nothing personal against your pretty little town.
It just so happened that it was the nearest and most accessible place of importance for us to get to. It was the unfortunate victim of circumstances.
Had it been further off and some other town nearer that other town would have gone and
Chambersburg have been saved.
