Rebellion Record: a Diary of American Events: Poetry and Incidents., Volume 4.
Frank Moore, Ed.

[74] A Chapter of Rebel Outrages.--The deeds of Zollicoffer's hordes are as atrocious as any committed by the rebellious Sikhs in the British Indian war, and Nena Sahib is an angel of light and mercy compared to the confederate ruffians. In proof that this assertion is no exaggeration, Mr. W. M. Green, who was compelled to leave Jamestown, Russell County, and take refuge at Columbia, writes to us from the latter place that the counties of Clinton, Wayne, and Russell are completely overrun by the confederates. Their force consists of eleven regiments of infantry and about one thousand five hundred cavalry, with eight pieces of cannon, two of which are rifled twelve-pounders.

The cavalry are ranging over the country, shooting down citizens or taking them prisoners, and taking possession of all the horses, cattle, hogs, and bedclothes. In some instances they have compelled Union men to pull off their coats and boots, that they might appropriate them. They have taken fourteen citizens of Russell County away as prisoners; they robbed the store of John A. Leveredge, at Rowenas, of all his goods, and destroyed his books and notes to the value of eighteen thousand dollars; they plundered the store of George W. Ludwil, in Jamestown, of all the clothing it contained, and also took his horse.

In Wayne, near the line of Russell County, they violated the person of a Mrs. Dean in the presence of her father-in-law, an infirm old man aged ninety, and left her nearly dead, and committed a like fiendish act upon two sisters named Harris, and treated them so barbarously that they have since died, or rather Mr. Green has heard a report of their death. In several of our border counties half of the male inhabitants are in the Union armies. Russell, with a voting population of nine hundred and fifty, has sent five companies to the field, and about seventy more men are scattered in other commands. There are no more loyal people in the State than in the counties of Russell, Cli<*>ton, Cumberland, and Monroe, the four counties having furnished at least two thousand five hundred soldiers. These men have all been withdrawn from the protection of their homes, so that rebel marauding parties are ravaging the counties without a single soldier to oppose them.