Good Guys and Bad Guys, Huh?

 I witness the barbarities inflicted on the aged widow, and young and delicate females. Officers, high in command, were engaged in tearing from the ladies their watches, their ear and wedding rings, the daguerreotypes of those they loved and cherished. A lady of delicacy and refinement, a personal friend, was compelled to strip before them, that they might find concealed watches and other valuables under her dress. A system of torture was practiced towards the unarmed and defenseless, which, as far as I know and believe was universal throughout the whole course of that invading army. Before they arrived at a plantation, they inquired the names of the most faithful and trustworthy family servants; these were immediately seized, pistols were presented at their heads; with most terrific curses, they were threaten to be shot if they did not assist them in finding buried treasures. If this did not succeed they were tied up and cruelly beaten. Several poor creatures died under the infliction. The last resort is of that of hanging, and the officers and men of the triumphant army of General Sherman were enraged in erecting gallows and hanging up these faithful and devoted servants. They were strung up until life was nearly extinct, when they were let down, suffered to rest awhile, then threaten and hung again. It is not surprising that some should have left hanging so long that they were taken down dead. Cooly and deliberately these harden men proceeded their on their way, as if they had perpetrated no crime, and as if the God of heaven would not pursue them with vengeance. But it was not alone the poor blacks (to whom they professed to come as liberators) that were thus subject to torture and death. Gentlemen of high character, pure and honorable and gray-headed unconnected with the military, were dragged from their fields or their beds, and subjected to this process of threats and beating, and hanging. Along the whole track of Sherman’s army, traces remains of the cruelty and inhumanity practiced on the aged and the defenseless. Some of those were hung up died under the rope, while their cruel murderers have not only left unreproached and unhung, but hailed as heroes and patriots. The list of those martys, whom the culpidity of the officers and men of Sherman’s army sacrificed for their gold and silver, is large and most revolting. If the editors of this paper will give their consent to publish it, I will give it in full attested by their names of the purest and best women and children of our Southland................Reverend Dr. John Bachman Charleston, South Carolina 1865