Where Lies the Truth- Part Two

TO THE PUBLIC- In the Richmond Examiner of the 20th instant, Mr. JOHN B. ANDERSON has dragged my name before the public with no conceivable motive but gratify his malevolence and vanity. Mr. Anderson was, I regret to say my partner in business. A chancery suit, entered by himself, is now pending for the settlement of the only real controversy between us. His attempt thus to bring before the public the private issues, is unmanly, and is a course which the public never fails to condemn. That he was an unfaithful and improvidant partner, bitter experience has taught me, but I have no desire to prove it through the newspapers. Having voted against the Virginia ordinance of Secession, he, in the month of of March last, left his business without any notice whatever to me, and was gone for five months. I believed and still believe that he was with the Yankees, and expressed my belief. His charges that I endeavoured to have his property confiscated because of his disloyalty, have no foundation in fact, and can only proceed from the imagination of a suspicious and guilty conscience.

PETER G. COSBY

sep28- 1t

-The Richmond Examiner, September 28, 1864

A Jaunt up the James VI- "A Flaming and Indignant Letter"

From Edward Everett Hale*

MILTON, MASS., Aug. 11, 1864

MY DEAR GENERAL BUTLER: Governor Everett sends me a flaming and indignant letter which some person unknown has addressed to him in a Richmond paper, complaining of the treatment received by the lower Brandon plantation, on James River, at the hands of our troops. The only reason Mr. Everett is addressed is that he was once or twice a visitor at the place. He says he does not suppose he can take any notice of the article; but I think he would like to make a fit answer to it. And he would be glad if you could make time enough to let him or me know if there was any special purpose which can be laid before the public to advantage of what these people call "the Raid," and how far the facts are correctly stated if you saw the article. If you can do this it will be a favor to him and to me.

Mr. Motley acknowledged with great pleasure your kindness to his son, Capt. Motley. It was his last news from him.

Pray ask Maj. Mulford the first time he goes up to see what news he can get of my friend Maj. Forbes, of our 2nd Cavalry, he is now at Lynchburg. Pray exchange him if an accidental chance appears.

In the chance that nobody sends you any books, I have ordered the fourth volume of Carlyle's Frederic the Great sent to you. In reading it, I have a dozen times been struck with things which I thought would please you; and though I know you must be familiar with those campaigns, I know you will like C s short-hand way of telling the story.

Major Stackpole telegraphed me that he wanted my testimony in Capt. King s case; and then that he should do without. I wrote him that if he would send me my report I would swear to it here if necessary.

I think of you all at head quarters constantly; and wish you all success.

Truly yours, EDW. E. HALE

-Private and official correspondence of Gen. Benjamin F. Butler: during the period of the Civil War


* The Rev. Edward Everett Hale was the nephew of Senator Everett.

When No Self Respecting City Had One Paper . . .

 The difference in reading the Richmond Daily Dispatch and the Richmond Daily Examiner . . .

Mayor's Court.

Mrs. Flutina Myers was bound over to keep the peace in the sum of $100 for assaulting and beating with a broomstick Henrietta Nockman, a girl of fourteen.

-The Daily Dispatch, April 14, 1864.

MAYOR'S COURT-

Wednesday, April 13, 1864.

. . .

Mrs. Myers, the Jewess, previously mentioned in this column, who looks as if she had been blown up in the laboratory explosion, was charged with beating a girl of fourteen, named Henrietta Nockman. The girl stated that, Mrs. Myers being in the act of beating a negro in the streeet, she was looking on, when Mrs. Myers, getting through with the negro, made a dash at her, the witness, and chased her through Mrs. Simons's house with a stick, and beat her over the head and otherwise.

Officer Granger stated that Mrs. Myers was very vicious.

Mrs. Myers was bound over to keep the peace.

-The Daily Examiner, April 14, 1864

"The excess of cavalry which Government permits to be maintained seriously affects the morale of the soldier"

  In the May 8, 1864, edition of the New York Times . . .

From the Richmond Examiner. April 30.

One of the most serious questions of the war relates to the cavalry. It is absolutely certain that if the present number of horses are indispensable, the productive power of the country will be destroyed. One cavalry man costs as much grain and as much meat, (considering forage in its equivalent of beef.) as six or ten of infantrymen. One good infantryman, after selecting about one in four from the cavalry, is worth a dozen, or a hundred, or a thousand, of the remaining horse-militia. A judicious ,selection of about one-fourth from, amongst the present vast herd of Confederate cavalry would secure all that was worth their costly support, and the rest could be reduced to foot, not only without injury, but with positive benefit to the service, even to the cavalry; service itself. One horse could be kept far and capable of any required service on what is now divided among four leap, feeble and inefficient beasts, never fit for service in any emergency. Every farmer knows that it is better to keep one good team than a half-dozen indifferent ones, and the fact is stronger with the cavalry service, for there, we see four idle consumers waiting for their skeleton brutes to get fat.

Some judicious system of reduction has become indispensable, and unless the measure is carried into effect before the next forage and grain crops are harvested, by next February we shall have absolutely no cavalry at all. Half the horses now on the meadows are so enfeebled that they must of necessity die a lingering death in the first part of the Summer, if subjected to any service; and thus they will not only have consumed the hay in the form of grass but the country win have lost half the horses employed, in the senseless policy.

The excess of cavalry which Government permits to be maintained seriously affects the morale of the soldier. They become desperate after forage for their animals in consequence of the scarcity and take, ruthlessly. whatever they can lay their hands on. The horseman, is moreover, required to furnish his own steed; and when a horse is disabled, from starvation or other cause, the rider supplies himself as best he can -- the system of "pressing" forage, very often suggesting the expedient of privately pressing a horse, when the Government can no longer save him the trouble by seizing the last beast at the days of Richmond. To such straits have things come, that a district of country often suffers less from the march through it of a brigade of Yankee, infantry than a battalion of Confederate cavalry.

Wherein W. T. Sherman expounds on "anarchy" and "real Government" . . .

                HEADQUARTERS FIFTEENTH ARMY CORPS,
                     Camp near Vicksburg, April 8, 1863.

 Major-General GRANT:
 DEAR SIR: I received last night the copy of your answer to Mr. Knox's application to return and reside near your headquarters. I thank you for the manner and substance of that reply. Many regard Knox as unworthy the notice he has received. This is true; but I send you his letter to me and my answer. Observe in his letter to me, sent long before I could have heard the result of his application to you, he makes the assertion that you had no objection, but rather wanted him back, and only as a matter of form required my assent. He regretted a difference between a portion of the army and the press. The insolence of these fellows is insupportable. I know they are encouraged, but I know human nature well enough, and that they will be the first to turn against their patrons. Mr. Lincoln, of course fears to incur the enmity of the Herald, but he must rule the Herald or the Herald will rule him; he can take his choice.
 I have been foolish and unskillful in drawing on me the shafts of the press. By opposing mob law in California, I once before drew down the press; but after the smoke cleared off and the people saw where they were drifting to, they admitted I was right. If the press be allowed to run riot, and write up and write down at their pleasure, there is an end to a constitutional government in America, and anarchy must result. Even now the real people of our country begin to fear and tremble at it, and look to our armies as the anchor of safety, of order, submission to authority, bound together by a real Government, and not by the clamor of a demoralized press and crowd of demagogues.
     As ever, your friend,
                                 W. T. SHERMAN.

-The war of the rebellion: a compilation of the official records of the Union and Confederate armies.; Series 1- Volume 17 (Part II)


For a deeper look at the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance.