BENJAMIN F. WADE AND THE ATROCITY PROPA-
GANDA OF THE CIVIL WAR
By HARRY WILLIAMS
The atrocity propaganda issued in the
North during the
Civil War flowered in bewildering
abundance from a variety of
persons and agencies. Heads
of governmental departments,
semi-official bodies, editors, members
of Congress, and private
individuals devoted their efforts to the
dissemination of tales of
cruelties and barbarisms practiced by
the Confederate Govern-
ment and its soldiery.1 Although these
multitudinous produc-
tions were often amateurish and
unrelated, the greater number
took their information and inspiration
from a common source,
the reports of the Congressional
Committee on the Conduct of
the War.
The Committee, a joint body of both
houses, had been
established at the insistence of the
Radical Republican faction
in December, 1861. The Radical
chieftains, disturbed by the
inaction of the armies, Abraham
Lincoln's failure to adopt a
vigorous anti-slavery policy, and the
prevalence of Democratic
generals in important posts, secured the
creation of an investiga-
tive committee endowed with broad powers
to inquire into all
phases of "the conduct of the
war." The Committee, function-
ing for the duration of the war,
furnished Congress with infor-
mation concerning military movements and
the administration of
the army, strove to replace conservative
generals with officers de-
voted to the tenets of radicalism, and
pressed the Radical policy
1 Stories of southern atrocities found
ready and eager acceptance in the North.
Thirty years of sectional controversy
had fixed in the popular mind a stereotype of
the slaveholding southerner: cruel,
treacherous, animated by savage feelings of hatred
toward the people of the North. At the
outbreak of war, editors and clergymen warned
that the South would wage a struggle
characterized by barbarism and savagery. Rev.
W. H. Furness, A Discourse Delivered
on the Occasion of the National Fast (Phila-
delphia, 1861), 12, 13; New York Tribune,
September 30, 1861, excerpts from sermons
of fifteen New York and Boston
ministers; New York Tribune, December 14, editor-
ial; New York Times, May 1, Grant
Goodrich to Lyman Trumbull, July 29, Lyman
Trumbull MSS. (in Library of Congress).
For an account of some of the agencies
engaged in propaganda work, see W. B.
Hesseltine, "The Propaganda Literature of
Confederate Prisons," in The
Journal of Southern History, I, (1935), 57-67.
(33)
34
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
of emancipation in Congress and upon
Lincoln.2 Among these
important activities the members found
time to essay several
adventures into the field of atrocity
propaganda. The commit-
tee's facilities for investigation and
the authoritative nature of
its reports made it the leader of all
the instrumentalities engaged
in arousing a mass-hatred of the enemy.
The dominating figure
of the committee, which included such
well-known leaders and
Radicals as Senator Zachariah Chandler
and Representatives
George W. Julian and John Covode, was
the chairman, Senator
Benjamin F. Wade of Ohio. A bitter
critic of slavery and the
southern social system from the day of
his arrival in the Senate
in 1851, Wade saw in the outbreak of war
the long-awaited
opportunity to destroy both, and he
proposed to use the Com-
mittee as the engine of destruction.3
He was the most active and
energetic member, taking the lead in the
work of investigation,
the writing of reports, and the
sometimes stormy conferences
with Lincoln and the Cabinet. The
production of atrocity propa-
ganda became his special interest, and
he was responsible for the
vivid documents depicting Confederate
savagery that aroused and
even horrified northern opinion.
Early in the Committee's career, Wade
found adequate and
pressing reasons for exploiting real or
alleged Confederate
atrocities. Probing the causes of Union
defeats at Manassas and
Ball's Bluff in 1861, the chairman and
his colleagues learned from
Generals Irvin McDowell and C. M. Meigs
that the superior
dash and courage of the Confederates had
given them the victory.
The officers asserted that this
desirable quality was the result
of a hatred for the North which
motivated the southern soldiers.
The numerous questions that Wade shot at
the officers indicated
that he grasped the military importance
of inculcating similar
sentiments into the northern masses and
volunteer armies.4 Wade's
2 For the creation of the Committee, see
Congressional Globe, 37 Cong., 2 Sess.,
pt. 1, p. 16-7, 29-32, 110; Life of
Zachariah Chandler (Detroit, 1880), 216-7; George W.
Julian, Political Recollections (Chicago,
1884), 201. The records of the Committee exist
in eight volumes, three published in
1863, three in 1865, and two in 1866, as Committee
on the Conduct of the War, Reports (Washington), hereafter cited
as C. C. W.,
Reports.
3 Benjamin F. Wade Traitors and Their
Sympathizers (Washington, 1863), 2, 5;
Cong. Globe, 38 Cong., 2 Sess., pt. 1, p. 161.
4 C. C. W., Reports, 1863, I, 139, 155. McDowell
testified on December 26, 1861,
and Meigs the next day.
BENJAMIN F. WADE: WILLIAMS 35
intimate on the Committee, Julian of
Indiana, came to the same
conclusion when General Ambrose Everett
Burnside told him
that the Federal disaster at
Fredericksburg was due to a lack of
fighting spirit among the soldiers, who
did not "adequately hate"
their enemy.5 If this motive
was purely military, the dominant
spirits of the Committee possessed
others wholly political. The
Radical press continually used reports
of Confederate inhumani-
ties to southern unionists as the basis
of demands for emancipation
and the employment of negro soldiers.
Wade and his followers
recognized the political value of this
potent appeal; they also
knew that the officers and soldiers must
be taught to hate slavery
if the Radical policies of confiscation
of "rebel" property were
to be effective.6
Equipped with an adequate appreciation
of the military and
political advantages to be secured by
the dissemination of atrocity
propaganda, Wade's committee soon found
an opportunity to
display its talents. In July, 1861, immediately after the
battle
of Manassas, sensational stories of
Confederate mutilation of the
Union dead and of inhumanities inflicted
upon northern prisoners
emblazoned the press. The
"Rebels," it was asserted, had used
the bodies found upon the field for
purposes of sport and amuse-
ment; they had tortured the wounded unto
death.7 Indignant
citizens read of insidious attempts to
poison Union soldiers, of the
wrecking of passenger trains in the
border states, of unspeakable
outrages committed upon southern
unionists, and of the inhuman
treatment meted out in Richmond prisons.
Soon a new and
startling charge was added to this
growing list of southern
barbarisms. It was announced that the Confederate Govern-
ment had enlisted large bodies of the
southwestern Indians in its
armies and that the horrors of Indian
warfare would soon be
known in the border states.8
5 George W. Julian, Select Speeches (Cincinnati,
1867), 33; Julian, Recollections,
225. Julian believed it a military
necessity that the people and the armies should
hate the "Rebels."
6 Frank Leslie's Newspaper, August 24, 1851; New York Tribune, September
16; ibid., May 30, 1862, army
correspondence, p. 1.
7 New York Times, July 25, 1861; Harper's
Weekly, August 17, contains a sketch
of the scenes that supposedly ensued
after the battle.
8 New York Tribune, September 2,
letter of a soldier; September 1, 2, 6, 19,
October 31, December 14; New York Times,
August 18, September 30; Harper's Weekly,
November 2; Washington National
Intelligencer, August 28, September 2, 5, 16; Leslie's
Newspaper, August 24, September 14.
36
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL
QUARTERLY
The persistent continuation of these
rumors and charges
prompted Charles Sumner to present a
resolution in the Senate
on April 1, 1862, instructing the
Committee to collect evidence
regarding "the barbarous treatment
of the Rebels at Manassas
of the remains of officers and soldiers
of the United States," and
the employment of "Indian
savages" by the Confederacy.
In
offering his resolution Sumner declared
that the North was in
conflict with a people lower in the
scale of civilization than
themselves, and he wanted a record of
southern barbarism for
the use of future historians.9
As early as February, the Committee had
examined witnesses
on their knowledge of the Manassas cruelties,
and on the day
following the passage of Sumner's
resolution the inquisitors were
busily at work. Two Union surgeons
captured at Manassas,
people who had visited the field after
the battle to claim the bodies
of relatives and friends, and returned
prisoners from Richmond
thronged the Committee rooms to offer
their testimony. Wade
took charge of the questioning of these
witnesses, and his queries
indicated that he had prepared himself
for the investigation by a
thorough study of the press accounts of
the scenes following the
battle. The surgeons testified that the
Confederate authorities
had inflicted needless brutalities upon
the Union wounded, re-
fusing them food, water, shelter, and
proper medical attention.
Only young and inexperienced surgeons
were permitted to per-
form operations upon them, and they,
Wade charged in the Com-
mittee's report, "seemed to delight
in hacking and butchering"
the patients.10 Men lately
returned from the prisons of Richmond
assured Wade that the officials deprived
the inmates of proper
shelter, medical treatment, and food,
and permitted the guards
to torture them.11 These revelations
profoundly impressed the
Committee, but they found even more
telling indictments of the
Confederacy in the testimony relating to
the alleged desecration
9 C. C. W., Reports, 1863, III,
449; Harper's Weekly, April 19, 1862. Sumner
was fully aware of the military and
political necessity of arousing a hatred of slavery.
See Richard Henry Dana to Charles
Francis Adams, November 25, 1861, in C. F.
Adams, Richard Henry Dana (Boston,
1890), II, 259.
10 C. C. W., Reports, 1863, III,
450-1, 468-74.
11 Ibid., 449-50, 451, 452,
461-5, 485-7, 487-90. Some of this testimony was hearsay,
and most of it reflected more upon the
poor administration of the southern prisons
than upon the character of the officials.
BENJAMIN F. WADE: WILLIAMS 37
of the Union dead. Witnesses who had
gone over the field after
the battle and talked to Negroes and
whites in the neighborhood
furnished sensational material on this
point. The Committee
learned that for two weeks after the
engagement the bodies of
northern soldiers had lain naked and
unburied upon the ground.
Several witnesses stated that they found
remains with the head
or other portions removed. Others had heard that the Con-
federates boiled the dead bodies to
obtain bones as relics, used
Yankee shinbones as drumsticks,
collected skulls to serve as
drinking cups, and carved rings and
other ornaments from thigh
bones.12
Wade wrote a report of the Committee's
investigation in the
latter part of April, although he
continued to collect evidence for
several months. Written in the vigorous
style affected by the
chairman, the report was a powerful,
moving document. Wade
reviewed the testimony of the surgeons
and the returned prisoners,
and presented his own conclusions. His
most eloquent para-
graphs were reserved for "the
treatment of our heroic dead,"
where the "fiendish spirit of the
rebels was most prominently
exhibited." He appealed to the
public sentiment of the North
and of Europe to outlaw the author of
these outrages:
They have now crowned the rebellion by
the perpetration of deeds
scarcely known even to savage
warfare.... Our fellow countrymen, here-
tofore sufficienty impressed by the
generosity of the government of the Unit-
ed States, and by the barbarous
character of the crusade against it, will
be shocked by the statements of these
unimpeached and unimpeachable wit-
nesses, and foreign nations must, with
one accord, consign to lasting odium
the authors of crimes, which in all
their details, exceed the worst excesses
of the Sepoys of India. ... It was reserved for your
Committee to dis-
close as a concerted system their insults to the
wounded, and their mutila-
tion and desecration of the gallant
dead.13
No report was submitted on the
employment of Indians by
the Confederacy; Wade stated that time
had not permitted them
to conduct an investigation of this
subject in the West. How-
ever, a number of documents submitted by
western officers were
included in the testimony. These charged
that Indians fought
12 Ibid., 451, 453-4, 458-60,
460-1, 473-4, 474-7.
13 Ibid., 453,
455-7.
38 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND
HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
in the battle of Pea Ridge, and that
Union survivors and bodies
had been mutilated and scalped.14
Wade released the report on "Rebel
barbarities" to the press
in May, although he held back all other
publications of the Com-
mittee's researches until the following
year.15 The Manassas
document became the immediate theme of
northern propagandists.
An influential New York weekly called it
"one of the most
melancholy documents in history,"
an accurate description of the
acts of men barbarized by slavery.16
For months the Repub-
lican press used the report as the
source of their propaganda
stories, and sketches based upon its
vivid paragraphs appeared
in the illustrated weeklies.17
Pamphleteers composed sensational
summaries,18 and Republican
members of Congress utilized the
material for speeches in legislative
halls and on the stump.19
The next atrocity adventure of Wade and
his colleagues was
a double-edged attempt to maintain a war
psychosis and to at-
tack the President for his refusal to
order a system of retaliation
inflicted upon Confederate prisoners.
Reports of conditions in
southern prisons reaching the North
convinced many people that
the Confederate officials were
deliberately following a policy
designed to destroy the prisoners, and
demands arose that the
Government retaliate in kind. Wade and Chandler constantly
urged Lincoln to make a declaration that
reprisals would be re-
sorted to, unless the Confederacy
improved the conditions of its
prisons.20 The Radical
leaders also resented the failure of the
administration to adopt measures of
retaliation designed to force
the Confederacy to treat the negro
soldiers of the North as
equals and entitled to the protection of
the laws of war.21
14 Ibid., 490-1; Harper's
Weekly, February 7, 1863.
15 The main body and the conclusions appeared in the New York Tribune, May
1, 1862.
16 Harper's Weekly, May 17, 1862.
17 Ibid., June 14, 1862, October 18, 1862, February 7, 1863; Leslie's
Newspaper,
April 4, 1863.
18 J. R.
Bartlett, Barbarities of the Rebels (Providence, 1863); The Rebel
Pirate's
Fatal Prize (Philadelphia, 1862).
19 Julian, Speeches, 71. During
the campaign of 1863, Julian, using the Com-
mittee's report, tried to arouse among
the masses a feeling of hatred toward the
enemy. See Julian, Recollections, 235.
20 New York Times, December 5,
1863, March 5, 12, 31, 1864; Harper's Weekly,
December 5, 1863; New York Tribune, March
5, 1864; W. B. Hesseltine, Civil War
Prisons (Columbus, 1930), 191-7; Adam Gurowski, Diary . . .
863-'64-'65 (Washington,
1866), 191.
21 New York Independent, June
4, 1863; Hesseltine, Civil War Prisons, 112, 187;
John G. Nicolay, A Short Life of
Abraham Lincoln (New York, 1902), 352.
BENJAMIN F. WADE: WILLIAMS 39
In April, 1864, a wave of hysteria
gripped the North at the
reported massacre of a negro garrison
and its white officers in
Ft. Pillow, Tennessee, by Bedford Forrest and his cavalry.22
Lurid accounts of the bloody work of
Forrest's troops appeared
on the front pages of the press.23 Demands for reprisals upon
Confederate prisoners mingled with
Radical denunciation of Lin-
coln for his failure to force the Davis
government to recognize
the negro soldiers as equals.24 The
harassed President, in a speech
at Baltimore, promised a system of
retaliation if the Ft. Pillow
rumors were substantiated by some
official body.25
Spurred by this promise, the Radical
leaders passed a Senate
resolution directing the Committee to
investigate the facts of
the Ft. Pillow slaughter.26 That agency accepted the
responsibility
and designated Wade and Daniel W. Gooch
as a sub-committee
to proceed to the West and collect
evidence on the spot. The
two members departed on their mission
armed with Secretary of
War Stanton's orders directing the
military authorities to furnish
them full cooperation.27 At
Cairo, Mound City, Ft. Pillow, Colum-
bus, Kentucky, and Memphis, they
examined seventy-eight wit-
nesses. This list included hospital
surgeons who had cared for
the survivors, twenty-one colored and
twenty white soldiers of
the garrison, general officers, and
people who visited the fort after
the engagement.28
Their evidence gathered, Wade and Gooch
returned to Wash-
ington. While the members were
considering the testimony, Wade
placed before them a letter from
Stanton, suggesting that they go
to Annapolis and examine there a group
of recently returned
Union prisoners. The secretary was sure
the Committee would
22 The
battle occurred on April 12. Eric Sheppard, Bedford Forrest (London,
1930), 168-72; J. A. Wyeth, General
Nathan Bedford Forrest (New York, 1899), 344-62.
23 Leslie's Newspaper, May 7,
1864; New York Independent, April 21; Harper's
Weekly, April 30.
24 New
York Independent, April 28, May 5; Leslie's Newspaper, May 7; Harper's
Weekly, April 30; S. A. Ballou, letter of April 25, Edwin M.
Stanton MSS. (in Li-
brary of Congress); J. A. Sharpless to
Joseph Holt, April 24, Joseph Holt MSS. (in
Library of Congress).
25 John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Complete
Works of Abraham Lincoln (New
York, 1905), X, 49.
26 C. C. W., Reports, 1865, I, p.
xxv; Senate Reports, 38 Cong., 1 Sess., no. 63,
p. 1, "Ft. Pillow Report." The
resolution was passed on April 16.
27 Stanton's
three orders of April 18, Letterbook of Edwin M. Stanton, III, pt.
2, MS. (in Library of Congress); Julian,
Recollections, 238. They left Washington
on April 19.
28 For examples of the testimony of
these witnesses, see Senate Reports, 38
Cong., 1 Sess., no. 63, p. 13-4, 30, 31,
40, 44.
40
OHIO ARCHEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
find evidence of a "deliberate
system of savage and barbarous
treatment and starvation,"
practiced upon northern inmates of
Confederate prisons, and that a full
revelation of the facts would
"fill with horror the civilized
world."29 On the next day, May 5,
Wade submitted a report on Ft. Pillow
which was accepted imme-
diately. Then the Committee left for
Annapolis to take the tes-
timony of the prisoners.30 Julian
later said that the condition of
those prisoners drew tears from the Committee's chairman.31 A
report of the evidence collected at
Annapolis was combined with
the Ft. Pillow report and printed on May 9 as one document.32
These reports, the most expert
propaganda productions of
the war, were written by Wade. The Ft.
Pillow narrative con-
tained a vivid description of the events
enacted after Forrest's
troopers swarmed into the fort and
dispersed the frightened
negro garrison. The excesses committed,
declared Wade, were not
the results of momentary passions but of
a deliberate policy to
discourage the use of negro soldiers by
the North.
The rebels commenced an indiscriminate
slaughter, sparing neither age
nor sex, white or black, soldier or
civilian. . . . Men, women ,and even
children were deliberately shot down,
beaten, and hacked with sabres; some
of the children not more than ten years
old were forced to stand up and face
their murderers while being shot; the
sick and wounded were butchered
without mercy, the rebels even entering
the hospital and dragging them out
to be shot, or killing them as they lay
there unable to offer the least resis-
tance.33
Not content with slaughtering the
garrison, Wade continued,
the attackers also indulged in the
torture of burning soldiers alive.
Many of the wounded perished in the huts
and tents which For-
rest's men fired; others were nailed to
the floors or walls which
29 Stanton to Benjamin F. Wade, May 4,
1864, Stanton Letterbook, III, pt. 2;
C. C. W., Reports, 1865, I, p.
xxv; House Reports, 38 Cong., 1 Sess., no. 67, p. 1,
"Returned Prisoners Report."
This document is also to be found in Senate Reports,
38 Cong., 1 Sess., no. 68.
30 C. C. W., Reports,
1865, I, p. xxv.
31 Julian, Recollections, 238-9.
32 C. C. W., Reports, 1865, I, p.
xxv; Cong. Globe, 38 Cong., 1 Sess., pt. 3,
p. 2171.
33 Senate Reports, 38 Cong., 1 Sess., no. 63, p. 4. The testimony
on the scenes
enacted in the fort was contradictory.
Captain Marshall, commanding a Union gun-
boat, said that he removed all the women,
children, and sick Negroes to an island
before the battle started. Ibid., 86.
That a great deal of needless slaughter did take
place is shown by the testimony on p.
13--4, 44, 51, 94. There can be no doubt that
Forrest and his men were greatly incensed by the use of
negro troops and determined
to make an example of the garrison.
BENJAMIN F. WADE: WILLIAMS 41
were then set ablaze.34 "The
testimony also establishes the fact
that the rebels buried some of the
living with the dead, a few of
whom succeeded in digging themselves
out, or were dug out by
others, one of whom your committee found
in Mound City hos-
pital and there examined."35
Accompanying the Ft. Pillow document was
the shorter but
equally effective report on the
Annapolis prisoners.36 Embellished
with pictures of eight wasted victims
from the Richmond prisons,37
this narrative detailed the sufferings,
privations, and persecutions
of the survivors. Wade charged the
Confederacy with deliberately
following a policy designed "to
reduce our soldiers in their
power ... to such a condition
that those who may survive shall
never recover so as to be able to render
any effective service in
the field."38
The Ft. Pillow and Annapolis reports
produced a greater
impact upon the public and secured a
more sensational reception
than any other single propaganda
production of the period. Backed
by the great authority of the Committee,
the reports attained
tremendous circulation. The Republican
press gave them promi-
nent front-page notices, and editorially
denounced the Confed-
eracy as the author of these outrages
and Lincoln for permitting
the criminals to go unpunished.39 Twenty
thousand extra copies
were printed for the use of the
Senate.40 Pamphlet versions
flooded the country.41 One northern citizen, after
reading the re-
34 Ibid., 5. The witnesses who testified on this point were on
the field the day
after the battle. Ibid., 27, 30,
31, 94. One witness, John Penwell, said that the Con-
federate officers tried to remove men
from the burning tents. Ibid., 82-3.
35 Ibid., 5. Daniel Taylor, the witness in question, testified
that he feigned
death in order to escape attack. He
allowed himself to be partially buried, but an
officer noticed that he was alive and
had him removed. Ibid., 18-9.
36 House Reports, 38 Cong., 1 Sess., no. 67.
37 The use of pictures was a striking
innovation in Civil War propaganda of
an official nature. Senator Zachariah
Chandler said that language was inadequate to
describe the prisoners, that only
pictures could make the people realize "the barbarities
that had been perpetrated upon
them." Cong. Globe, 38
Cong., 2 Sess., pt. 1, p. 496.
Julian spoke of the reports and their
pictures as "a special installment of our pro-
ceedings, for popular use." See his
Recollections, 238-9.
38 House Reports, 38 Cong., 1 Sess., no. 67, p. 3. The testimony, as in
the earlier
Manassas report, revealed more of the
administrative faults of the southern prisons
and the scarcity of supplies than it did
of any concerted, deliberate system of destruc-
tion. The Committee members were
apparently profoundly shocked by the condition
of the prisoners. In a sense Wade and
Chandler were victims of the war psychosis
they had helped to create.
39 New York Tribune, May 6, May
10, 1864; New York Herald, May 8; New
York Times, May 8; Chicago Tribune,
May 10; Harper's Weekly, May 21. The Demo-
cratic press, for the most part, did not
print the reports.
40 Cong. Globe, 38 Cong., 1
Sess., pt. 3, p. 2171.
41 Rebel Barbarities; Official
Accounts of the Cruelties Inflicted upon Union Pris-
oners and Refugees at Ft. Pillow,
Libby Prison, etc. (New York, 1864);
Frank
Moore, ed., The Rebellion Record (New
York, 1864-68), VIII, 80-98.
42
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
ports, recorded in his dairy: "It
is horrible, atrocious. History
records no instances of such deliberate
ferocity. . . . Let Lincoln
send a copy of this book to every home.
It is better than the
draft or his greenbacks."42
The reports, however, failed to force
Lincoln to adopt mea-
sures of reprisal. Stanton suggested a
six-point program, and
the Committee pressed its merits, but
the President refused to
come to a decision.43 Wade, convinced that he would never
do
so, finally offered a resolution in the
Senate in January, 1865, mak-
ing it mandatory upon the President to
invoke retaliatory measures
upon Confederate prisoners. The Ohio
Senator championed his
measure vigorously, defending it against
the attacks of Democrats
and Republicans in the persons of Sumner
and Henry Wilson.
His speeches bristled with criticisms of
Lincoln and denuncia-
tions of southern prison officials. He reviewed the evidence
gathered at Annapolis and even took
additional testimony during
the course of the debate. "I would
rather stand upon the pages
of history as the man who stood forth to
vindicate our own glori-
ous soldiery . . . ," he
declared, "than to stand there as the man
who shrank from his duty because it was
a disagreeable one ....
I would starve the whole rebellion
unless it becomes effectual
so that they release our men from this
jeopardy." Despite Wade's
leadership and the valiant aid of his
colleague of the Committee,
Chandler, the resolution was so
emasculated by amendments at
its final passage that the author
abandoned the fight.44
Wade, however, could feel well satisfied
that the Committee's
propaganda labors had accomplished the
desired results. Julian
believed that the atrocity reports were
largely responsible for the
sustained drive that brought final
victory to the Union.45 Their
influence was also apparent in the
political field. Using the ma-
42 William
E. Doster, Diary, July 4, in Doster, Lincoln and Episodes of the
Civil War (New York, 1915), 243. For another example of popular
reaction, see the
minutes of the Congregational Association of Michigan
for 1864, The Congregational
Churches of Michigan for the First
Fifty Years (Printed by order of the
Associa-
tion, 1892), 187; Julian, Recollections, 239.
43 Stanton to Lincoln, May 5, Stanton
Letterbook, III, pt. 2; F. A. Flower,
Edwin McMasters Stanton (Akron, 1905), 235-6; Edward Bates, Diary . . .
1859-1866;
ed. by H. K. Beale (Washington, 1933),
365.
44 Cong. Globe, 38 Cong., 2 Sess., pt. 1, p. 267-9, 363-5, 381-91, 410,
426-35, 452-61,
491-500, 515-22, for the debates;
Chandler to Mrs. Chandler, January 16, 1865, Zachariah
Chandler MSS. (in Library of Congress);
New York Independent, February 2, 1865,
Washington correspondence.
45 Julian, Speeches,
33.
BENJAMIN F. WADE: WILLIAMS 43
terial in the reports, especially that
relating to prison conditions,
the Radical press urged that the
perpetrators of such barbarisms
must not be permitted to come back into
the Union as equals.46
The assassination of Lincoln intensified
this appeal. The men who
murdered helpless Negroes and tortured
prisoners had now
climaxed their villainies by killing the
best of Presidents! They
should be excluded from the Union.47
Wade himself, in the Committee's final
report, attempted to
sustain the passions which his reports
had aroused. He adjured
the people, while they welcomed the
returning soldiers, to remem-
ber those who would not come home, those
unfortunate victims
of "that savage and infernal spirit
which actuated those who
spared not the prisoners at their mercy,
who sought by midnight
arson to destroy hundreds of women and
children, and who
hesitated not to resort to means and to
commit acts so horrible that
the nations of the earth must stand
aghast as they are told what
has been done."48 To save the Union, Wade had assisted
in the
creation of a war psychosis. Now he
proposed to use that
psychosis as an aid in reconstructing
the Union according to the
dictates of his political creed.
46 New York Independent, April
13, 1865; Leslie's Newspaper, April 15.
47 New York Independent, April
27, May 11, 1865; Leslie's Newspaper, April 29,
May 6, May 20.
48 C. C. W., Reports, 1865, I, p.
iii-iv.