[239] steamer General Foster came to his place. The sailors entered the house, kicked his sick children, and robbed him of everything. That white officers led negro raids into Westmoreland and Richmond counties. Women were violated wherever they were caught by the negroes with the utmost impunity.
N. D. Hall, of Larkinville, Alabama, a soldier of Western Virginia, during Hunter's, Crook's and Averill's horrible desolation of Virginia, says that the rebels found a negro man and child, both dead, and a negro woman stripped naked, whose bleeding person had been outraged by Averill's men.
That Averill's men offered to give to Dr. Patton's wife, in Greenbrier county, West Virginia, fifteen negro children which they had stolen, and which she refused to take from them. To rid themselves of the burden, and the children from suffering, they were thrown into Greenbrier river.
In the valley below Staunton, Crook's men tied an old gentleman, and violated his only daughter in his presence, until she fainted.
In Bedford county he saw the corpse of one, and the other sister a raving maniac, from violation of their persons. Desolation was left in the trail of these men.
An aged and respectable minister was hanged in Middletown, Virginia, by military order, for shooting a soldier in the attempt to violate his daughter in his own house in Greenbrier county.
David Nelson, of Jackson, was shot because his son was in the Confederate army.
Another person named Peters, a mere boy, was shot for having a pistol hidden.
Garland A. Snead, of Augusta, Georgia, said he was taken prisoner at Fisher's Hill, Virginia, September, 1864; sent to Point Lookout, which was in the care of one Brady, who had been an officer of negro cavalry.
He was starved for five days, had chronic diarrhea; was forced to use bad water, the good water being refused them. Men died frequently of sheer neglect. He was sent off to make room for other prisoners, because he was believed to be in a dying condition; as it was manifestly the purpose to poison all that could be destroyed by deleterious food and water, or by neglect of their wants.
He said that negroes fired into their beds at night; and one was promoted for killing a prisoner, from the ranks to sergeant.
Claiborne Snead, of Augusta, Georgia, writes from Johnson's Island, that prisoners were frequently shot without an excuse; that prisoners having the small-pox were brought to Johnson's island on purpose to inoculate the rest of the prisoners, and that many died of that disease; a crime for which civilized government visits the most terrible penalties. Yet this disease, thus planted, was kept there until it had spent its force.
That the rations were bad, and prisoners went to bed suffering the pangs of hunger.
