May 29, 1863, The Charleston Mercury
‘They were both killed by the first fire, and died without a struggle. Their bodies were delivered to their friends from Kentucky by order of Gen. BURNSIDE.’ Thus read the telegrams from Sandusky, Ohio, announcing the execution of T.P MCGRAW and WM. CORBIN, who were sentenced to death, we believe, for endeavoring to enlist men in Kentucky for the Southern cause. They ‘died without a struggle,’ is the consoling announcement; and Gen. BURNSIDE most graciously ordered their lifeless bodies to be ‘delivered to their friends.’ That man, at the beginning of the war, put on the air of the humane gentleman; but finding that not popular with the Yankees, he essays now a shorter road to favor and thrift in the Northern mind, by throwing off all hypocrisy and becoming the unrelieved and unmitigated brute. He sees how BUTLER has thriven in Yankee esteem – how he has firmly fixed himself on a granite base on the very rock of Plymouth, where he cannot be shaken or displaced by his crimes against justice and humanity. He has, therefore, become his imitator, and is rising in the popular scale along with him. Humiliated and disgraced by his failures on the Potomac, he finds a malicious satisfaction, as well as a facile way of lifting himself up in Yankeedom, in issuing inhuman and bloody orders against all sympathisers with the men whose valor and skill in arms drove him in disgrace from the battle field. Safely ensconsed in his headquarters, in his own country, he is doing a slashing business among those who, through the agency of his spies and informers, incur the penalties of his orders. He thus seeks a spite that is free from present peril – a quiet and safe revenge, comforting to a coward’s heart, and grateful to a coward’s feelings.
But BURNSIDE is only performing the duty assigned him by his master at Washington. Like the execrated headsman, he is the mere instrument appointed to his bloody office. There is, however, a more serious view of the sanguinary orders now being enforced through him and others by the inhuman Government at Washington. It becomes the duty of the Government of the Southern Confederacy, as far as lie in its power, to protect those enlisted in its cause, and to retaliate upon our ruthless enemy his wanton and unjustifiable cruelties. It has already been announced that measures would probably be taken to retaliate for the execution of two Kentuckians, and we believe those mentioned in this article. If the cases of those men are properly understood, there can hardly be two opinions as to the propriety of this retaliation.