April 22, 1863, Arkansas True Democrat (Little Rock)
It has been known, for weeks, that the federals in this State, as well as others, were destroying all farming implements, seizing all provisions and preventing the planting of crops, with the avowed determination to starve the people into submission. We suppose it might be possible that this was the vindictive cruelty of some cowardly commander, who vented his spite on women and children. But it is now certain that orders to that effect have issued from Lincoln’s war department. In Phillips, Chicot, and other counties, where the federals have a foothold they have and are burning all the fences, plows and farming utensils they find. They destroy the property of widows as well as of male citizens. They are sending thousands of women and children within our lines, destroying all the provisions they find and preventing the people from planting. Out of many cases reported to us, is one of a widowed lady, at whose house a number of officers and men called and demanded their dinners. After having eaten, they told her that they had orders to seize all her provisions, destroy all the farming implements and fences and prevent her from having a crop raised. They left her a week’s supply of provisions only. In Phillips county they kill every milch cow, shoot down every hog and cut down fruit trees. In Chicot county, they have made a clean sweep.
This is not civilized warfare. It is a war upon women and children. It is a wholesale robbery and national murder. Yet so timid has been our policy that we have let these villains navigate our waters, because they protested against the barbarity of firing into boats. We have paroled jayhawkers whose hands and garments were incarnadined with the blood of murdered patriots. We have forborne until forbearance has ceased to be a virtue, until it has ceased to be manly. What will the action of the President and the military authorities, in this crisis, we cannot anticipate, but that an enemy so violating all rules of warfare and waging a barbarous and fiendish war, should be treated according to the rules of civilized war, is absurd. Surely, these men should be hung as soon as caught. They have thrown away their stars and stripes and hoisted the black flag. They are warring upon women and children, and when caught their captors would be justifiable in killing them as they would be in killing a wild beast.
As strenuously and sternly as we have resisted all attempts to make this a black flag war, the enemy seem determined to drive us to it. They are organizing insurrections in South Carolina; they have sent a negro army into Florida; they are organizing black regiments in Tennessee; they execute partisans who fire on boats, and guerrillas everywhere, and now, they declare a war for extermination, not only of men, but of women and children.
This being the acknowledged policy of the federals, it becomes a matter of life and death that we should raise everything that will sustain life in those parts of the country beyond reach of the federals; that we should be economical in the use of breadstuffs; close all distilleries and hold the distillers as public enemies, and cultivate fields and gardens to their utmost limit.
It has been demonstrated that the Confederacy cannot be whipped, and if we do our duty, we can prepare to ward off this blow, and hold those to strict accountability who seek to inflict it upon us.