William Gilmore
Simms, the antebellum South’s literary luminary, wrote in 1865, “There are some
horrors which the historian dare not pursue. They drop the curtain over crime
which humanity bleeds to contemplate.”
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| William G. Simms 1806-1870 |
Convoluted
wording, indeed, but Simms wrote during the genteel Victorian era. It’s
clear Simms was writing about the rapes and sexual “outrages” he witnessed during
Union Gen. William T. Sherman’ occupation of Columbia, South Carolina’s
capital. Simms’ account was first published
serially in his hastily assembled newspaper, the Columbia Phoenix, an amazing feat considering Sherman’s troops had
burned three-fifths of the city, including its newspaper offices. (Controversy still rages about whether it was Sherman's men or others who burned much of the city.)
Simms explained
that most of the “horrors” against women had taken place away from Columbia. He
wrote that Union soldiers and Sherman’s hangers-on might have threatened white
women, but they actually targeted black women in rural areas. In the city, Simms’ on-the-ground
reporting, however, revealed what we can only call a gang rape:
The poor negroes were terribly victimized
by their brutal assailants, many of them . . . being
left in a condition little short of death. Regiments, successive relays
(emphasis by Simms), subjected scores of these poor women to the torture of
their embraces, and – but we dare not farther pursue the subject – it is one of
such loathing and horror.
…Two cases are described where young
negresses were brutally forced by the wretches and afterwards murdered – one of
them being thrust, when half dead, head down, into a mud puddle, and there held
until she was suffocated.
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| This Harper's Weekly image during the Civil War depicts women as angels of mercy. It's said no war was as much a woman's war as the American Civil War. |
Did Simms
witness an anomaly in Columbia, where Sherman’s soldiers’ pent-up anger against
the cradle of rebellion triggered especially heinous aggression, or did Civil War
soldiers commonly wield weaponized sex?
Facts are hard to come by. In the Victorian 1860s, sexual crimes against
women were kept behind a curtain of silence to protect reputations of the
delicate sex. Family males would exact punishment. Even in today’s sexually explicit society, experts
estimate that more than 60 percent of rapes go unreported.
Still, we can find a
few documented incidences of sexual crime in the Civil War. Most occurred during Sherman’s March to the Sea, when angry
white Southerners wanted to point out Union “depredations.” Here are some examples:
In North Carolina:
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A Union soldier "ravished" a black woman in Raleigh during Sherman’s occupation,
documents show.
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Pvt. James Preble of the 12th NY Cavalry was court-martialed in
Kinston for the rape of Letitia Craft near Whitehall.
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A Union soldier was tried and hanged for the rape of a 58-year-old woman in Wayne
County. Reports indicate army
“stragglers ravished” women between Kinston and Goldsboro.
In Georgia: Near Milledgeville, two Union soldiers
raped Kate Nichols, wife of a Confederate captain. Women diarists wrote that Nichols went insane and spent
the rest of her life in an asylum.
The rapists, possibly a pair among the horde of ravaging “bummers” following
Sherman’s troops, were not captured.
In New Orleans: When the Union took New Orleans in
1862, Major Gen. Benjamin Butler ordered his men to treat the taunting Southern
white women as if they were prostitutes. We might guess the results of Butler’s
order.
Fear of rape
surely chilled the hearts of white women in the South, where most Civil War
battles erupted, but the scant documentation available indicates African-American
women, usually slaves or freed slaves, suffered most.
The pages of history remain largely blank on this subject.
Today, at
least one female historian is attacking the blind eye cast toward sexual
violence during the Civil War. In the
academic journal Daedalus, Crystal N.
Feimster asserts, “hundreds, perhaps thousands of women suffered rape” during
the war. For details, go to http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674035621.
If we fail to acknowledge the sex crimes Americans commit during war, then rape and other
sexual crimes – even in our own military ranks – can continue behind the
curtain without proper scrutiny, punishment and binding of psychological
wounds.
A U.S.
Department of Defense report in 2008 stated that nearly
3,000 female soldiers were sexually harassed, assaulted or raped by their American
comrades during the War in Iraq, in some cases by their commanding officers. Americans should find this
unacceptable, especially the men who serve or have served our country
honorably.
At minimum, we
should be talking publicly and loudly about the price women pay in war, now
and in the past.
RESOURCES: Simms, William Gilmore. A City Laid
Waste, The Capture, Sack and Destruction of the City of Columbia, 1865. Barrett, John G. Sherman’s
March Through the Carolinas. UNC Press, 1956. Catton, Bruce and McPherson, James. M. American
Heritage New History of The Civil War. Barnes and Noble, 2005. Benedict, Helen. The Lonely
Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq. Beacon
Press, 2010.
