Fulton County IN Archives News.....INDIANA COPPERHEADS DIGGING UP THE CORPSE OF A UNION SOLDIER April 2, 1863
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Tina Vickery http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00025.html#0005998 February 11, 2018, 11:06 pm

THE BERKSHIRE COUNTY EAGLE, (Pittsfield, Massachusetts), Thursday, April 2, 1863, P. 1 April 2, 1863
"INDIANA COPPERHEADS DIGGING UP THE CORPSE OF A UNION SOLDIER. -- Mr. 
Hamlett, a soldier in one of the Indiana regiments, died in hospital No. 4, 
in this place, some two weeks ago, and his body was carried home by his son 
to Rochester, Fulton county, Indiana, where his remains were interred. A few 
days afterwards a Union meeting was held in that vicinity and several 
copperheads left the meeting hurrahing for Jeff Davis, and after collecting 
about a hundred other vagabonds of the Butternut stripe, twenty-five of whom 
were armed, repaired to the soldier's grave, dug up the coffin, and chopped 
it open with axes. The reason for this horrid deed was, as these jackalls in 
human form alleged, that the coffin contained a lot of Governor Morton's 
fire-arms. The brutes, however found nothing in the coffin save the remains 
of a soldier who had sacrificed his life for his country. Before the work of 
exhuming the corpse was begun, the body-snatchers placed a guard around the 
grave. One of the men, growing ashamed of the brutal work, refused to 
participate in it, but the captain of the gang, Orange Meredith, presented a 
pistol to his breast and threatened to kill him if he withdrew. The corpse 
was reinterred by the soldier's widow, who placed a notice over the grave, 
begging that the body of her husband might be allowed to rest in peace. We 
gather these statements from a letter written by to widow to her son, who is 
a nurse in hospital No. 4 in this city. ---- Nashville Union.

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