CONFEDERATE BIOGRAPHY: STRANGE ! STRANGE!! STRANGE!!!

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Submitted by Doris Peirce - ginlu@charter.net
1 February 2002 
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WHO WORE THE GRAY by Sid S. Johnson 
STRANGE! STRANGE!!STRANGE!!!

The National Tribune of June 13, 1907, says: "Many people will be 
shocked into incredulity by Murderer Orchard's cold blooded 
testimony as to the industry and lack of remorse with which he 
followed his horrid trade of assassination.  It seems unbelievable 
to them that any man could go about day after day coolly taking 
away human life with as little compunction as a pig sticker in the 
Chicago Stock Yards slays his victims.  History, however, tells us 
that such natures are not at all unusual.  We of this generation 
have seen a Captain Wirz, aided and abetted, specifically ordered 
by Gen. John H. Winder and Jefferson Davis, conduct a system which 
every day sent to their graves hundreds of fully as good men as 
Orchard slew, and accompanied this with cruelties incomparably 
worse than Orchard visited upon his victims.  There are men born 
so destitute of moral sense and sympathy as to feel absolutely no 
compunction about taking human life, and Orchard is one of them."
The National Tribune is related to the Grand Army of the Republic
 quite as this  Veteran to the Confederates. 

Black clots of bloody shirts seem to have become petrified, and 
cleansing is evidently hopeless.  Good men of the North differ in 
thier views.  A handsome patriot at the Richmond Reunion was asked 
where he served in the sixties, and he replied:  "I served in the 
Union army; but if it were to do over again, I would be a 
Confederate."  He so spoke referring to the principles involved 
in the war.  He believed in the stainless Jefferson Davis.  
(Confederate Veteran.)

The Confederate Veteran is a conservative magazine, representing 
Southern history and Southern ideals, with right on its side, 
therefore is magnanamous.  On the other hand The National Tribune 
is of the bloody shirt order, and deals in the very thing that a 
conservative reader would not indulge in.  Truth is truth, and 
facts of history cannot be disregarded in this day of intelligence.  
The future historian will dig up the facts and cast aside the 
rubbish as so much chaff.  The South will live in history and 
song until the end of time.