Pam, these documents I've been posting are certainly interesting. I've been running across them, and many like them, in the course of some research I've been doing on Arkansians serving in Missouri regiments.

What everyone needs to keep in mind is that neither side's skirts are clean, especially in the Trans-Mississippi. Mistreatment of civilians, execution of prisoners and tit-for-tat retaliation occurred on both sides. It's the seamy side of the Civil War that doesn't get as much attention as the big battles back east.

For sheer, inhuman brutality, though, both the Union and Confederate deeds pale in comparison to the savagery of the Sioux attacks in Minnesota in 1862. While thumbing through Union army reports in connection with my research, I ran across report after report of white children being nailed alive to trees and buildings, women and young girls being subjected to gang rape (and subsequently mutilated by having their noses and breasts cut off), men being castrated and tortured. When the Civil War caused troops from the Northwest frontier to be drawn down and transferred to the front, the Sioux saw their opportunity to strike back at the white settlers. Another seldom-told story of the Civil War.