Cleveland Morning Leader US
Rebel Barbarities in Arkansas and Missouri.*
A correspondent of the New York World, writing from Helena, Arkansas, under date of the 3d, thus details the atrocities of the rebels throughout that region:
LEX TALIONIS.
" All the world has heard of the impudent and bullying demand of Jeff. Davis for the surrender of Gen. McNeil of Missouri, as a special pleader for humane warfare. Were no other instances waiting, unhappily I have just come into possession of the evidence, damning and revolting the transcendently infamous barbarity with which the war has been waged on the soil of Arkansas.—Gen. Holmes may be
spared the murder of "the next ten Federal officers which may fall into his hands,” inasmuch as himself and his predecessor have offset the execution of the Missouri guerrillas by a ten-fold sacrifice. Not less than a hundred of our soldiers and loyal citizens have been murdered at Little Rock within six months.
“How many nameless victims have disappeared throughout the State, may never be reckoned up. The picture presented to us by persons who have escaped into our lines, although narrated by sober, hard working farmers, is more like the horrid phantasm of an opiate dream than the painting of actual life.
CLIMACTERIC OF BARBARITY.
“Arkansas! that home of the robber, the horse theif, the land pirate, the conspirator and assassin! That nursery of the savage and selfish in human nature! The home of the repeater and bowie knife, and tooth-pick! The market for bad whisky and bad women. Arkansas, thou haunt of the panther and tiger in human shape; to thee belongs the bold, freezing distinction of slaughtering old and young, male and female, black and white, in cold blood, for no better cause than private malice or naked robbery!
"Honest men, dreaming no evil, breathing no malice, speaking no wrong—no crime but that of loving the land of their birth and the flag of their worship, have been shot on the highways ; their houses
burned at the dead hour of night, their tender families outraged and cast adrift to the pitiless wilds of almost primeval forests. Young lads, crazed with drink and maddened by the reproaches of their older and wiser neighbors, have been killed and robbed for their superior wisdom and virtue. Along the road from Helena to Clarendon the graves of Union men and Union soldiers are thicker than mile-stones.
All this has happened in Arkansas, in the nineteenth century, and under the dominion of that preceptor of humanity, Jefferson Davis!
"Colonel Compton, who accompanied 16 other paroled prisoners from Little Rock, yesterday, under a flag of truce, relates several instances of cruelty. He never expected to return, but to be shot.
He was a cotton-buyer, and was seized while beyond our lines, some three months ago. He was shown money, gold and treasury notes in large quantities, taken from our soldiers and civilians. He is satisfied that the owners in most cases were murdered. The villians admitted as much, saying that “Dead men told no tales." No report is ever made of booty of this sort; it is shared by the gang, and there is the end.
"One case of abhorrent cruelty deserves more particular mention. A reputable gray-haired old planter from the Northern part of the State, had been sent to the filthy prison at Little Rock for his Union sentiments. On his incarceration he was charged to speak no word to any one. More than once he refused to respond to the call of the jailer, not knowing but he was being tricked. For this offense, that poor wretched man whom fiends might have pitied and devils wept over, was taken out and whipped like a common field hand, for contumacy. Can the annals of Sepoy atrocity or savage cruelty furnished any parallel to this? Is there a man whose blood does not burn at the thought?
“Well may some of these dauntless and outraged spirits, looking with frenzied eyes upon our soothing policy and heedless of law and precedent, rush out to their revenge single-handed. A dozen of these men are now beyond our lines, resolved, if die they must, to live until they have dispatched their persecutors to their eternal doom! Fighting the devil with fire, hiding behind fences, in chapparal and cane-brake, lurking like the wild tiger, rifle in hand, ready to wreak a solemn and hallowed vengeance upon the authors of their foul wrongs."
General Hindman Killed by his Own Men.
It was reported at Searcy, Arkansas, last week Wednesday, that Hindman made his men ford the Arkansas River, and when they had done so, they turned about and shot him. It is yet to be confirmed. So says a Cairo dispatch to the Chicago Tribune.

*I had to include this article as an example of the propaganda used by the North to demonize the South in order to justify the real atrocities committed by Union forces against Southern civilians and captured military personnel. The rumor about the purported assassination of General Hindman is merely amusing.