IMPORTANT LETTER ON CONFEDERATE STATIONERY
400
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(MILITARY.) PATRIOTIC CONFEDERATE LETTERHEAD. SNODGRASS,
REV. D. S.
Autograph Letter Signed to another minister.
4to, folded to form 4 pages,
small 8vo; a couple of neat, closed tears at the folds.
Vicksburg, 26 May, 1861
[1,000/1,500]
A LETTER WITH EXCEPTIONAL CONTENT WRITTEN ON RARE CONFEDERATE PATRI
-
OTIC STATIONERY
.
The writer, Reverend D. S. Snodgrass was a New Orleans Baptist minister
who moved to Texas following the War and founded a church there. “Dear Bro. Confrere: It is
Sabbath and while here every thing is quiet and hushed . . . I suppose that in Virginia, the
roar of cannons and of musketry is attesting the malice and bloodthirstiness of the unions of
infidelity—and the seekers of ‘booty & of beauty.’ Yesterday we had news of an attack on
Alexandria, and last night Harper’s Ferry.” Snodgrass complains bitterly that he has “not a
dollar, nor a dime,” that his parishioners are not giving. He says he has joined a company of
volunteers, and will be off to the War, “one of the bloodiest wars that ever malice devised, or
wickedness invented.” He goes on to say that it is their “sacred honor” to defend the institution
of slavery, that the New Testament so ordains! “The motto of the infidel horde is ‘Booty and
Beauty!’ and ‘woe worth the day’ when the hellish passions of the degraded [?] of freeloveism
at the North riot in our women’s disgrace.” In another reference to the rape of Southern
women, “I say women’s honor depends on the issue.” “Oh my brother, I have no heart for
anything but the utter defeat of the diabolical crusade of the North against our rights, our honor
and our sacred institutions.” In a recent article by Crystal N. Feimster, a University of North
Carolina historian, “hundreds, perhaps thousands of women [white and black] suffered rape [by
Union soldiers] during the war.” (Daedalus 8/21/2009) In fact, General Butler decreed that
any New Orleans woman showing contempt for his occupying troops “shall be regarded and
held liable to be treated as a woman of the town plying her avocation”—i.e., the city’s outspo-
kenly Confederate belles were to be treated as prostitutes.
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