Found Object - Yankee Wretches

This week marks the 140th anniversary of Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston’s surrender to Union Gen. William T. Sherman (left) - and the end of Georgia’s role in the Civil War. To honor the anniversary, we’ve dug up writings by soldiers and citizens in the war’s final years.

“The more the Yankees triumph, the worse I hate them, wretches! I would rather be wrong with men like [Gen. Robert E.] Lee than right with a lot of miserable oppressors like [Secretary of War Edwin M.] Stanton and [Pennsylvania Congressman] Thad Stevens.” - Eliza Francis Andrews’ April 28, 1865, diary entry, published in The War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl, 1864-1865.”We had the pleasure of seeing ourselves described in the Atlanta newspapers as ‘the most objectionable, the filthiest and the most God-forsaken prisoners’ they had ever seen.” - Union Lt. Col. Ole C. Johnson, in a letter to his brother describing his 1863 transfer from an Atlanta war prisoners’ camp .”I will have to admit that the women of the South are beautiful and appealing. Whole flocks of them go among the Rebel troops in spite of the heaviest firing when every minute they are in danger of their lives.” - Union 1st Sgt. Martin J. Norde, describing a recon mission to the Chattahoochee River in an Aug. 12, 1864, diary entry.*

*Posted on www.15thwisconsin.net/15story6.htm.