Happy Friday and Happy Women’s History Month! We continue our homage to Civil War women with this provokative—and morbid—drawing from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper:
The corresponding commentary and caption read:
“The outrages upon the dead will revive the recollections of the cruelties to which savage tribes subject their prisoners. They were buried in many cases naked, with their faces downward. They were left to decay in the open air, their homes being carried off as trophies, sometimes, as the testimony proves, to be used as personal adornments, and one witness deliberately avers that the head of one of our most gallant officers was cut off by a Secessionist, to be turned into a drinking-cup on the occasion of his marriage.
“Monstrous as this revelation may appear to be, your Committee have been informed that during the last two weeks the skull of a Union soldier has been exhibited in the office of the Sergeant-at-Arms of the House of Representatives which had been converted to such a purpose, and which had been found on the person of one of the rebel prisoners taken in a recent conflict.” – Report of the Congressional Committee on the Conduct of War
The Rebel Lady’s Boudoir
Lady (reads)—“My dearest wife, I hope you have received all the little relics I have sent you from time to time. I am about to add something to your collection which I feel sure will please you—a baby rattle for our little pet, made out of the ribs of a Yankee drummer-boy,”
Source: Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, May 17, 1862.
