ilitia_.

In reporting this case to the Adjutant General in Washington I did not
approve it, as my investigation showed that the statements of
McReynolds's acts were true. I did not censure the officers, but issued an
order that officers should follow more closely the orders of the
Department, and ended that order as follows: "Hereafter men caught in arms
will have no mercy shown them." General John McNeill, of Missouri, took
twelve citizens out and shot them, it being claimed they were connected
with guerillas that shot a Union man. In some histories it is known as the
Palmyra massacre. It is claimed that the Union man turned up alive. If the
reports of the numbers of robbers, guerillas and outlaws who were shot on
sight in Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, and elsewhere, by both sides in
1864 and 1865, could be gathered up they would furnish retaliations and
cruelties enough for these water-cure journals for years.

Consider this matter in a broader sense. Take the order of General Grant
to General Sheridan to make the Shenandoah Valley a barren waste; it was
absolutely destroyed so the enemy could not again occupy it. I can see no
difference between an order to make the Shenandoah Valley a barren waste
and Smith's order to make Samar a "howling wilderness." Take the order I
received to go to the rear of Bragg's Army and destroy the Valley of the
Tennessee, and all the supplies gathered there for the use of his Army,
which valley was burned from Bear River to Decatur. These were orders from
principal officers in our Army, and I only quote them to show the contrast
between that time and the present. Senators in the halls of Congress find
it necessary in these days to take up the question. Senator Rawlins, of
Utah, made an attack upon our officers, and especially upon General
Chaffee, which was nothing short of disgraceful, and should not be allowed
to go without vigorous condemnation. He represents a state and people
under whose orders Lieutenant Gunnison and his party were massacred by
Mormons disguised as Indians. Some one should get up in the Senate and
call him to account for these things, and ask him, in consideration of
these facts, why he is so deeply outraged by the orders of General
Chaffee, a gallant soldier and gentleman, a humane man, and one who, in my
opinion, has done nothing in the Philippines but what was perfectly
justified, and will in time be considered to have been humane.

The two Senators from Colo