Richmond, Va.:
Geo. W. Gary, Printer and Binder.
1879.
The following remarkable statement occurs as a note to theaccount of the battle of Gettysburg, on page 78, volume III, of"The Pictorial History of the Civil War in the United States ofAmerica, by Benson J. Lossing, LL. D.":
Many, mostly young men, were maimed in every conceivableway, by every kind of weapon and missile, the most fiendish ofwhich was an explosive and a poisoned bullet, represented in theengraving a little more than half the size of the originals, procuredfrom the battlefield there by the writer. These were sent by the Confederates.Whether any were ever used by the Nationals, the writer is notinformed. One was made to explode in the body of the man, andthe other to leave a deadly poison in him, whether the bullet lodgedin or passed through him.
Figure A represents the explosive bullet. The perpendicularstem, with a piece of thin copper hollowed, and a head over it ofbullet metal, fitted a cavity in the bullet proper below it, as seenin the engraving. In the bottom of the cavity was fulminatingpowder. When the bullet struck, the momentum would cause thecopper in the outer disc to flatten, and allow the point of the stemto strike and explode the fulminating powder, when the bulletwould be rent into fragments which would lacerate the victim.
In figure B the bullet proper was hollowed, into which wasinserted another, also hollow, containing poison. The latter beingloose, would slip out and remain in the victim's body or limbswith its freight of poison if the bullet proper should pass through.Among the Confederate wounded at the College were boys of tenderage and men who had been forced into the ranks against their will.
The italics I am responsible for. It is difficult for those wholive at the South to realize how extensively such insinuating slandersas the above against the Confederates are credited at theNorth, even by reading people.
I purpose in this paper to examine the statement of the authorof this Pictorial History, and to show, by indisputable proof, itsrecklessness and its falsity. In the above quotation, he states thathe had picked up, on the battlefield of Gettysburg, an explosive anda poisoned ball. "These," he adds, "were sent by the Confederates.Whether any were ever used by the Nationals, the writer is not informed."I do not desire to be severe beyond justice; but it does seem that[4]as no one ventured to inform him to the contrary, this authoraccepted the silence of the world and deliberately put into printthis slander against the Confederates without having made anyapparent effort to learn, as he could have done with ease, whetherhis statement had any basis of truth.
It is with entire confidence in the facts presented in this paperthat I deny this author's statement, above, to be a statement of fact.