25
Southern Prisoners.
thought of the Queen s proclamation and inter-
national obligations ! I told him that as he had
had voluntarily entered the Southern army
in defiance of said proclamation he must ac-
cept the consequences. Discussing the war,
I admitted the right of secession, but asserted
that the South had exercised it in such a man-
ner as absolutely to compel the North to go to
war, hence I sided with it. This didn t
please my friends at all. Furthermore I ob-
jected to some Southern peculiarities in waging
it, instancing the Yorktown torpedoes. This my
Louisianian tiger considered a d____d yankee
lie. I told him I had seen it, when he said
something about my being only a reporter, who
was never in any danger, who stayed in the
rear and wrote any d____d lies they told me,
I said that if I were captured by the enemy,
perhaps no man in the Union army would have
a worse look-out than I. Why ? you re a
civilian and non-combatant. Yes, but I
represent a paper particularly obnoxious to the
South you may have hear of it? The New
York Tribune ! It was curious to notice the
looks that were turned on me. Oh ! Greeley,
eh? They d string you up to a tree damned
quick ! said the Louisianian. I knew that,| Page |
| Title: | Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries, Volume Twenty: page thirty-three |
| Description: | Regarding continued discussion with the confederate prisoners about secession and Gunn's status as a non-combatant. |
| Date: | 1862-05-29 |
| Subject: | Battle of Yorktown (Va.); Greeley, Horace; Gunn, Thomas Butler; Irish; Journalism; New York tribune.; Prisoners of war (Confederate); Secession; Torpedoes |
| Coverage (City/State): | Yorktown, Virginia |
| Scan Date: | 2010-09-10 |
| Volume |
| Title: | Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries, Volume Twenty |
| Description: | Includes Gunn's descriptions of his experiences as a war correspondent for ""The New York Tribune"" at Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, especially Hilton Head, Port Royal, St. Augustine, Key West, and the end of his experiences with the Army of the Potomac during the Peninsular Campaign when he had to leave camp due to illness. |
| Subject: | African Americans; Boardinghouses; Bohemians; Civil War; Diseases; Gunn, Thomas Butler; Journalism; Marches (U.S. Army); Medical care (U.S. Army); Military; Military camp life; Peninsular Campaign (Va.); Travel; Women |
| Coverage (City/State): | New York, New York; Port Royal, South Carolina; Hilton Head, South Carolina; Key West, Florida; St. Augustine, Florida; Virginia |
| Note: | Thomas Butler Gunn was born February 15, 1826, in Banbury, England, and came to New York in 1849. During the Civil War he worked as a correspondent for the New York Tribune and the New York Evening Post. He returned to England in 1863, and died in Birmingham in April 1903. The collection includes twenty-one volumes of his diaries, including newspaper clippings, letters, photographs, sketches, and various other items inserted by Gunn. Diary entries date from July 7, 1849, to April 7, 1863, and include his experiences with the New York publishing and literary world, his descriptions of boarding houses, his travels throughout the United States, and his experiences traveling with the Federal army as a Civil War correspondent. |
| Publisher: | Missouri History Museum |
| Rights: | Copyright 2010 Missouri History Museum. |
| Source: | Page images, transcriptions, and metadata of the Thomas Butler Gunn diaries have been provided by the Missouri History Museum. |
