 Elsie Duncan's father, who served as a drill master for the local militia when the war broke out, owned about 1,500 acres of land at Pittsburgh Landing, including Duncan Field, which is a tour stop if you ever visit the battle site. Duncan Field's part of the Hornets Nest. When the war broke out, Elsie's father went to a cave he knew of in the woods that sat under a bluff near an orchard. Maybe the famous peach orchard that sat on the other side of the Hornets Nest from Duncan Field, but I don't know, and I couldn't find anything to confirm if this cave has been identified today. But her description makes me think of a Cold War-era bomb shelter. Elsie wrote, It was about the size of a large room. Father laid logs across the top and planks and made a floor and covered it with logs and covered them with brush. Then he made a trap and ladder to go down. That is where we kept things hidden. That cave proved to be a blessing in many ways. End quote. Elsie Duncan's father served as an army chaplain for the Confederacy throughout the war. Because he was a chaplain, he was able to ask for leave to visit his family from time to time. After Grant's army moved on from Pittsburgh Landing, Union raiders, detached regiments I assume, continued to rule the area for the rest of the war. When Elsie's father was home, they'd look for him. She tells of one such incident, quote, One night father came home and he brought some much needed things. He said that things were getting so much better that he was going to stay a few days. He had good news from the boys on the front. He had to stay in the house. We had to keep watch. He called us his little sentinels. At night Margie, the family slave, would watch us until bedtime, but our peaceful days did not last long. One night someone knocked on the door. Father slipped out the back door and made for the cave. Mother did not open the door right away until she saw that they were going to break it down. She told Margie to open it and get behind it. Two men came in and the rest stayed outside. They tried to make mother tell where father went, but she would not. They said that they knew that he was in the house. One told them to search the house and they did, but found no one in it. Then he told mother if she did not tell them, they would hang her. Then Margie stepped out from behind the door. The other man said, don't do that. We will hang the Negro until she tells us. Then they went out to get a rope. And when they came back, the Negro was gone. They hunted everywhere but did not find her. Then the same man said that they would hang mother. The other man said, no don't do that, for she would die before she would tell them. End quote. This wouldn't be the only time that Elsie's father hiding from roaming bands of Union soldiers would take shelter in his secret cave. Every time he returned home to visit his family, usually bringing with him much needed supplies of food during times when Southern civilians were literally starving, he had to be wary of Union raiders looking out for him. He taught his family a password, peace be still. And when he came home at night, he would knock on the door and utter these words so his family knew it was safe to open it. If he knocked and gave the password three times without answer, he would know to take shelter in his cave. The aftermath of Shiloh, for the civilians living there, would last the rest of the war. Elsie Duncan remembered fondly the kind soldiers she encountered from Grant's army who affectionately nicknamed her Little Rebel. Although they were our enemy, she later wrote, they would not harm anyone outside of warfare. Although they were our enemy, they were no less American gentlemen, end quote. But once they left, the bands of soldiers left behind made life perpetually difficult for civilians like Elsie and her family, quote. When the Yankees marched away, we were left entirely without any protection. We were left to the merciless raiders whose aim was to still and destroy everything in their path. A lot of soldiers came over to our house thinking that father was home. The officer in command was very brutal. In his manner, he tried, at the point of a gun, to make mother tell where father was. And if she did not, he would shoot her. I was praying to God to help her, and he did. There was a young man lying on the bed playing with the baby. He jumped up and jerked the gun out of that brute hand and threw him out the door. Then he looked back and said, I may die for this, but I too have a mother at home. I hope that nothing happened to that brave boy. There were so many bands of men going around dressed in blue uniform. These men were disgraced to the Union army down below Pittsburgh and Crump's Landing. There was a bend in the river called Hoker's Bend there. A nest of men who were a disgrace to the uniform were there. Under their coats of blue, they committed crime, stealing, robbing, etc. They did not stop at murder when it suited their purpose. They went around in small bands led by a captain. They were a tear to the people that they left in the wake of the regular Union army. These small bands were called raiders. They were traitors to their country. We were under Tory rule." It is interesting to see how Elsie Duncan, who never stopped defending the Confederacy even as an adult, wrote about the Union soldiers she encountered while Grant was still at Pittsburgh Landing and those she dealt with for the rest of the war after Grant's army left. The enemy soldiers she referred to as American gentlemen were Yankees, but the Union soldiers who ruled Pittsburgh Landing for the next few years pillaging and terrorizing the locals, Elsie Duncan throughout her diary only ever referred to these men as Tories and the Tories ruled Pittsburgh Landing for the next three years. I'm Chris Calton and this is the Mises Institute podcast, Historical Controversies. I know most of you are probably ready to move on from the battle of Shiloh, but as with any major battle, I think that the aftermath is part of the story, especially in regards to the civilians who lived in the areas that the fighting took place. For Shiloh, the aftermath lasted the remainder of the war. It is a part of the story that we don't want to skip. Before I get into it, I should also announce, just so people aren't wondering in the next week or so, that after this episode, I am going to take a break from the podcast. It is too much of a demand on my time and I want to try to read some other things, try to catch up and get back ahead of the podcast because it has been by the skin of my teeth that I have been able to keep up with weekly episodes over this past year. When I do come back, I will not be returning to the Civil War. That doesn't mean I'll never return to it. I still want to finish this story, but we are more than 50 episodes into the war and only a year of the war itself has been covered. So it's a little exhausting. I'm a little tired of it. I think some listeners are a little tired of the Civil War, so I want to do something different. So when I do come back, I am planning, as of right now, to talk about the Russian Revolution and the early Soviet Union, and then eventually, after I've recovered a little bit from my exhaustion from the Civil War, I can pick up the story after Shiloh, which I think is a good stopping place for that. Following the battle, General Beauregard asked Grant for a truce to allow Confederates to help bury the dead. Grant declined, saying that his men were already taking care of the Confederate dead as well as their own. Beauregard also asked if the civilians in the area could be allowed to look for their loved ones. Grant rejected this request as well. Pittsburgh Landing was still a battlefield as far as he was concerned. The Union Army formed burial parties to try to handle the terrible task. But Elsie Duncan's mother claimed that the Union men did not bother to bury the Confederates. Why would they? They had enough work on their plate, trying to give a reasonably respectful burial to their own fallen comrades. Why would they show the same respect to the men who killed them in the first place? According to Elsie's diary, paraphrasing a mother, quote, The Anki's did not bury the Confederate dead. They threw them into the gullies and ravines and covered them with brush and leaves and left them for the hogs to root up and eat up. This is as I know to be the truth. I could not understand how anyone could be so heartless to leave a human being unburied. Even if they were rebel, they were dead. End quote. In reality, there was probably some truth to that. In all battles, soldiers were less concerned with respecting the enemy dead. But most likely, many soldiers would have tried to bury some of the enemy soldiers. Soldiers react differently to these duties. For those they did show respect for, it was far from a traditional burial. Mass graves became a necessity. One soldier described the burial process, quote, We dig long holes in the ground, lay them side by side without any coffin, fire a salute over the grave, and then cover their cold bodies with the Tennessee River clay. End quote. In addition to firing a volley over the mass grave, burial parties showed respect for the dead by burying friends together. So one mass grave would be devoted to all the dead found from a single regiment. Sometimes they stuck headboards in the ground to serve as a makeshift gravestone. For the Confederate dead, these small gestures were less necessary. One mass grave had 150 Confederate corpses in it, according to one soldier's testimony, with 20 bodies still lined up next to it while the burial party worked to make the grave long enough to fit them all. Most of these men would be, as John Cochlear called to them, the dead and unknown. For some men, this may have been more traumatizing than the battle itself. One soldier later wrote of his work on a burial party, quote, Months passed before I recovered from the effects of it, end quote. But with thousands of dead bodies, both human and animals to deal with, even these burials were hasty and poorly executed. Some graves were so shallow that limbs would occasionally be visible protruding through the ground. And some haunting cases, even a face could be seen staring up through the dirt. Horses, of course, didn't warrant even this much respect, and graves for horses would have taken even more time to dig. At first, the men tried to burn the carcasses, but all it left was the charred, but intact, remains. The stench was nauseating and the waste attracted swarms of flies to plague the area. The stench was so bad that many men were unable to return to the field without becoming physically ill. The Shiloh Church, where Elsie had attended school before the war, as I mentioned in a previous episode, was torn down so the wood it was constructed with could be used for coffins for some of the dead. Some of the Union soldiers kept pieces of it as souvenirs of their battle. When they were done, not even the foundation remained. The Union soldiers dealt with the aftermath in different ways, of course. Many of them tried to write letters home, but they couldn't find the words. Even Braxton Bragg, when writing to his wife, began his letter, quote, How to begin a letter confounds me, so much has been crowded in a small space of time that the mind becomes confused, end quote. For many soldiers, the experience from the battle changed to them in a similar way that Henry Morton Stanley and John Cockerell had been changed in the previous episode. One quote that echoes Stanley's statement about how the fields of glory were a glittering lie, wrote about his mental state immediately after the battle, quote, I had been feeling mean all morning as if I had stolen a sheep. I had heard and read of battlefields, seen pictures of battlefields, of horses and men, of cannons and wagons, all jumbled together while the ground was strewn with dead and dying and wounded. But I must confess, I never realized the pomp and circumstance of the thing called a glorious war until I saw this. Men were lying in every conceivable position. The dead were lying with their eyes wide open, the wounded begging piteously for help and some waving their hats and shouting for us to go forward. It all seemed to me a dream, end quote. As was the case in previous battles, some soldiers took pity on the enemy dead and wounded that had been left behind. Others took out their anger on them. One Indianan soldier named Eli Clampett referred to himself alternately in the third and first person. He wrote hum quote, the rebels raised the black flag and when I saw it old Eli made good use of the bayonet as I passed to the wounded enemy. Cap said I used my bayonet a little too much on the wounded. We will have to kill some of the CS over for I see them wiggle and I think they are coming to life. End quote. Obviously this was not standard nor was it officially allowed. The rules of war dictated that enemy wounded would be given medical treatment and taken as prisoners. If you remember the six part series I did on the filibusters in Nicaragua, the American filibusters there were appalled to find the Nicaraguans bayonetting wounded enemies after a battle, which actually was standard practice there. But for Eli Clampett, it was a violation of that oxymoron civilized warfare. But the union surgeons indiscriminately treated northerners and southerners alike. But nobody could have anticipated how many wounded there were to treat. Most casualties are counted as wounded, though many would die later of course. But out of the 20 to 30,000 casualties of the battle, at least 16,000 were wounded. The surgeons were overwhelmingly burdened by the number of men they had to tend to. They didn't have nearly enough supplies to bandage wounds and alleviate pain, and the hospitals were quickly grouted out. Civilian homes were converted into hospitals as well as Elsie Duncan described her home even before the war was over. Her family wasn't alone. One union soldier said quote, there was not a house within 10 miles round, but was full of wounded, end quote. But it was never enough. Some soldiers were left to linger with their injuries for days. As another soldier remembered his return to the battlefield sometime after it was over, quote, we found the poor fellows lying in fence corners in the woods and everywhere they could find a dry or high place to rest, end quote. For the Confederates, many wounded men fell or were dropped off during the retreat, meaning that even the civilians between Pittsburgh Landing and Corinth found themselves caring for wounded men. The day after the battle was over, Elsie Duncan's mother went to the battlefield to try to find her son, Elsie's brother, who had fought there and had not been heard from since. But per Grant's prescription of civilians entering the battlefield, the sentinels stopped her. Her mother was distraught. The family turned back, sick with grief and fear that their loved one may be stranded, wounded without help, or lying dead where he would be buried without identification. But as they came back to the house, Elsie saw her brother, quote, black with gun smoke, his hat and coat was gone, his pants were torn with bullets, but his flesh was not touched, end quote. Her mother ran forward crying, and mother and son had an emotional reunion. As hard as it might be to imagine, following this family's reunion, life was actually easier for Elsie and her family than it would be after Grant's army moved on to Corinth. Grant was kind to the family, as Elsie remembered it, and I'm going to be quoting longer passages here than I usually do because, like the previous episodes, I think Elsie's words do better justice than I could in paraphrasing them. But as Elsie remembered it, quote, after the battle was over, everything was fairly peaceful for a short time. While the Union army was in possession, General Grant was good and kind to the people that were left on that bullet-riddled battlefield. It did not allow his men to mistreat anyone or anything that we had left. If they did, we had only to report it to him, and he would put a stop to it right away. There was one poor rebel that got out of the battle so badly wounded that he died. His wife was so overcome with grief and sorrow, she died three days later. Mother had to go over there, so she sent for Grant. He came while she was in the kitchen baking light bread. She gave him some with butter on it and some milk. He looked at mother and said that it was the best bread he had eaten since his mother had baked bread. Then he added, not that you are as old as my mother. Then they compared ages and found that he and mother were the exact same age, forty-two. I think that his kindly manner made us like and trust him. When he left, he put a guard around the house. Mother gave them the run of the house and gave them books to read, and they took care of the children, baby and all. After that, we missed the only cow that we had left. Mother reported to Grant, and soon a soldier brought it back and said that he found it tied up and the boys were milking her. There were lots of Yankees left there. They were camped at Pittsburgh and up in the hills. They were camped all around us. Most people would not let their children go around among them. They were afraid that the Yankees would hurt them, but mother let us go all around them. Those boys were very fond of us and were always glad to have us come. They called me the little rebel because I was not afraid of them. We went into a tent and one of the boys gave us a little glass barrel full of sugar. I took it outside and threw it down the hillside. I did not know that he was watching me, and he came out of the tent just slapping his hands and laughing. I told him it was not because we did not like him, but because some folks thought that the Yankees would poison the children. We did like him because he was friendly and jolly. We made lots of friends among the Yankee boys, and they had lots of fun out of us little secesh. When the soldiers started coming down sick, Elsie's mother took care of them. There was a very bad disease broke out in camp. A contagious diarrhea, and those boys sure did suffer. My mother turned the main room in the house into a hospital. She took care of them without the aid of a doctor. She took Samson's snake root and boiled it in sweet milk, which is the best medicine in the world for that type of disease. She had the floor full of those poor suffering boys. One of them told mother that she was not a secesh but union to the bone. Mother told him that she was not working for either side, that she was working for suffering humanity. He said that she was an angel of mercy. She saved every one of them that she took care of except one poor fellow. His name was Joe Stratton. They buried him there on a sunny hillside among the wild flowers that bloom in wild profusion, while the birds were singing, as if they knew they were taking part in the burial of a human being gone to his god. It was after the union army moved on to Corinth that things got worse for Elsie's family. After the army left, Elsie visited the deserted camp. Everything looked like desolation. Seems as if a cyclone sure had passed, leaving wreckage in its wake. We would never again see our friends. Never more are the saddest of all sad words. It slays the heart and leaves us in despair. When the Yankees marched away, we were left entirely without any protection. We were left to the merciless raiders whose aim was to still and destroy everything in their path. This was when, as she described it in the opening anecdote, Tory rule took over. For Elsie's family, this would genuinely be a reign of terror. Speaking of the Tories, as she always called them, to distinguish them from the Yankees that she had befriended. We did not know in what hour of the night they would come and burn us out of house and home. One night, we saw a big blaze up in the edge of the woods. Mother and I went out into the yard. We saw a man burning brush on the hillside just outside of the gate. Mother asked them to put the fire out before the house caught on fire. They said they were not going to burn the house that night, but the next time they would. They said they were just warning us to be on the lookout. We lived in constant fear of what might happen next. Mother was very brave, ready for anything that may happen. As we passed through the dark and stormy days and nights of terror, the nights were the worst because we were afraid to have any light such as it was. A tin plate with some grease in it with a twisted rag for a wick, but it was light. We did not burn it long because we did not have the grease. Then we had a little light in the place. We used to cover that up with ashes to keep it from going out as we had no way to light a fire. One night, we had no fire. Father slipped in and took an old flintlock musket and put some powder in the pan and scraped some fine stuff off of some wood. And he kept the hammer snapping until the wood caught fire. That was the only time that the fire went out. Father had to leave that night for it was not safe for him to stay. The fall of the year was coming on. We children were playing out in the backyard under the old apple tree. When mother called us into the house and told us to listen and hear the horses galloping. Soon we saw them coming. They rode into the yard and told mother they wanted something to eat. There were six of them. She told them that she did not have anything to give them. They said that they would get something for themselves. So they went into the garden pulled up the corn and all of the vegetables brought them into the beach yard and then went into the kitchen to get something to cook them in. I watched them cook. They put everything in the pot together. I was afraid they would set the house on fire. I asked the man what they were cooking in the pot. He said it was the cat. I ran into the house and told mother that the Yankees were cooking the cat. Mother said she did not believe that they would eat the cat. Eat it or not we never saw that cat again. When those men left they went into the garden and pulled up all of the onions and all of the things that we had planted. Mother planted the onions out again. We lost all of our chickens and geese. Only one colt was left. My 14 year old brother wanted mother to let him put it in the house. That did not save it for they took it later on. Obviously I don't know if they actually ate the cat or if they were just making a cruel joke but it isn't implausible that they did actually eat the cat. By the time this scene took place late in 1862 when winter was approaching food was incredibly scarce in the region and was scarce really throughout the whole confederacy. It is not an exaggeration to say that people were literally starving. This story about the cat made me think of a passage from the book Mao's Great Famine referring to the famine suffered in Mao Zedong's communist China. The short passage reads quote. In the most radical communes private plots, heavy tools and livestock all had to be turned over to the collective. In many cases people were allowed to keep nothing but the bare essentials. In response villagers tried to salvage as much of their property as possible. They slaughtered livestock, hid grain, and sold assets. At the very start of the movement Hu Yongming, a farmer from the humid hilly northeast of Guangdong, killed four chickens, followed on day two by three ducks, then came three female dogs, the puppies being slaughtered next. Finally the cat was eaten. End quote. Obviously there are important differences between Chairman Mao's Great Leap Ford from 1958 to 1962, and the Confederacy at the end of 1862, but there are also more similarities than you might realize. The Confederacy itself was rapidly nationalizing their economy in 1862, and by the end of the year the Confederate economy would be full-blown war socialism, according to Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, a civil war historian who has some writings on the Mises Institute website. Compounding this was the war itself where the Confederate government resorted to impressment to confiscate food and other items from civilians to support the army, paying them in token money that immediately exchanged well below par. And Union soldiers, like the raiders that Elsie Duncan wrote about, had little compunction about seizing whatever they saw fit to take from enemy civilians. So the result would be, much like the description in Mao's Great Famine, that civilians were inclined to consume what they had rather than trying to save it and risk having it stolen by some soldiers from one side or the other. And because food was so scarce, theft from other civilians, desperate themselves, was likely increasing. So the result was the quick depletion of stores of food in areas like Pittsburgh landing. And even those who rode with martial impunity and seized what they wanted would have found themselves running short on food. Would they have been hungry and desperate enough to cook and eat a house cat as the Chinese farmer Hu Yongming did a century later? I don't know, but it's certainly plausible. The passage from Mao's Famine also talks about how the subsistence farmers, subject to the tyranny of the collective, resorted to hiding grain. This was one of the reasons that Elsie's father's cave was a blessing. He also had a cabin hidden in the woods that served as a storage site for eight barrels of wheat, which he thankfully hid before the Battle of Shiloh. It is possible that these stores of food, insufficient as they were, proved the difference between life and death for Elsie. During the terrible winter of 1862 and 63, Elsie's family finished off the last of the flower that her father had hid for them. This whore would continue for the next two years. In the spring of 1863, Elsie's family was glad to have a single cow left that provided milk. The children were starving. Elsie's sister lost her baby over the winter, and they believed that the cow was the difference between life and death. But as bad as things were for Elsie's family, they had an easier time than some of her neighbors, who'd been displaced by the war and rendered homeless. Elsie's mother was at least able to give them shelter. As their clothes wore out, they didn't have the cloth to replace or repair them. At first, Elsie's mother made do with what she could salvage, but the children didn't want to wear anything that was blue, the color of the union. After a time, that didn't matter anymore. Quote, Occasionally, Elsie's father dropped by with food, risking his safety to do so, as the Tories were still looking for him. One time, when her father came home and stayed the night, as she tells the story, quote, My father being a chaplain, he could get permission to come home. He would always bring something with him to eat when he could get it, but it was not safe for him to come. Just a few days after that, some men came all dressed in gray. They looked all around, upstairs, and in the kitchen. They said that they were looking for some Yankee scouts. They did not bother anything. They asked mother a lot of questions about her menfolk. I slipped around behind mother and told her that I saw a U.S. on their belts. She said that she knew they were nice and friendly. When they left, mother said that they were wolves in sheep's clothing, end quote. They struggled to get by, and as soon as anything good happened, it seemed to fall apart. In one depressing passage, Elsie wrote, We picked up an old horse. He must have gotten loose from someone. We thought we could plow with him and make a crop. We tied him out in the bushes. All of our hopes were doomed to failure. A thief came in the night and took our horse away. We did not have any seed anyway to plant a crop with. They lived for lengthy periods off of wild onions, quote. We would gather them in arms full. Mother cooked them without salt or any kind of seasoning, and we children would eat them like Scotch Irish rebels that we were. Our cow had gone dry and we didn't even have any milk to cook with. We were getting along fairly well, hoping that we would not have any more trouble, but we never can tell. We were still under Tory rule. We were booked for more trouble. There were spies on the lookout for any rebel boys that might slip in, end quote. Eventually even her cow was stolen and it almost broke her mother, quote. Two men came in the lot and took our cow right in daylight. We saw them drive around and we ran in and told mother about it. She came out but she couldn't do anything about it. She said that it was the last straw. She hoped it would not break the camel's back. Old Sherry did not have much milk but helped a lot. That left us with nothing, not even the cat. The Yankees ate her up. The men that took cows, horses and other animals were thieves. They had no mercy on the helpless people that could not help themselves. Things were getting bad by this time. We had very little to eat, end quote. Near the end of the war they were barely surviving and many in Elsie's family did not. And her sad testimony, quote. My mother is so tired that we were so hungry and cold. We never see our boys anymore. It has been so long since anyone has come home. We hear from them only when father slips in and that is not often. We have to go on through another winter. We are a ride in the nest of people that we cannot trust. All of them, about this time my youngest half-sister's husband came home and died. They lived down a river. She came home with her two children. She and mother were heartbroken and they cried in each other's arms. This cruel war will it ever end? Will the heartaches, grief and sorrow ever end? Will we ever be at peace and rest? And cease to shed bitter tears for our loved ones so cruelly taken away from us? Sis had a baby and named her Mary. She was a lovely baby. I was glad to have her for my little sister although I still grieve for little Sally. I was so proud of this little sister but alas it was not to be. After a few months, dear little Mary was taken away to that beautiful garden in heaven, there to play with a little Sally. My poor little heart was broken. I felt that God did not want me to have a little sister. My little brother fell into the water though and got wet. I took him into the house. Then mother went out there and made them put on dry clothes. Some of them took colds. Little Joe seemed to be more delicate than the rest of them. Next morning little Joe was very sick. Mother was nearly crazy. We did everything we could. We could not save him. He died in mother's arms and so dear little Joe has also gone on to play with the other little girls, Sally and Mary. There was more grief and heartaches when Sis came home. It seemed that we could not stand anymore. Sis was all alone now her husband and two children gone. That night we were so sad and lonely. By this time we were in rags. Our clothes were past doing anything with. Eventually in 1864 Confederate guerrillas started fighting back against the Union Raiders. Among them, according to Elsie's account, was Nathan Bedford Forrest. To conclude Elsie's story, quote, My half-brother William and his son were in the Southern Army. Men locked his family in the house and set fire to it. This made my brother so furious that he got permission from the regular army and raised a squad of men and went for the Tories. And when the guerrillas came they drove the Tories down the river. One night not long after that a party of men came looking for brother William. They said that they were going to hang him. They told mother if she did not tell where he was they would burn the house. Then they changed their mind and said they would take me. I was sitting on the stairs steps. I told them there was no one up here but there was another company on the way and I hoped they would kill them. Then the captain guessed there was no one upstairs so they left. The guerrillas kept those Tories busy. Eventually the Tories and the lawless raiders had been run out of the community and we were having some rest and safety. There was as yet guerrillas to keep the Tories from slipping in and when we heard horses galloping we never knew whether they were friend or foe and that kept us in a state of terror for we all knew if they were enemies they would take that poor wounded boy out and hang him. They did not come often to our relief. That did not relieve the tension that we were in for being uncertain. Mother was almost in despair. We were overjoyed when we heard that the Confederates were coming even if they were guerrillas as they would be a protection to us. We had been through so much that caution and fear became second nature to us. We had news from some source that General Forrest was sending scouts out to stop the lawlessness that had been going on ever since the Shiloh battle. They helped a lot. There was another general named Rody. I did not know much about him. I heard a guerrilla say that when they caught a Tory they sent him the nearest way to Rody. I knew what that meant, that they would hang him. My brother Jim was with the scouts the last part of the war. We had a cousin whose husband was a Tory captain. His men got Jim and had the rope around his neck and the captain turned him loose and took him home with him and kept him until he could send him home. When he was coming home someone in ambush shot him in the breast and that bullet stayed in him until the day of his death. After that we did not have any more trouble with the Tories. We still had the guerrillas. They were just as bad, only they were on the Confederate side. But even though they never had any more trouble with Union Raiders they didn't yet know that would be the case. And Elsie and what remained of her family continued to live in fear. When scouts wearing Confederate greys came by, quote, we did not trust them. We were afraid that they were wolves in sheep's clothing. We had been deceived before and we did not know whether they were friend or foe. That we never knew, end quote. By this time the family was surviving on stolen goods. People in the community stole what they could and shared it with their neighbors, including Elsie's mother. When a neighbor woman came by and dropped off a supply of flour, her mother asked to the neighbor where she got it. The woman said that her husband had stolen it. It didn't matter. As Elsie put it, quote, mother said that it was not wrong to still or to tell lies during war time when there was nothing to it, end quote. But thieves continued to come for them too. To read Elsie's last anecdote before the war was over, quote, Papi came home last night after six weeks' absence. He had a nice trip. We were also glad to have him back safely. He came by Ripley and saw Jim and our other brother who had been there ever since the Shiloh battle. He was such a big boy that they were afraid to leave him at home. He was only 15 years old. Papi brought a lot of things home with him and left more at the railroad station to get later. After he saw how things were at home, someone gave him a little gray mare. She was a beauty, but she had been shot in the mouth and her front teeth were shot out so she could not eat corn or bite the grass. We took great pleasure in gathering grass to feed her. We did not have her long. One morning we went out and she was gone. Some thief had stolen her. Everything happens at night. We were so afraid that she would not be fed right. We were afraid for the night to come. For Elsie, the tears of the battle of Shiloh did not end on April 7th. They lasted for the rest of the war. And with the incredible number of family members that she lost, we might say it lasted for the rest of her life. Her testimony is an incredible account, but the conditions she survived were no different than what so many civilians suffered living in battlefield areas like Pittsburgh Landing. The armies moved on and the civilians, like nine-year-old Elsie Duncan, were left behind in the wake of their destruction. Historical Controversies is a production of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. If you would like to support the show, please subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or Stitcher and leave a positive review. You can also support the show financially by donating at Mises.org slash Support HC. If you would like to explore the rest of our content, please visit Mises.org. That's M-I-S-E-S dot O-R-G.