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18, Report on Confederate “Reign of Terror” in Mississippi and Alabama The Reign of Terror in Mississippi and Alabama. Women Torn to Pieces by Bloodhounds. Old Men Sixty Years of Age Pressed into the Rebel Service. Special dispatch to the Cincinnati Gazette. Memphis, Feb. 11, via Cairo, 13— Great outrages are now experienced by the unfortunate residents of North Alabama and Mississippi. In the latter State the Legislature recently enacted a law embracing as conscripts all men not included in the Confederate act. The act of Jeff. Davis includes all from eighteen to forty years of age, and that recently passed takes all from forty to sixty years of age. The territory of Mississippi has been laid off in districts of twenty miles, and recruiting Colonels appointed for each district. A thousand Colonels have been appointed to enforce the conscript act, and the militia act in North Alabama is even worse. Many Union men in that section state that violent efforts are made to force them into the Confederate ranks. The Union men have long hid out in the woods and caves, rather than be taken as conscripts. This induced a novel hunt for them. Guerrillas and blood-hounds have been put upon their track, and many poor victims have been smelt out in this way. Not long since a young girl, carrying food to her father, who was hiding in a cave, was attacked by one of these blood-hounds and torn to pieces. It is estimated not less than 1,000 Union men from Mississippi and Alabama, have made their way to Corinth, where Gen. Dodge made all possible provisions for them. Gen. Dodge sent out and brought in the families of the persecuted and downtrodden Union men, and has established a sort of encampment or home for all these families at Purdy, where they are likely to be freed from persecutions. At Corinth a regiment is forming of Union men from Alabama and Mississippi, It already numbers six full companies. Capt. J. C. Cameron, Provost Marshal of the District of Corinth, is to be Colonel. This regiment is made up from among those who have recently suffered persecutions. Abraham Kennedy and J. A. Mitchell, of Hackeldo settlement, Munroe county, Ala., have been hung by the rebels for indulging Union proclivities. Mr. Holl Work and daughter of the same county have been shot; and Rector Lewis, and immediate neighbor, of suspected Union proclivities, was hunted down by bloodhounds and captured. The house of J. A. Palmer, Worly Williams, and other Union men, were burned over their families' heads, and the people living in the neighborhood notified that if they harbored them their own houses would be burned. Mr. Paterson living at the head of Bull Mountain was killed for Union sentiments.--Two women in Talcumbia county were torn to pieces by bloodhounds. In addition to the foregoing one hundred families driven out of Alabama, reached Corinth on foot without food or clothing. some of the fugitives are old men, eighty years of age. The rigid enforcement of the conscription act has probably induced the return to Memphis of many old citizens who went away under order No. 1, but who, when called upon to fight in a war of their own making, skulk away to Memphis, seeking the protection of the guns of the enemy—the very men against whom they have all along vaunted their undying hatred. Nashville Daily Union, February 18, 1863.
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