Civil War Anti Confederate Atrocity Pamphlet Documenting Violence Against African Americans and Unionists 1863 Percy Howard

Colonel Howard Percy

Pamphlets

Howard, Percy. The Barbarities of the Rebels as Shown in Their Cruelty to the Federal Wounded and Prisoners; In Their Outrages Upon Union Men; In the Murder of Negroes, and in Their Unmanly Conduct Throughout the Rebellion, 1863, a wartime polemic that documents and publicizes Confederate violence against Union soldiers, African Americans, and Southern Unionists while seeking to influence foreign opinion during the American Civil War. Issued at a moment when the Union government and its supporters worked to prevent British diplomatic recognition of the Confederacy, the pamphlet assembles accounts of battlefield and extrajudicial brutality, including the killing of Black civilians and prisoners, persecution of Union loyalists, and abuse of women. Howard, a colonel with prior military experience in Europe and Asia, positions these as evidence of the moral illegitimacy of the Confederate cause and directly challenges pro Southern sympathy abroad rooted in economic reliance on cotton.

Howard, Percy. The Barbarities of the Rebels as Shown in Their Cruelty to the Federal Wounded and Prisoners; In Their Outrages Upon Union Men; In the Murder of Negroes, and in Their Unmanly Conduct Throughout the Rebellion. Providence, R.I.: Privately printed, 1863. First edition. Pamphlet. The text presents a series of reported incidents, including massacres of African Americans and German American communities in Texas, forced conscription practices, and the imprisonment and mistreatment of Union aligned civilians. The language is explicitly accusatory and evidentiary, structured to persuade readers beyond the United States, particularly in Britain, where textile industry dependence on Southern cotton had shaped early sympathies toward the Confederacy.

Published in 1863, the same year as the Emancipation Proclamation took effect and the war increasingly centered on slavery as a defining issue, the pamphlet participates in a broader Union information campaign that linked Confederate military conduct with the institution of slavery itself. By foregrounding the murder of Black individuals and the repression of dissent within Confederate territory, Howard connects battlefield conflict to racial violence and political coercion, reinforcing the Union argument that the war was inseparable from the defense and expansion of slavery. Wrappers separated from spine with some paper loss on verso; interior clean. Fair to good condition.

Item #17360

Price: $700.00