debate was diverted into a rancorous discussion of the conduct of
the general's in the execution of martial law. Foote pulled out
all the stops in the organ of political rhetoric and went in for
a chant royal of righteous indignation. The main object of this
attack was General Hindman and his doings in Arkansas. Those were
still the days of pamphleteering. Though General Albert Pike had
written a severe pamphlet condemning Hindman, to this pamphlet
the Confederate Government had shut its eyes. Foote, however,
flourished it in the face of the House. He thundered forth his
belief that Hindman was worse even than the man most detested in
the South, than "beast Butler himself, for the latter is only
charged with persecuting and oppressing the avowed enemies of his
Government, while Hindman, if guilty as charged, has practised
cruelties unnumbered" on his people. Other representatives spoke
in the same vein. Baldwin of Virginia told harrowing tales of
martial law in that State. Barksdale attempted to retaliate,
sarcastically reminding him of a recent scene of riot and
disorder which proved that martial law, in any effective form,
did not exist in Virginia. He alluded to a riot, ostensibly for
bread, in which an Amazonian woman had led a mob to the pillaging
of the Richmond jewelry shops, a riot which Davis himself had
quelled by meeting the rioters and threatening to fire upon them.
But sarcasm proved powerless against Foote. His climax was a
lurid tale of a soldier who while marching past his own house
heard that his wife was dying, who left the ranks for a last word
with her, and who on rejoining the command, "hoping to get
permission to bury her," was shot as a deserter. And there was no
one on the Government benches to anticipate Kipling and cry out
"flat art!" Resolutions condemning martial law were passed by a
vote of 45 to 27.