General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: No, the Civil War is NOT Over. In fact, the South is slowly winning. [View all]B2G
(9,766 posts)"Such explicit prohibition was necessary, because even after the code was in place, sexual violence was common to the wartime experience of Southern women, white and black. Whether they lived on large plantations or small farms, in towns, cities or in contraband camps, white and black women all over the American South experienced the sexual trauma of war.
Union military courts prosecuted at least 450 cases involving sexual crimes. In North Carolina during the spring of 1865, Pvt. James Preble did by physical force and violence commit rape upon the person of one Miss Letitia Craft. When Perry Holland of the 1st Missouri Infantry confessed to the rape of Julia Anderson, a white woman in Tennessee, he was sentenced to be shot, but his sentence was later commuted. Catherine Farmer, also of Tennessee, testified that Lt. Harvey John of the 49th Ohio Infantry dragged her into the bushes and told her he would kill her if she did not give it to him. He tore her dress, broke her hoops and put his private parts into her, for which he was sentenced to 10 years in prison. In Georgia, Albert Lane, part of Company B, in the 100th Regiment of Ohio Volunteers, was also sentenced to 10 years because he did on or about the 11th day of July, 1864
upon one Miss Louisa Dickerson
then and there forcibly and against her will, feloniously did ravish and carnally know her.
Black women were in even more danger. Rape was one of the many horrors of slavery, though whites rarely recognized it as such. Interestingly, it was only in the context of war that Southern whites for the first time were forced to acknowledge the rape of black women. In the spring of 1863, John N. Williams of the 7th Tennessee Regiment wrote in his diary, Heard from home. The Yankees has been through there. Seem to be their object to commit rape on every Negro woman they can find. Many times, troops and ruffians raped black women while forcing white women to watch, a horrifying experience for all, and a proxy rape of white women. B. E. Harrison of Leesburg, Va., wrote a letter to President Abraham Lincoln complaining that federal troops had raped his servant girl in the presence of his wife. Gen. William Dwight reported, Negro women were ravished in the presence of white women and children. Just as the rape of white women implied that Southern men were unable to protect their mothers, wives and daughters, the rape of slave women told whites they could no longer protect their property."
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/25/rape-and-justice-in-the-civil-war/