e bones as relics. So frequently, however, has the story
been repeated, and from so many trustworthy quarters, that we are
reluctantly compelled to admit that such paragraphs as the following,
from the Southern correspondence of the Boston _Journal and Transcript_,
are very possibly founded in fact:

'_Washington, 1st_.

'The certainty that the graves of the members of the Chelsea and
Boston Fusilier companies who fell in the advance on Bull Run,
last July, have all been despoiled, with a probability that their
bones were sent South, as relics, causes a deep feeling of
indignation here.

'A citizen of Cambridge, Mass., who went to Bull Run to recover
the remains of his brother, who belonged to a Boston company,
gives a sad account of the sacrilege committed upon the graves of
our soldiers by the rebels. About twenty of a Boston company and a
Chelsea company had been buried near each other, but every skull
had been taken away, and nearly all the principal bones of the
bodies were gone. Some of the bodies had been dug out, and others
pried out of the graves with levers, and in some the sleeves of
uniforms were split to obtain the bones of the arms. It was
described as a sickening spectacle.'

When we recall the savage, half-Indian nature of many of the lower
Southern troops, and the threats of scalping and mutilating, in which
they so often indulged; and when we remember that even in Richmond, the
body of John Brown's son is still exposed, as the label on it intimates,
not as a scientific preparation, but as a warning to Abolitionists; we
see nothing extraordinary in such tales. If professors, men of science,
and 'gentlemen' can wreak vengeance on the harmless bodies of the dead,
and place a placard, expressing the hope that it may be thus with those
who simply differ with them in political opinions, it is not to be
wondered at that their rude and ignorant _confreres_ should dig up dead
bodies, and send the bones home as relics. It is just possible, however,
that we do not appreciate the true motives of these Ghouls. When
Scanderbeg died, his enemies fought among themselves to obtain the
smallest fragment of his bones, believing that their possession would
confer on the lucky wearer some of the courage of the great hero
himself. And so it may be that these craven savages hope to get a little
real Northern pluck and stubborn endurance.

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