...Tennesseans! Brothers! We appeal to you! Show the sneering foe that we who have been true to you are not friendless and forgotten!...

Appeal to the Army of Tennessee. Autograph letter signed "Rebel Girls of Murfreesboro!" [Murfreesboro, Tennessee], [circa 1863?]. 6 pages, 4to. Docketing to verso. 

A verbose and eloquent appeal to the Confederate Army of Tennessee by the "Rebel Girls of Murfreesboro." The desperate screed details at great length the slights they have endured under John Gibson Parkhurst (1824-1906), Colonel of the 9th Michigan Infantry, and after the Provost Marshal of the 14th Army Corps and of the Military District of Tennessee. Following the Battle of Stones River (also known as the Second Battle of Murfreesboro), Parkhurst remained in Murfreesboro and married Josephine Reeves.

The letter opens: "Till Parkhurst took command however, the Yankees treated us very decently. He became enraged at the ladies of the place and immediately made war on us. Our girls proved themselves ladies - they spit in no man's face, insulted no one; but they proved themselves also true Southerners. They held themselves profoundly aloof from the invaders; they permitted no social intercourse, they would receive none of their attentions, but on all times and occasions made them feel that they were regarded as aliens and enemies…We have no time to give the particulars of the vigorous prosecution of Parkhurst's war on the 'she-rebels', nor to tell of the sick ladies to whom he would not allow medicine to be sold or given several of whom died in consequence; nor how the arms were taken from us and given to the negroes and the horrible deeds those negroes performed…"

She continues with her account of the First Battle of Murfreesboro when Nathan Bedford Forrest attacked and Parkhurst was taken as a prisoner of war: "Time passed on, and P. filled the jail with our citizens and had chosen three to be hung on the 14th of July. On the 13th Gen. Forrest attacked the town. P. ordered his men to shoot all the women and children they saw. The larger part of his command refused to obey his orders 'because if they were captured the rebels would hang them for it.' Some obeyed, and it is owing to the bad marksmanship of the Yankees that there was one of the women left alive, for we were without exception in the street feeding the soldiers and caring for the wounded. The entire force of Yankees were captured, P. among the number. He was carried off with the rest, but at McMinnville the privates were paroled and sent back. Then we inquired about their officers they replied that they 'calculated they were all on the road to Libby except Parkhurst and they rather guessed he was swinging to some tree-limb; anyhow if anybody had abused their women-folks as he had the Southern ones they would have made short work of him when they once got him.' Some one hinted of the danger of retaliation. 'Who do you suppose would ask the Government any odds? We rather guess the Government wouldn't have any 'official information' about it. When the Yankees again took possession, with P.'s probably fate before their eyes, they treated us all civlized nations treat non-combatants. Parkhursts' fiance went to Gen. Nelson to learn his fate, and he replied 'I don't know nor care what's become of him - except the rebels hung him - hope they did for the coward deserved it for spending his time fighting their women instead of attending to his business.'…Imagine our surprise when in the vanguard of Rosecrans' Army we saw our quondam master Col. J. G. Parkhurst as large as life, and a little larger in the proud consciousness of a successful villainy. And all through our town he boasted of the kind and courteous treatment he received at the South! Since then the Yankees showed us no mercy for they have lost the fear of punishment, and blei e they can insult and murder the women of Tennessee with impunity."

Continuing with her desperate plea, she mounts a defense of the Southern Women who may have fraternized with Union Soldiers. Indeed, the reviled Parkhurst married Tennessee woman Josephine Reeves while in the Army. She writes: "We know you have been hurt and mortified to hear of the many girls who are receiving the visits of Yankees and deserters and even marrying them. Believe us! - The vast majority of our girls have done no such thing. Some have, and by so doing have disgraced themselves and dishonored the fair name of our state; but remember before you cast the first stone at them that not one in a hundred had anything to say to the Yankees the first year they were here, for they all said 'Our boys will be angry', but when you came, you were just as cordial and friendly with those who had been intimate with the Yankees, as with those who had been true through evil as well as good report…the 'Yankeeized' girls have been more weak than wicked though they have acted shamefully…And how can the faithful Southerners know that the sneer of the 'Yankeeized' is not true, and that on your return they will not be your chief favorites?"

The writer concludes with a renewed plea of the Army of Tennessee and its officers, emphasizing that though many doubt that they will come, she has faith that they will come to their rescue: "For two years the women of Tennessee have been robbed, insulted, murdered. We have appealed in vain to the Yankee authorities and they have answered with fresh insults for they have lost fear of you. They say you have forsaken us, forgotten us, and that you care nothing for our fate. They tell us they can murder us and stretch forth their hands reeking with our blood to you and you will grasp them as those of honorable foemen. We cannot believe it. We will not believe it! And now in our sorrow and danger we appeal to you! Crushed and down-trodden, her garments wet in the blood of her sons and daughters, Tennessee holds out her hands to you in prayer for aid and protection, she had no hope under God, save in you!...Raise no 'black flag' - proclaim no exterminating war, but let it be known that whoever dares to injure one hair on the head of a mother, a sister, or wife of one soldier in our ranks, dies be he the highest General or lowest private in the Yankee Army! Tennesseans! Brothers! We appeal to you! Show the sneering foe that we who have been true to you are not friendless and forgotten!...Soldiers of the South! Our brothers all!....And in the red tide of battle or on the toilsome march, remember that crushed and bleeding, yet steadfast and true to our holy cause and noble soldiers, amid our ruined homes and desolated hearthstones, we are praying for you!"

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