The commanding general, therefore, earnestly exhorts the troops to abstain, with most scrupulous care, from unnecessary or wanton injury to private property; and he enjoins upon all officers to arrest and bring to summary punishment all who shall in any way offend against the orders on this subject.

R.E.  LEE, General.

The noble maxims and truly Christian spirit of this paper will remain the undying glory of Lee.  Under what had been surely a bitter provocation, he retained the calmness and forbearance of a great soul, saying to his army:  “The duties exacted of us by civilization and Christianity are not less obligatory in the country of the enemy than in our own....  No greater disgrace could befall the army, and through it our whole people, than the perpetration of outrage upon the innocent and defenceless....  We make war only upon armed men, and cannot take vengeance for the wrongs our people have suffered without offending against Him to whom vengeance belongeth, without whose favor and support our efforts must all prove in vain.”

Such were the utterances of Lee, resembling those we might attribute to the ideal Christian warrior; and, indeed, it was such a spirit that lay under the plain uniform of the great Virginian.  What he ordered was enforced, and no one was disturbed in his person or property.  Of this statement many proofs could be given.  A Pennsylvania farmer said to a Northern correspondent, in reference to the Southern troops:  “I must say they acted like gentlemen, and, their cause aside, I would rather have forty thousand rebels quartered on my premises than one thousand Union troops.”  From the journal of Colonel Freemantle, an English officer accompanying the Southern army, we take these sentences: 

“In passing through Greencastle we found all the houses and windows shut up, the natives in their Sunday clothes, standing at their doors regarding the troops in a very unfriendly manner.  I saw no straggling into the houses, nor were any of the inhabitants disturbed or annoyed by the soldiers.  Sentries were placed at the doors of many of the best houses, to prevent any officer or soldier from getting in on any pretence....  I entered Chambersburg at 6 P.M....  Sentries were placed at the doors of all the principal houses, and the town was cleared of all but the military passing through or on duty....  No officer or soldier under the rank of a general is allowed in Chambersburg without a special order from General Lee, which he is very chary of giving, and I hear of officers of rank being refused this pass....  I went into Chambersburg again, and witnessed the singularly good behavior of the troops toward the citizens.  I heard soldiers saying to one another that they did not like being in a town in which they were very naturally detested.  To any one who has seen, as I have, the ravages of the Northern troops in Southern towns, this forbearance seems most commendable and surprising.”