Our Southern homes have been pillaged, sacked, and burned; our mothers, wives and little ones driven forth amid the brutal insults of your soldiers. Is it any wonder that we fight with desperation? A natural revenge would prompt us to retaliate in kind, but we scorn to war on women and children. We are fighting for the God-given rights of liberty and independence as handed down to us in the Constitution by our fathers. So fear not: if a torch is applied to a single dwelling, or an insult offered to a female of your town by a soldier of this command, point me out the man and you shall have his life. General John B. Gordon, C.S.A. to the women of York, Pennsylvania.