Rebellion Record: a Diary of American Events: Poetry and Incidents., Volume 8.
Frank Moore, Ed.

“Yankee” atrocities in North--Alabama.--A colonel, and for the last campaign a brigade commander, furnishes the following facts, which stamp with eternal infamy the atrocious conduct of the enemy in North-Alabama. About twenty-five Yankees, headed by one Ben Harris, a Tory from Madison County, crossed the Tennessee River into Beech Island, and captured Benjamin Raden — an old man — his son, his nephew James Raden, and his son, and another man whose name is forgotten — all private citizens — and shot them, killing four, and threw them into the river, three of whose bodies were afterward found. The fifth caught hold of some bushes, when Harris ordered them to cut his head off with their sabres, which they attempted, but could not reach him; he then ordered them to knock his brains out with a fence-rail; and failing in this, they fired two guns, and he dropped his head in the water as if dead, and the fiends, supposing him dead, departed. The same crowd went to the house of Madison Ritchie, the conscripting officer, and took him out of his bed and drove him in front of them some two or three miles to Paint Rach River, and made him wade in about midway, and shot him, putting seven balls through his body. These were all unoffending citizens. Benjamin Raden was an old man, sixty-three years old. They hung an overseer — who had formerly taken the oath to Lincoln — his sole offence consisting in assisting his employer to get his stock across the river. They put a notice on the tree, that it would be death for any one [45] to take his body down. They went to P. Rallins, formerly a captain in Colonel Hale's regiment, who had resigned in consequence of ill-health, and robbed him of several thousand dollars, giving him ten minutes to cross the Tennessee River, and threatening to hang him, and leave him hanging till the buzzards should pick his eyes out, if he ever returned. issued an order for all to take the oath or leave their lines. Such are a few of the many atrocities these Yankee fiends — the representatives of “the best government the world ever saw” --are inflicting on the people of North-Alabama.--Richmond Whig, January 27.