* * * * *
The suddenness with which the outbreak had occurred and the
extraordinary rapidity with which it spread, driving the defenseless
settlers from their homes and causing desolation and ruin on every
side, rendered it necessary for the governor to call an extra session
of the legislature for the purpose of devising means to arm and equip
volunteers, and assist the homeless refugees in procuring places of
shelter where they would be safe from molestation by these dusky
warriors. Could anything be more terrible than Gov. Ramsey's picture
of the ravages of these outlaws in his message to the legislature?
"Nothing which the brutal lust and wanton cruelty of these savages
could wreak upon their helpless and innocent victims was omitted from
the category of their crimes," said the governor. "Helplessness and
innocence, indeed, which would inspire pity in any heart but theirs,
seemed to inspire them only with a more fiendish rage. Infants hewn
into bloody chips of flesh or torn untimely from the womb of the
murdered mother, and in cruel mockery cast in fragments on her
pulseless and bleeding breast; rape joined to murder in one awful
tragedy; young girls, even children of tender years, outraged by
these brutal ravishers till death ended their shame; women held into
captivity to undergo the horrors of a living death; whole families
burned alive; and, as if their devilish fancy could not glut itself
with outrages on the living, the last efforts exhausted in mutilating
the bodies of the dead.
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