From Jon Perr at PERRspectives:
And what noble cause and lofty principles inspired this bestial, bloodthirsty cruelty? Why were Dangerfield Newby’s ears cut off as trophies after John Brown’s Harpers Ferry raid of 1859, as were the ears, nose, and genitals of Sam Hose during his torture and dismemberment in 1899? Why did Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest butcher hundreds of surrendering black Union troops at Fort Pillow in 1864 and white militiamen slaughter 100 African-Americans in Colfax, Louisiana, who were merely trying to safeguard the results of the local elections there in 1873? As Jane Coaston recently explained (“Confederate Memorial Day: when multiple states celebrate treason in defense of slavery”), Alabama Confederates like Stephen F. Hale made no secret of the obvious in December 1860:
What Southern man, be he slave-holder or non-slave-holder, can without indignation and horror contemplate the triumph of negro equality, and see his own sons and daughters in the not distant future associating with free negroes upon terms of political and social equality, and the white man stripped by the heaven-daring hand of fanaticism of that title to superiority over the black race which God himself has bestowed?