“If God Almighty,” wrote an angry Governor Vance to the War Department in 1863, “had yet in store another plague worse than all others which he intended to have let loose on the Egyptians in case Pharoah still hardened his heart, I am sure it must have been a regiment or so of half-armed, half-disciplined Confederate cavalry.” Despite the notorious reputation of northern invaders in this regard, many southerners believed that “the Yankees cannot do us any more harm than our own soldiers have done.”
