A good
many Southern women, refugees from the theatre of active war, were
very open in their defiance of the government, and in their efforts
to aid the Southern armies by being the bearers of intelligence. The
"contraband mail" was notoriously a large and active one.
Burnside had been impressed with this condition of things from the
day he assumed command. His predecessor had struggled with it
without satisfactory results. It was, doubtless, impossible to do
more than diminish and restrain the evil, which was the most
annoying of the smaller troubles attending the anomalous
half-military and half-civil government of the department. Within
three weeks from his arrival in Cincinnati, Burnside was so
convinced of the widespread and multiform activity of the disloyal
element that he tried to subdue it by the publication of his famous
General Order No. 38. The reading of the order gives a fair idea of
the hostile influences he found at work, for of every class named by
him there were numerous examples.
[Footnote: The text of the order is as follows:
"General Orders.
No. 38.
HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF THE OHIO,
CINCINNATI, OHIO, April 13, 1863.
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