"Hell was suddenly transferred to earth and all the fiends of darkness summoned to join this carnival of blood.  Centralia, with all its horrors, was eclipsed here in the enormity and infamous conduct of the bloody demons!  No treatment was too brutal, no treatment too cruel to satisfy the greed of that hellish crew, and were it possible for human souls to grow drunk on blood, I trust the idea may offer some palliation for the scenes enacted there, for the bloody, dastardly, cowardly, wanton acts committed upon the living and dead persons of those brave Union boys!  Men's heads were severed from their lifeless bodies, exchanged as to bodies, labeled with rough and obscene epitaphs and inscriptions, stuck upon their carbine points, tied to their saddle bows, or sat grinning at each other from the tops of fence stakes and stumps around the scene.  God knows the sight was too horrible for description."  - Sgt. Thomas M. Goodman, 25th Missouri Infantry
