History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia Part 22

Viewed in the light of a communication from Sheridan to Halleck, dated November 26, 1864, this expedition seems not to have been even moderately successful. In it he said: "I will soon commence work on Mosby. Heretofore I have made no attempt to break him up, as I would have employed ten men to his one, and for the reason that I have made a scape-goat of him for the destruction of private rights. Now there is going to be an intense hatred of him in that portion of this Valley, which is nearly a desert. I will soon commence on Loudoun County, and let them know there is a G.o.d in Israel...."

In his determination to rid himself of his troublesome enemy, Sheridan, the next day, issued the following orders to Major-General Merritt, commanding the First Cavalry Division:

"You are hereby directed to proceed to-morrow morning at 7 o'clock with the two brigades of your division now in camp to the east side of the Blue Ridge via Ashby's Gap, and operate against the guerillas in the district of country bounded on the south by the line of the Mana.s.sas Gap Railroad as far east as White Plains, on the east by the Bull Run range, on the west by the Shenandoah River, and on the north by the Potomac. This section has been the hot-bed of lawless bands, who have, from time to time, depredated upon small parties on the line of army communications, on safeguards left at houses, and on all small parties of our troops. Their real object is plunder and highway robbery. To clear the country of these parties that are bringing destruction upon the innocent as well as their guilty supporters by their cowardly acts, you will consume and destroy all forage and subsistence, burn all barns and mills and their contents, and drive off all stock in the region the boundaries of which are above described. This order must be literally executed, bearing in mind, however, that no dwellings are to be burned and that no personal violence be offered to the citizens. The ultimate results of the guerilla system of warfare is the total destruction of all private rights in the country occupied by such parties. This destruction may as well commence at once, and the responsibility of it must rest upon the authorities at Richmond, who have acknowledged the legitimacy of guerilla bands. The injury done this army by them is very slight. The injury they have indirectly inflicted upon the people and upon the rebel army may be counted by millions. The Reserve Brigade of your division will move to Snickersville on the 29th. Snickersville should be your point of concentration, and the point from which you should operate in destroying toward the Potomac. Four days' subsistence will be taken by the command. Forage can be gathered from the country through which you pa.s.s. You will return to your present camp, via Snicker's Gap, on the 5th day."

In addition to Merritt's three brigades, Colonel Stagg was ordered to send out four regiments.

[39]"The Federals separated into three parties, one of which went along the Bloomfield road and down Loudoun in the direction of the Potomac; another pa.s.sed along the Piedmont pike to Rectortown, Salem, and around to Middleburg, while the main body kept along the turnpike to Aldie, where they struck the Snickersville pike. Thus they scoured the country completely from the Blue Ridge to the Bull Run Mountains.

"From Monday afternoon, November 28th, until Friday morning, December 2nd, they ranged through the beautiful Valley of Loudoun and a portion of Fauquier county, burning and laying waste. They robbed the people of everything they could destroy or carry off--horses, cows, cattle, sheep, hogs, etc.; killing poultry, insulting women, pillaging houses, and in many cases robbing even the poor negroes.

"They burned all the mills and factories, as well as hay, wheat, corn, straw, and every description of forage. Barns and stables, whether full or empty, were burned.

"At Mrs. Fletcher's (a widow), where the hogs had been killed for her winter's supply of meat, the soldiers made a pile of rails upon which the hogs were placed and burned. They even went to the Poor House and burned and destroyed the supplies provided for the helpless and dependent paupers. On various previous occasions, however, the Alms House had been visited by raiding parties, so that at this time there was but little left, but of that little the larger portion was taken.

[Footnote 39: _Mosby's Rangers_, by James J. Williamson.]

"Colonel Mosby did not call the command together, therefore there was no organized resistance, but Rangers managed to save a great deal of live stock for the farmers by driving it off to places of safety."

_Home Life During the War._

In Loudoun, as everywhere in every age, the seriousness of war was not fully realized until the volunteer soldiery, following a short season of feverish social gayety, interspersed with dress parades and exhibition drills, had departed for their respective posts.

Immediately and with one accord those left behind settled themselves to watch and wait and work and pray for the absent ones and the cause they had so readily championed.

When few slaves were owned by a family the white boys, too young for service in the army, worked with them in the fields, while the girls busied themselves with household duties, though, at times, they, too, labored in the open. In families owning no slaves the old men, cripples, women, and children were forced to shoulder the arduous labors of the farm.

Stern necessity had leveled s.e.xual and worldly distinctions, and manual labor was, at times, performed by all who were in the least physically fitted for it. All cla.s.ses early became inured to makeshifts and privations, though they managed in some unselfish manner to send, from time to time, great quant.i.ties of clothing, meats, and other supplies to the soldiers in the field and their wounded comrades in the army hospitals.

The intense devotion of Loudoun women to the Confederate cause was most irritating to a certain cla.s.s of Federal officers in the armies that invaded Northern Virginia. They seemed to think that through their military prowess they had conquered entrance into Southern society, but the women repulsed them at every turn and quite effectually checked their presumptuous advances.

The women of all cla.s.ses played and sang Confederate airs on every occasion, and, though ordered by the military authorities to desist, with consummate daring they usually persisted until a guard of soldiers had been detailed to enforce the order. The Federal officers who acted in a gentlemanly manner toward the non-combatants were accused by their rude fellows and by ruder newspaper correspondents of being "wound round the fingers of the rebel women," who, they were sure, had some cherished object in view.

The women, without question, had much the harder task. The men, in active service in the field, were reasonably sure that their families were safe at home and, in the feverish excitement of war, felt no concern for themselves, while, on the other hand, the women lived in hourly dread of direful news from the front, and, moreover, were burdened with labors and cares more irksome and hara.s.sing than had ever been borne by the absent males.

The music and songs that were popular just before and during the war attest the vacillating temper of the people. Joyous airs were at first heard, these growing contemptuous and defiant as the struggle approached, then stirring war songs and hymns of encouragement. But as sorrow followed sorrow until all were stricken; as wounds, sickness, imprisonment, and death of friends and relatives cast an ever-lengthening shadow over the spirits of the people; as hopes were dashed by defeat, and the consciousness came that, perhaps, after all the cause was losing, the iron entered into the souls of the people.

The songs became sadder, while in the churches, where the doctrines of faith and good works were earnestly propounded, little else was heard than the soul-comforting hymns and the militant songs of the older churchmen. The promises were, perhaps, more emphasized and a deeply religious feeling prevailed among the home-workers for the cause.

_Pierpont's Pretentious Administration._

On December 7, 1863, the legislature of the "Restored Government of Virginia" held its first meeting in the chambers of the city council at Alexandria, which munic.i.p.ality became the seat of a Union administration in the Old Dominion, after Governor Pierpont's removal from Wheeling, W. Va., where, by unqualified political trickery, he and his unauthorized following had effected the establishment of a new Union commonwealth out of the ruins of Confederate Virginia. Six senators were present, representing the counties of Norfolk, Accomac, Fairfax, Alexandria, and _Loudoun_, and the city of Norfolk. Prince William, Northampton, Alexandria, _Loudoun_, and Norfolk counties were represented by seven delegates. J. Madison Downey, of Loudoun, was elected speaker of the house of delegates.

This tiny mouth-piece of Virginia Unionists had naturally few important, or even ordinary, questions of legislation to decide. The most important was a provision for the amendment of the State const.i.tution with relation to its bearing on the slavery question.

"Everybody," said Governor Pierpont in his message, "loyal or disloyal, concedes that slavery in the State is doomed. Then acting upon this concession, call a convention of loyal delegates, to alter the State const.i.tution in this particular, and declare slavery and involuntary servitude, except for crime, to be forever abolished in the State."

A new const.i.tution which should supercede that of 1851 and express the Union sentiments of the Potomac legislators, was accordingly drafted.

Nominations of delegates to the const.i.tutional convention were made in January, 1864. By the terms of the act relative thereto, any voter in the State who had not adhered by word or act to the Confederacy since September 1, 1861, might be chosen a member of the convention; all "loyal" citizens, who had not given aid or comfort to the Confederacy since January 1, 1863, possessed the right to vote.

Elections were held January 22, 1864. Very little interest was manifested by the people, as was evidenced by the ridiculously small vote everywhere polled. _Loudoun's_ nominees, Dr. J.J. Henshaw, J.

Madison Downey, and E. R. Giver, were elected by a mere handful of voters.

The convention met at Alexandria February 13, 1864, with fifteen[40]

delegates present from twelve counties. Le Roy G. Edwards, of Portsmouth, was elected president and W.J. Cowing, secretary. A number of radical changes in the old const.i.tution, framed by legitimate authority in ante-bellum days, were consummated during the two months'

session of this convention.

[Footnote 40: It should be noted that Loudoun County furnished three of this number.]

The Alexandria government held sway very nearly two years. The legislature met for its second session December 5, 1864, and re-elected J. Madison Downey, of Loudoun County, speaker of the house of delegates.

The Pierpont government was not in itself of great importance. Its influence extended to only a dozen counties and three cities and, "under the shadow of bayonets, it was the rule of a few aliens in the midst of a generally hostile population. Men at the time and since have laughed at its legitimist pretenses." It would have been summarily dismissed by the people but for the protection afforded it by the Federal armies. Thus it appears that the "Restored Government of Virginia" was not based upon the consent and approval of the governed. Yet, suited to a policy of expediency and aggression, it was, with quivering and unseemly eagerness, recognized as the legal government of the State by the Lincoln administration.

_Emanc.i.p.ation._

A significant event of the war was the issuance by President Lincoln of his celebrated emanc.i.p.ation proclamation. This highly important measure, promulgated on New Year's day, 1863, sounded the death-knell of slavery, an inst.i.tution that, in the South, had seemed commercially indispensable.

The tidings spread rapidly through Loudoun producing, however, no change in the amicable relations existing between the white and colored races. In all sections of the South some apprehension was at first felt lest the negroes be tempted by Federal rewards to insurrection and the state militias be required to suppress outbreaks.

The people of Loudoun, of course, shared in these early misgivings, but here, as elsewhere, the negroes, as a whole, manifested no outward signs of disaffection. History must record to their credit and praise that while actual warfare was being waged on the soil of Loudoun they quietly awaited the final issue of the fiery struggle.

Entire communities of women and children were left in their charge, while all able-bodied white men were away on the battlefield, and the trust was faithfully kept. Instances of criminal acts were so rare that at this period none are recalled, and while this fidelity is proof of the peaceable character of the negro, it is also evidence for their owners that slavery had produced no personal hostilities between the two races in Loudoun County, and that the treatment of the negro by his owner under the law had been such as to maintain between them personal attachment and mutual confidence. Many negroes accompanied their owners to the seat of war, not to take part in battle, but to serve in semi-military duties without exposure to danger. Some of them marched in Maryland and Pennsylvania with the armies of Lee, voluntarily returning, although they might have remained in the free States without hindrance. They are still proud of the conduct of their race in those days of anxiety and peril.

The proclamation of President Lincoln was regarded in Virginia as a strictly political war measure, designed to place the cause of war distinctly upon the sole question of slavery for an effect to be produced upon foreign countries and with the purpose of making use of negroes as soldiers in the Federal army. The issue of negro freedom had not been distinctly made until this proclamation created it.

Hitherto it had been understood that, at the furthest, the Federal authorities would insist only on restriction of slavery to the limits where it already existed and a gradual emanc.i.p.ation upon payment of the value of slaves held at the beginning of the war. But now it was settled that the United States proposed to enforce by arms an instantaneous emanc.i.p.ation without compensation.

_Close of the War._

The half-clad and impoverished southern armies, after four years of valiant fighting, were no longer able to withstand the superior numbers that had confronted them with merciless regularity in every important conflict of the war, and, in April, 1865, the struggle ceased with the complete subjugation of the Southland.

All that the States-rights supporters had prophesied would be accomplished if unresisted; all that the Unionists had indignantly denied to be the objects of the war was accomplished: the South was conquered, State sovereignty repudiated, the slaves were freed, and the recognition of negro political equality forced upon the nation.

Neighborhood strifes and animosities had been engendered in every village and hamlet, and in nearly every household mothers wept for the lost darlings asleep in their unmarked graves. The women and children, hearing with a shock of the surrender, experienced a terrible dread of the incoming armies. The women had been enthusiastic for the Confederate cause; their sacrifices had been incalculable, and to many the disappointment and sorrow following defeat were more bitter than death. The soldier had the satisfaction of having fought in the field for his opinions and it was easier for him to abide by the decision of arms.

But the terms of peace had scarcely been signed when the great popular heart of the State swelled with generous and magnanimous rivalry in an effort to repair the past. The soldiers who had fought and striven under the successful banners of the Union came back with no bitterness in their hearts, with no taunts on their lips. The war-worn exiles of the Southern army, long before formal permission had been given by either the State or Federal Government, were summoned home and received with open arms and affectionate greetings by both the Union and States-rights men. The people of the entire State seemed to remember with sorrowful pride the n.o.ble men who had died gallantly in the ranks of either army. Over their faults was thrown the mantle of the sweet and soothing charities of the soldier's grave; and, on all sides, there was manifested unstinted admiration for the valor with which they had borne the dangers and privations of the war.

RECONSTRUCTION.

_After the Surrender._

If the era of Reconstruction which followed the tragic drama of civil war lacked the fierce element of bloodshed, it was none the less painful and protracted. It was a gloomy period through which the people of Loudoun, in common with other communities of the Southland, were compelled to pa.s.s, and there was no appeal and no alternative save submission.

The conditions in the South in this decade were radically different from those in the North. As a result of the war, the markets of the South were destroyed, investments in slaves were lost, and land improvements deteriorated. The close of the war found the planters bankrupt, their credit destroyed, and agriculture and all business paralyzed by lack of working capital. Vast areas of land went out of cultivation, the reported acreage of farm land in all the Southern States was less in 1870 than in 1860, and the total and average values of land everywhere decreased.

The paroled Confederate soldier had returned to his ruined farm and set to work to save his family from extreme want. For him the war had decided two questions--the abolition of slavery, and destruction of State sovereignty. Further than this he did not expect the political effects of the war to extend. He knew that some delay would necessarily attend the restoration of former relations with the central government, but political proscription and humiliation were not antic.i.p.ated.

No one thought of further opposition to Federal authority; the results of the war were accepted in good faith, and the people meant to abide by the decision of arms. Naturally, there were no profuse expressions of love for the triumphant North, but the people in general manifested an earnest desire to leave the past behind them and to take their places and do their duty as citizens of the new Union. Many persons were disposed to attribute their defeat to the will of the Almighty.