Legends of Loudoun Part 19

His men were volunteers, many having served in other Confederate commands and thence attracted to Mosby by his romantic reputation and his greater freedom of operation. Numerous Loudoun men were in the organization[173] but they made up a much smaller proportion than in White's Battalion or in the 8th Virginia Regiment. Many of his men were very young. One of these youths who survived the constant perils which surrounded the band was John H. Alexander, born in Clarke County. After peace was declared, he completed his interrupted education, was admitted to the Bar and, eventually taking up his permanent residence in Loudoun, very successfully practiced his profession there until his death in February, 1909. He wrote an interesting book, _Mosby's Men_, covering his experience with that leader, which was published in 1907. His only son, the Hon. John H. R. Alexander, one of the most esteemed and efficient judges Loudoun has contributed to the Virginia Bench, now presides over the Circuit Court for Loudoun and adjacent counties. Two more of Mosby's youths, these both of Loudoun, were Henry C. Gibson and J. West Aldridge. After the war Mr. Gibson married Mr. Aldridge's sister. Dr. John Aldridge Gibson and Dr. Harry P. Gibson, prominent Leesburg physicians, are the sons of this marriage. Did s.p.a.ce permit many others Loudoun members of the command could be mentioned. The instances given go to show how the sons of Mosby's Rangers still carry on in Loudoun.

[173] See rosters in Williamson, pp. 475 and 487.

On the 17th June, 1863, Lee's Army was on its way north for its second invasion of Maryland and toward the fateful field of Gettysburg. General J. E. B. Stuart, in command of the Confederate Cavalry, had established his temporary headquarters at Middleburg. Early that morning Colonel Munford, with the 2nd and 3rd Virginia Cavalry, acting as advance guard of General Fitzhugh Lee, was foraging in the neighborhood of Aldie with Colonel Williams C. Wickham, who had with him the 1st, 4th, and 5th Virginia Cavalry. While Colonel Thomas L. Rosser was carrying out Colonel Wickham's orders to select a camp near Aldie, he came in contact with General G. M. Griggs' 2nd Cavalry Division of Federals made up of General Kilpatrick's Brigade (2nd and 4th New York, 1st Ma.s.sachusetts and 6th Ohio Regiments) the 1st Maine Cavalry and Randol's Battery.

These forces attacked each other with the greatest determination and courage. Charges were followed by counter-charges and desperately contending every foot of ground the adversaries surged up and down the Little River Turnpike and the Snickerville Road, where two squadrons of sharpshooters from the 2nd and 3rd Virginia Cavalry were holding back Kilpatrick's men. Says Colonel Munford in his report of the fight:

"As the enemy came up again the sharpshooters opened upon him with terrible effect from the stone wall, which they had regained, and checked him completely. I do not hesitate to say that I have never seen so many Yankees killed in the same s.p.a.ce of ground in any fight I have seen on any battle field in Virginia that I have been over. We held our ground until ordered by the major-general commanding to retire, and the Yankees had been so severely punished that they did not follow. The sharpshooters of the 5th were mostly captured, this regiment suffering more than any other."[174]

[174] _Life and Campaigns of General J. E. B. Stuart_, by H. B.

McClellan, 301.

In truth the Federal soldiers had paid dearly for their victory. Dr.

James Moore, who was acting as surgeon with Kilpatrick and afterward wrote a life of that General, calls this engagement "by far the most b.l.o.o.d.y cavalry battle of the war."[175]

[175] Moore's _Kilpatrick and Our Cavalry_, 71.

While all this desperate fighting was going on around Aldie, Colonel A.

N. Duffie, with the 1st Rhode Island Cavalry, was on a scouting expedition, having crossed the Bull Run Mountain at Thoroughfare Gap and being headed for Noland's Ferry. His orders were to camp on the night of the 17th at Middleburg. Approaching that town about 4:00 o'clock in the afternoon, he drove in Stuart's pickets "so quickly that Stuart and his staff were compelled to make a retreat more rapid than was consistent with dignity and comfort."[176] The Confederate forces at Aldie were notified of the situation and ordered to Middleburg but Duffie apparently was not aware of the heavy fighting that had taken place at Aldie. When he at length succeeded in getting a message through to Aldie, asking reinforcements, Kilpatrick replied that his brigade was too exhausted to respond, though he would report the situation at once to General Pleasanton, in command of the Federals. "Thus" writes H. B.

McClellan, "Col. Duffie was left to meet his fate.... His men fought bravely and repelled more than one charge before they were driven from the town, retiring by the same road upon which they had advanced." But during the night Duffie was surrounded by Chambliss's Brigade and although Duffie himself, with four of his officers and twenty-seven men, eluded their foes and reached Centreville the next afternoon, he was obliged to report a loss of twenty officers and 248 men. Some of these, at first thought killed or captured, also succeeded in getting back to the Federal lines but the defeat had been crushing.

[176] _Life and Campaigns of Maj.-Gen. J. E. B. Stuart_, 303.

After Gettysburg, General Lee's Army pa.s.sed through Loudoun, followed by General Meade. Again, on the 14th July, 1864, General Early, after the battle of Monocacy, crossed with his Army from Maryland to Virginia at White's Ford. After resting his men in and around Leesburg he proceeded by way of Purcellville and Snickers Gap to the Valley.

All this time Mosby had been active in his "Confederacy" and attacks on the Federal communications also had been made by White's Battalion when in and around Loudoun. These attacks, frequently successful and always without warning, had caused great losses to the Federals and forced them to keep a large number of men engaged in their rear who badly were needed elsewhere. On the 16th August, 1864, General Grant, determining to end the menace, sent the following order to Major General Sheridan:

"If you can possibly spare a division of Cavalry, send them through Loudoun County to destroy and carry off the crops, animals, negroes and all men under fifty years of age capable of bearing arms. In this way you will get many of Mosby's men. All male citizens under fifty can fairly be held as prisoners of war, and not as citizen prisoners. If not already soldiers, they will be made so the moment the rebel army gets hold of them."

But Sheridan at that time was far too busy with his campaign in the Valley immediately to comply. It was not until after his decisive victory over Early at Cedar Creek on the 19th October, that he felt he could act. On the 27th November he issued the following orders to Major General Merritt in command of the 1st Cavalry Division:

"You are hereby directed to proceed, tomorrow morning at 7 o'clock, with 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 the army communications, on safeguards left at houses, and on 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 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. The 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 to them by this army 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 your command. Forage can be gathered from the country through which you pa.s.s.

"You will return to your present camp, via Snickersville, on the fifth day.

"By command of Major-General Sheridan.

James W. Forsyth, Lieutenant-Colonel and Chief of Staff.

"Brevet Major-General Merritt Commanding First Cavalry Division."

In pursuance of these orders Federal soldiers in three bodies entered the county on their devastating work. Williamson, himself a member of Mosby's band and an eyewitness of what followed, writes:

"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--Colonel Mosby did not call the command together, therefore there was no organized resistance, but Rangers managed to save a great deal of livestock for the farmers by driving it off to places of safety. In many instances, after the first day of burning, we would run off stock from the path of the raiders into the limits of the district already burned over, and there it was kept undisturbed or in a situation where it could be more easily driven off and concealed...."[177]

[177] Williamson, 317.

The loss to the county was enormous. Although many old and well-built mills, and barns of brick or stone were not destroyed, as is conclusively proven by their survival to this day, and the devastation did not equal that in the Valley,[178] yet how great was the aggregate damage is suggested by a report submitted to the second session of the Fifty-first Congress (1890-91) in which sworn claims of adherents to the Union alone amounted to $199,228.24 for property burned and to an additional $61,821.13 for live stock taken; the report adding that there had been no estimate of the losses sustained by those whose sympathies were with the Confederates.[179] That the total loss to the people of the County, as a result of Sheridan's order, was over a million dollars well may be believed--and this in a community which had been raided and robbed and levied upon by both armies, as well as many outlaw bands for over three years of warfare! The privations and suffering of the following winter and spring can but be imagined. It may be noted that a Federal Brigade, under General Deven, established its headquarters at Lovettsville about Christmas time and that, although his soldiers patrolled all parts of Loudoun during that winter, yet in spite of all the war-time strain and hatreds, their relations with the people of the county were far better than usually prevailed.

[178] _Comanches_, 356.

[179] House Report No. 3859.

"The year 1864 closed with a gloomy outlook for the Confederacy" writes Williamson and adds that "the winter in Virginia was very severe and the ground was covered with snow and sleet for the better part of the season." About all the comfort Loudoun had was in the repeated rumours of peace to which the people eagerly listened and repeated one to another.

And so the bitter winter pa.s.sed and in the spring came Appomattox.

CHAPTER XVI

RECOVERY

From east to west, from north to south, her farm lands ravaged, plundered and made desolate, many of her sons dead or incapacitated by wounds or sickness, her barns, outbuildings and fences burned, her horses, cattle and other livestock stolen, confiscated or wantonly driven away, Loudoun presented, in that summer of 1865, a sad and dispiriting contrast to the fruitful abundance of five years before. By the terms of the surrender at Appomattox the Southern cavalryman had been allowed to retain the horse or horses owned by him; but as the infantry started on their long trudge homeward, they carried with them little beyond the ragged clothes they wore and their determination to begin life anew. How slowly and with what unremitting toil and self-denial the ruined farms were restored, the fields again made to yield their corn and wheat and clover, rails split to rebuild the vanished fences, makeshifts at first and then better structures erected to replace those burned, only the people who lived through those years of poverty could tell; and on that slow path upward from ruin and desolation the part borne by the women equalled, perhaps surpa.s.sed, that enacted by the men. The County still reverently relates the uncomplaining toil and sacrifices of mothers, wives and daughters during that grievous time.

Bad as conditions were for the majority, they were even worse for the large landowners, the former wealthier cla.s.s. Gentlefolk, wholly unused to manual labor, perforce turned to tasks theretofore the work of their slaves. The men ploughed and hoed, their women cooked, performed every household task and somehow kept up their homes. One of the few bright spots in the drab picture was that dwelling-houses seldom had been destroyed; thus at least there was human shelter. Also the small towns and hamlets, having escaped the devastation of the farm lands, were to a certain extent nuclei from which the new life could be built.

County government had well-nigh ceased to function during the war. All those who had borne arms against the United States or otherwise aided and abetted the Confederacy--that is, a very definite majority of the men of the county--now found themselves disfranchised; the minority of Union men, Quakers, Germans or others who had discreetly avoided acting with one side or the other, controlled the first local election after the peace. It was held on the 1st day of June, 1865. The court record, after a long silence and copied into its books later, begins again on the 10th of the following month:

"At a County Court held for Loudoun County on Monday the 10th day of July, 1865, present: George Abel, R. M. Bentley, Francis M. Carter, John Compher, Thomas J. Cost, John P. Derry, Enoch Fenton, Herod Frasier, Fenton Furr, Henry Gaver, John Grubb, William H. Gray, Eli J. Hoge, Joseph Janney, Alexander L. Lee, Charles L. Mankin, Asbury M. Nixon, Rufus Smith, Basil W. Shoemaker, Jno. L. Stout, Mahlon Thomas, Lott Tavenner, Henry S. Taylor, Michael Wiard, Jno. Wolford, Thomas Burr Williams and James M. Wallace. Gentlemen Justices elected who were on the 1st day of June 1865 duly elected Justices of the peace for the County of Loudoun, and who have been commissioned by the Governor, were duly qualified as such Justices by William F. Mercer, one of the Commissioners of Election for said County, appointed by the Governor by taking the several oaths prescribed by law."[180]

[180] 17 Loudoun Minute Books, 70.

The new county officers were William H. Gray, presiding justice of the court; Charles P. Janney, clerk of the county; Samuel C. Luckett, sheriff; William B. Downey, commonwealth's attorney; Samuel Ball, commissioner of revenue.

On the 11th July, 1865, there appears the following:

"George K. Fox Jr., as Clerk of this Court having removed from the County the records of this Court, under an order of Court heretofore made, he is now ordered to return the said records to the Clerks office as soon as possible."[181]

[181] Idem, 2.

These instructions were carried out by Mr. Fox. For over three years he had guarded his trust, without opportunity to return to Leesburg or see a member of his family during that time. He now found himself disfranchised; but between him and Charles P. Janney the new county clerk, who before the war had worked in his office, there was a strong friendship so that Mr. Janney appointed Mr. Fox his a.s.sistant, in which position he served until his reelection as county clerk, which occurred as soon as the civil disabilities of the former Confederates were removed. He continued as county clerk until his death on the 14th of December, 1872, at the early age of forty years. How truly valued was he in Loudoun was shown at his funeral which is said to have been the largest the county had known to that time.

On the 2nd March, 1867, the Congress pa.s.sed that indefensible Reconstruction Act which was to leave more bitterness in the South than the war itself, but, in all that followed, Virginia suffered less than other States of the old Confederacy. Under that act Virginia became Military District Number One and General John M. Schofield, formerly the head of the Potomac Division of the Federal Army, was given command. His choice was a most fortunate one for Virginia. Of him Richard L. Morton writes: