Day 9. March 9, 1862.
9
O Shenandore, I love to hear you….
March Sunday 9
Quite pleasant this morning and appears very much like spring. I put the baggage on the wagons and hospital stores. We have all got 3 days rations in our haversacks and our wagons are all loaded on the cars and baggage and horses and at 4ocklock we got on a train and at sundown we left Paw Paw Tunnel for Back Creek* 10 ½ miles west of Martinsburg where we had to stop on account of the arch blowen up on the B&O R.R. We slept in the cars all night. They were freight cars. I sleep very well all night and we came through two tunnels** on the Rail Road in Virginia. In the morning we found ourselves at Back Creek but the bridge had only commenced on Friday morning and was expecting to have it done soon
*A tributary of the Potomac River. See tomorrow for more on Back Creek.
**The Paw Paw Tunnel, which is over 2 miles, is in West VA. along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal (C&O). Opened in 1850. Paw Paw Station still stands, but there are broken tracks, and no trains have railed through since 1940. Recently, a proposed bike trail was not approved: bats, hanging Dracula-style in the pitch black, proved too much for townsfolk. Note also that at Pittsburgh “The Great Strike of 1877” takes place. July 16, workers on the B&O Railroad refuse to work in Martinsburg, WV. All cars on the Pennsylvania Railroad come to a stop and local police refuse to fire on strikers. Over 100 locomotives and 2,000 railroad cars are torched. See: Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877, Eric Foner, P. 583-584:“In Pennsylvania’s anthracite coal region, where “wages had been cut down until once comfortably-nourished families began to languish in misery,” some 40,000 workers left their jobs. “The most extensive and deplorable workingmen’s strike which ever took place in this, or indeed in any other country,” as The Nation described it….”
Foner writes, “Among other things, 1877 marked a decisive retreat from the idea, born during the Civil War, of a powerful national state protecting the fundamental rights of American citizens.
The strike exposed the deep hostility to railroads—symbols and creators of the new industrial order—that permeated many American communities. “Public opinion,” reported the New York Tribune, “is almost everywhere in sympathy with the insurrection.” Note as well other such as the Battle of Blair Mountain, West VA., 1921, coal, 10,000 against 3,000 police & strikebreakers, & a million rounds fired. the largest labor uprising & armed anything here since the Civil War.
(See July 5 Postscript for more post-war events.)
And note: PA.’s Appalachia region, the ongoing hostilities amidst war memory:
Americans Remember Their Civil War Barbara A. Gannon P. 33
“Robert M. Sandow discovered that “Grudges and Loyalties Die So Slowly” when he examined the “Contested Memories of the Civil War in Pennsylvania’s Appalachia” (2010), the home of a number of men and women who refused to support the federal war effort, particularly if it meant military service. After the war, these Pennsylvanians remembered their dissent. In fact, these memories were as much about Pennsylvania’s present as it was about their past. Many residents who rejected the war worked in the mines and participated in 1870s’ labor struggles. Between the memory of wartime rebellion and the reality of postwar turmoil it was not surprising that when a local citizen who had shot a sheriff enforcing the wartime conscription came to trial in 1874, he was cleared of all charges.”
Note too: Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s Piers Brendon P. 89
“During 1931 there were strikes and disturbances amounting almost to guerrilla warfare in the coalfields of Pennsylvania.”
P. 86
“Between the autumn of 1931 and the following spring the casualty lists of the Depression lengthened like those of the Great War. More than ten million people were unemployed but only a quarter of them were receiving relief. Indeed, about a quarter of the entire population, some 30 million Americans, were without any income at all. Two million vagrants, many of them youths, roamed the country looking for work. Twenty per cent of the nation’s school children were underweight; in the poorest communities– among the share-croppers of Alabama or the coal mines of Pennsylvania, Kentucky and West Virginia– over 90 per cent were affected.”
Last: R.B. Mellon, 1925 Pittsburgh United Mine Union buster: “You couldn’t run a coal mine without machine guns.” See for more about coal, & race baiting:
Civil War Weather in Virginia Robert K. Krick P. 51
“7a.m. 29; 2p.m. 65; 9p.m. 42. Smoky at 7, heavy frost.”
Lincoln Day by Day: A Chronology 1809-1865 Volume III: 1861-1865 C. Percy Powell P. 99
“March 9, 1862: Lincoln walks to White House. Asks Henry J. Raymond to reconsider compensated emancipation and print another article in New York “Times.” “One half-day’s cost of this war would pay for all the slaves in Delaware, at four hundred dollars per head.’”
The Thin Light of Freedom: The Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America Edward L. Ayers P. 125
“Since the beginning of the war, the Valley had played a critical role as a supplier of food and fodder to the Confederacy. The Valley Campaign of 1862 had been fought in part to protect that capacity and the Pennsylvania campaign of 1863 had sought to give the farms of the Valley time to replenish themselves in the summer. With the loss of Chattanooga and the cutting off of the railroads to the south, the Valley would be essential for the survival of Lee’s army and the Confederate capital of Richmond.
P. 126
The Valley had been, from the war’s beginning, “the great granary” of the Confederacy and of Robert E. Lee’s army. If Lee had to leave Virginia, the “withdrawal of that gallant army from Virginia by any cause whatever would depress the spirits of the people, not only in this State, but in the whole South, more than all the defeats we have suffered since the war.’”
The South: A Tour of its Battlefields and Ruined Cities, A Journey Through the Desolated States, and Talks with the People, 1867 J.T. Trowbridge, J.H. Segards, Editor P. 226
“In 1860 there were in the State less than eleven and a half million acres of improved land, out of an area of near forty millions. Over thirteen million bushels of wheat were produced; one million of rye, Indian corn, and oats; one hundred and twenty-four million pounds of tobacco; twelve thousand seven hundred and twenty-seven bales of cotton; and two and a half million pounds of wool (in round numbers). There were four thousand nine hundred manufacturing establishments, the value of whose manufactures was fifty-one million three hundred thousand dollars. There were thirteen cotton factories, running twenty-eight thousand seven hundred spindles. The most important article of export before the war was negroes. There were sold out of the State annually twenty thousand.
Footnote 1: “In 1850, the number of slave-owners in the State was 55,063. Of these 11,385 owned one slave each; 15,550, more than one and less than 5; 13,030, more than 5 and less than 10; 9,456, more than 10 and less than 20; 4,880, more than 20 and less than 50; 646, more than 50 and less than 100; 107, over 100 and less than 200; 8 over 200 and less than 300; and 1, over 300.”
How the South Could Have Won the Civil War: The Fatal Errors That Led to Confederate Defeat Bevin Alexander P. 272
“It was not evident to the leaders on either side until late in the war that the key to defense of the South rested on Chattanooga and Atlanta. The lateral railways ran through these towns and connected both theaters with the Confederacy’s open ports and with Richmond. Should Chattanooga and Atlanta be lost and the rail lines cut, then to all intents and purposes the Confederacy would be reduced to the Carolinas and Virginia.”
Note: Right now there’s no national gauge for railroad lines. Lincoln passes through Congress The Pacific Railway Act (July, 1862) for the first transcontinental rail line, 1,912 miles, connecting the track at Iowa all the way out to San Francisco (finished in 1869, late due to Civil War delays). Instead of several months to cross America, it took a week. And for the first time, accurate national maps got drawn up. Golden age of rail from the B&O to the Transcontinental Railroad: https://northeastmaglev.com/2018/10/09/the-golden-age-of-rail-in-the-usa-from-the-bo-to-the-transcontinental-railroad-to-the-northeast-maglev/ Note that in The South: A Tour of its Battlefields and Ruined Cities, A Journey Through the Desolated States, and Talks with the People Trowbridge states that “In 1860, there were in Virginia $66,000,000 of capital invested in 1675 miles of railroad, distributed over 16 lines. This estimate includes 287 miles of the Baltimore and Ohio Road. In all the important roads except this, the State is a principal shareholder. The management of some of them has always been loose and uneconomical.” (P. 234)
Note: The Northeast Maglev is a high-speed superconducting magnetic levitation (SCMAGLEV) system using Central Japan Railway Company (JR Central) technology. A proposed 15 minute trip between Baltimore & D.C., & an hour NYC to D.C. Hopefully will be built.
Nature’s Civil War: Common Soldiers and the Environment in 1862 Virginia Kathryn Shively Meier P. 37
“The 1862 Shenandoah Valley campaign and the preceding Romney campaign in January presented a challenging combination of mountainous terrain and variable weather, constant movement, and logistical snafu. The geographic space of the Valley encompasses the Shenandoah River watershed, extending roughly southwest from the Potomac River to Lexington for about 140 miles. The Alleghenies punctuate the western border while the Blue Ridge Mountains mark the east, facing each other like chess pieces across a great, crisscrossing board of farms. The Shenandoah River flows north, landing itself to peculiar terminology: the Northern region is the Lower Valley and the Southern portion the Upper Valley. Likewise, to go “up” the Valley is to go south and to go “down” the Valley is to venture north. Traversing the Valley landscape was a laborious undertaking during the Civil War. It did not just mean the plodding on the macadamized Valley Turnpike, one of the best roads in the Confederacy. In reality, even the Turnpike was hard and unforgiving on infantry feet when it froze or when traversed by the improperly shod. But soldiering in the Valley necessarily meant braving the mountains, the largest of which, Massanutten, stands 2,900 feet tall near Harrisonburg with only one passable gap. The Alleghenies and Blue Ridge Mountains also possessed few passages, each narrow, requiring treacherous climbs with heavy gear. Because of the varied terrain, the Valley attracted formidable weather– alternating snow, rain, wind, and ice.
Despite its natural challenges and its transformation to active campaign site during the war, the idea of the Valley as salubrious would be difficult for soldiers to shake. Soldiers in both gray and blue frequently marveled at the region’s beauty. “I looked upon this great handiwork of Creation and wondered if an atheist could look upon this land and say there is no God,” wrote Stonewall Brigade hospital steward John S. Apperson. Lt. Col. David Strother, a Virginia-born Yankee, concurred: “The sight of this beautiful valley, its rural wealth and improvements, seemed to have softened the hearts of officers and men.” Pvt. Thomas Ellis, an infantryman in the 111th Pennsylvania, could lament his disease environment and still praise the Valley’s majestic scenery in one breath: “We had to march 2 days through verry hard rain and then lay down in wet clothes on the wet cold ground. i here it has caused a great deal of sickness in our camps nearly all the soldiers are troubled with the dioreah. The Valley of the Shaunandoah is one of the finest that I have ever seen in all my travels…. I think that this must be a very healthy country. Though very warm,” he added with little concern over his apparent contradiction.”
Note: The Appalachian Mountains are 480 million years old; so old, in fact, they not only predate the Atlantic Ocean, but at one time reached into Europe, & used to be as high as the Alps & Rockies. They move from Alabama up to Newfoundland. In 1562, Diego Gutiérrez’s map has them called “Apalchen.”
A Stillness at Appomattox Bruce Catton P. 272-274
“There may be lovelier country somewhere—in the Island Vale of Avalon, at a gamble—but when the sunlight lies upon it and the wind puts white clouds racing their shadows the Shenandoah Valley is as good as anything America can show. Many generations ago the Knights of the Golden Horseshoe climbed the Blue Ridge to look down on it in wonder, and ever since then it has been a legend and the fulfillment of a promise. There is music in its very name, and some quality in the region touched the imaginations of men who had never even seen it. The sailors on deep water sailing ships made one of their finest chanteys about it, and sent topsail yards creaking to the masthead in ports all over the world to the tune of “Shenandore”:
O Shenandore, I love to hear you—
Away, you rolling river.
During the war it was known simply as the Valley: an open corridor slanting off to the southwest from the gap at Harper’s Ferry, broad land lying between blue mountains with the bright mirror of a looped river going among golden fields and dark woodlands, pleasant towns linked along a broad undulating turnpike and rich farms rolling away to the rising hills.
Queerly enough, although it had been a vital factor in the war, in a way the war had hardly touched it. Stonewall Jackson had made it a theater of high strategy, and there had been hard fighting along the historic turnpike and near quaint villages like Front Royal and Port Republic, and most of the fence rails on farms near the main highway had long since vanished to build the campfires of soldiers in blue and gray. Yet even in the summer of 1864 the land bore few scars. East of the Blue Ridge and the Bull Run mountains the country along the Orange and Alexandria Railroad* had been marched over and fought over and ravaged mercilessly, and it was a desolate waste picked clean of everything an army might want or a farmer could use. But the Valley had escaped most of this, and when Phil Sheridan got there it was much as it had always been—rich, sunny, peaceful, a land of good farms and big barns, yellow grain growing beside the green pastures, lazy herds of sheep and cattle feeding on the slopes.
Originally, the Valley had drawn many settlers from Pennsylvania and the Cumberland Valley, and these were mostly Dunkers, with a sprinkling of Quakers, Mennonites, and Nazarenes: devout, frugal, and industrious folk who held firmly to a belief that was sinful—a belief for which there may be a certain amount of backing, both in Scripture and in racial experience—and their religion forbade the faithful to take up arms. As non-resistants these people had been a problem to the Confederate government, since they would not volunteer and, because of the stubbornness with which they held to their faith, could not well be drafted. But before the war was very old they became an asset instead of a problem. The Confederate Congress in 1862 provided that they might be exempted from military service on payment of a $500 tax, and as a result the farms of the Valley had no shortage of manpower. And because the men were good farmers and the soil was fertile, the Valley became an incomparable granary and source of supply for Lee’s soldiers. Rations might be short now and then, because of poor transportation and an incompetent commissariat, but as long as these sober pacifists continued to till their lands and raise their flocks and operate their gristmills, Lee’s army could not be starved out of Richmond.
An accident of geography made the Valley worth more to the South than to the North, strategically. Running from southwest to northeast, the Valley was the Confederacy’s great covered way leading up to the Yankee fortress, the high parapet of the Blue Ridge offering concealment and protection. A Confederate army coming down the Valley was marching directly toward the Northern citadel, but a Yankee army moving up the Valley was going nowhere in particular because it was constantly getting farther away from Richmond and Richmond’s defenders. Nor did a Confederate force operating in the Valley have serious problems of supply. The Valley itself was the base, and it could be drawn on for abundant food and forage from Staunton all the way to Winchester and beyond.
Both Lee and Grant were thoroughly familiar with these facts. In the spring of 1862 Lee had used them, sending Stonewall Jackson down the Valley in such a way as to bring the North to stunning defeat. In the summer of 1864 he had used them again, and Early’s foray had caused more trouble. From the moment he took command Grant had had to take these facts into consideration. Until he solved the problem of the Valley, the Army of the Potomac was never safe from an attack in its rear.”
Note: The Valley in two years:
The Civil War The Final Year: Told by Those Who Lived It Edited by Aaron Sheehan-Dean P. 322-323
“SMOKE AND FLAME”: VIRGINIA, AUGUST 1864
Mathella Page Harrison: Diary, August 17, 1864
“(The union defeat at Kernstown, Virginia, on July 24 and the burning of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, by Jubal Early’s cavalry on July 30 led Lincoln and Grant to reorganize the forces opposing Early in the Shenandoah Valley. Major General Philip H. Sheridan, the commander of the Army of the Potomac’s Cavalry Corps, took command of the new Army of the Shenandoah on August 7, and began advancing south from Harpers Ferry three days later. When his cavalry encountered infantry reinforcements from Lee’s army near Front Royal on August 16, Sheridan decided to withdraw to the north and guard the Potomac River crossings. From her farm in Millwood, Mathella Page Harrison watched as Union soldiers carried out Grant’s orders to confiscate or destroy the Valley’s provisions, forage, and livestock.)”
“Wednesday, August 17th– Night has closed at last on this day of horrors. Years almost seem to have rolled since I opened my eyes this morning. The first sound that greeted my ears was the rumbling of Yankee waggons passing onward with their troops to swell the hosts of those who passed last week and who were assembled in and around Winchester waiting for Early’s return. At nine o’clock Yankee pickets were stationed in every hill. Fires of barns, stockyards etc. Soon burst forth and by eleven, from a high elevation, fifty could be seen blazing forth. The whole country was enveloped with smoke and flame. The sky was lurid and but for the green trees one might have decided the shades of Hades had descended suddenly. The shouts, ribald jokes, awful oaths, demoniacal laughter of the fiends added to the horrors of the day. They demanded feed when they had just applied the torch to the provisions of the year, and indeed years, for now the seed which would have been sown has been destroyed. In almost every instance every head of stock had been driven off. Those young animals that refused to go were shot down. Near a farm where eight fires were blazing. Custer** and his staff sat exulting over the ruin they had wrought. Large families of children were left without one cow. In many of the barns were stowed in and around carriages, all kinds of farming implements, waggons, plows, etc., and in no instance did they allow anything to be saved. The loss is inestimable and unpardonable in these times, situated as we are, communications with our lines so difficult, and no trade with the enemy even if we wished it. Hay, oats and straw were burnt with the wheat. I cannot imagine what the poor cattle are to live on this winter. Owing to the great drought the field grass burnt like tinder. Almost half of the county was in flames. Some of the dwellings were sacked, clothing, provisions, male and female taken indiscriminately. Remember Chambersburg was their watch word. Thoroughly did they enjoy their days work. When one fire at its hottest, the dwelling in peril of being added to the number, one turned to the other, “Haven’t we had a nice day?” Retaliation may be glorious for the interior of Dixie but to those in this poor place debatable land its fires are almost beyond endurance.”
In the Presence of Mine Enemies: The Civil War in the Heart of America, 1859-1864 Edward Ayers P. 406-407
“‘They took all they could find,” Cree wrote with terror and disgust, “even little children, whom they had to carry on horseback before them.” All who could get there fled to the woods, and many who were wise hid in the houses of their employers.” Despite such efforts by white patrons, the numbers and guns lay with the Confederates, who captured “about 250 people . . . into bondage,” Chambersburg merchant William Heyser estimated. Amos Stouffer sadly observed that Confederates “are scouring the country in every direction about Waynesboro, Greencastle, Mercersburg [and] Finkstown for horses and cattle and Negroes.”
Wagons left Chambersburg with thirty to forty black women and children, heading for Virginia under the control of a Confederate chaplain and four soldiers. A group of local whites, led by the owner of a local inn, stopped the wagons, disarmed the soldiers, took them prisoner, and set the women and children free. The Greencastle residents decided that they risked the destruction of their town if they did not release the soldiers, and so they did so. But the chaplain demanded fifty thousand dollars to pay for the loss of the people he claimed as his slaves. Though he lowered his demands by half, the townspeople still did not have that much money. After threatening to return and burn the town, the chaplain left. A local reporter met thirteen of the captured African Americans voluntarily returning to Greencastle after they had heard of the threatened burning. They were going to turn themselves over to prevent retaliation against their friends but were delighted to hear that the man who claimed to own them had departed.”
Beleaguered Winchester: A Virginia Community at War, 1861– 1865 Richard R. Duncan P. 209-210
“The Lincoln administration had reservations about house-burnings. On August 14 the president and Stanton suggested to Grant that he should confer with Lee over the matter of discontinuing the “destruction of private property.” After reflecting on the proposal, Grant preferred “to publish a prohibitory order against burning private property except where it is a Military necessity or in retaliation for like acts by the enemy.” Based on his experience, Grant told the president that the Confederates could not be trusted to observe an agreement “longer than suits their convenience.”
On August 26 Grant wired Sheridan, “If the war is to last another year, we want the Shenandoah Valley to remain a barren waste.” In fact ten days earlier Sheridan had ordered Gen. Alfred T.A. Torbert to destroy “all the wheat and hay south of a line from Millwood to Winchester and Petticoat Gap. You will seize all horses, mules, and cattle that may be useful to our army.” In keeping with Grant’s instructions he cautioned that no houses should be burned and that officers “must inform the people that the object is to make this Valley untenable for the raiding parties of the rebel army.” In a follow-up circular Gen. James Wilson reiterated the prohibition against marauding and illegal seizure of property. Soldiers were forbidden from entering “houses or enclosures” and seizing property without proper procedure. When property was taken, owners were to give receipts according to quartermaster regulations.”
Note: I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you how much of a joke that was in actual practice. People never, or rarely, ever saw their stuff again, nor got any compensation, & soldiers of both armies freely entered any dwelling they chose, unless the owner was protected (say, famous in politics in some way), hence was guarded by higher-ups standing right outside 24/7 until the army moved on.
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era James McPherson P. 501-502
“Although Pope did not shoot any guerrillas or expel any civilians, his policy concerning southern property was carried out, in Virginia as in other theaters, by privates as well as officers, with or without orders. Large portions of the South were becoming a wasteland. Much of this was the inevitable destruction of war, as both armies cut down trees and tore up fences for firewood, wrecked bridges and culverts and railroads or cannibalized whatever structures they could find to rebuild wrecked bridges and railroads, or seized crops, livestock, and poultry for food. Soldiers have pillaged civilian property since the beginning of time. But by midsummer 1862 some of the destruction of southern property had acquired a purposeful, even an ideological dimension. More and more Union soldiers were writing that it was time to take off the “kid gloves” in dealing with “traitors.’”
Note: Johannes A. S. Oertel (1823-1909) painted large works such as “The Union Scout” and “Army Supply Trains in the Shenandoah Valley” after he traveled with the Union army and sketched for a year.
Note: One year and 2 months ago today, Rebels fire on the Star of the West as it tries to deliver supplies to Fort Sumter. These were the first shots of the war.
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we found ourselves….
a tool tray, lancet, scalpel, steel blade, probe, chain ligature, a tool to bore into bone, amputation knife, forward hand grip, bone saw, bullet extractor, bone grip, bone crimper, surgical saw, hatchet edge for cutting away bone, surgeon’s mallet, a bone cutter, tourniquet
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