Near Mt. Crawford, Oct. 5, 1864.
I have reveillé about one hour before daybreak, — am always
awake, but never get up now, unless there are Rebs round.
Did you see the new moon last night within a quarter of an inch
of the evening star, and turning her back on him? They must have been close
together an hour before I could see them; for an hour after, they were still
less than an inch apart. They looked very strangely calm and peaceful and
almost reproachful in the West last night, — with the whole North and East, far
and near, lighted up by burning barns and houses. Lieutenant Meigs was shot by
a guerrilla, and by order the village of Dayton and everything for several
miles around was burned.1 I am very glad my Brigade had no hand in it.
Though if it will help end bushwhacking, I approve it, and I would cheerfully
assist in making this whole Valley a desert from Staunton northward, — for
that would have, I am sure, an important effect on the campaign of the Spring,—
but in partial burnings I see less justice and less propriety. I was
sorry enough the other day that my Brigade should have had a part in the
hanging and shooting of some of Mosby's men who were taken, — I believe that
some punishment was deserved, — but I hardly think we were within the laws of
war, and any violation of them opens the door for all sorts of barbarity, — it
was all by order of the Division Commander, however. The war in this part of
the country is becoming very unpleasant to an officer's feelings.
We have moved camp once every day since Saturday, but only
for short distances; so the date is still the same.
I think [the mail-carrier] is miserably timid about
guerrillas, — he won't come unless he has at least a brigade for escort, —
perhaps he is right, however; important despatches from General Grant to
Sheridan were taken, day before yesterday, by guerrillas, — provoking enough
when we are hoping to hear that Petersburg is taken, or perhaps to get the
orders which instruct us how to cooperate in taking it.2
I think that we shall move soon. As we are foraging our
horses entirely upon the country, we have to move frequently, but lately we
have done a little too much of it. This is a very scrubby letter and written
before breakfast, too.
I do wish this war was over! . . . Never mind. I'm doing all I can to end
it. Good-bye.
_______________
1 General Sheridan, in a despatch to General
Grant, said, “Lieutenant John R. Meigs, my engineer officer, was murdered
beyond Harrisburg. . . . For this
atrocious act, all the houses within an area of five miles were burned. Since I
came into the Valley from Harper's Ferry, every train, every small party, and
every straggler has been bushwhacked by people, many of whom have protection papers
from commanders who have been hitherto in that Valley.” It was asserted at the
time that the murderer was disguised in the United States uniform. Mr. George
E. Pond, associate editor of the Army and Navy Journal, in his book on
the Campaign in the Shenandoah Valley (1883), says, “It was ascertained,
after the war, that this gallant youth [Lieutenant Meigs], a soldier of
brilliant gifts and promise, the son of the Quartermaster-General, fell at the
hands of an enlisted Confederate soldier of Wickham's brigade, engaged in
scouting.”
2 In 1864, the evils of guerrilla warfare rose to
high-water mark. The sure demoralization which such a system wrought in those
engaged in it, reached such a pitch that even the Confederate authorities could
not ignore it. Matters worked in a vicious circle. Murderous marauding drove
the Union commanders to devastating the places known to harbour these men. The
devastation naturally enraged the inhabitants, and led them even to private
bushwhacking. In the late autumn of 1864, bitter retaliations began on both
sides. As early as January, 1864, the Confederate General Rosser, who had had
opportunity while serving in the Valley to judge the value of “irregular bodies
of troops known as partisans,” etc., wrote to General Lee: “I am prompted by no
other feeling than a desire to serve my country, to inform you that they are a
nuisance and an evil to the service. Without discipline, order, or
organization, they roam broadcast over the country, — a band of thieves,
stealing, pillaging, plundering, and doing every manner of mischief and crime.
They are a terror to the citizens and an injury to the cause.”
He gives the following reasons for his protest: that it keeps
men on this service away “from the field of battle, when the life or death of
our country is the issue;” that their latitude and many privileges cause
dissatisfaction among the regular troops; this encourages desertion.
He says he finds it almost impossible to manage the
companies of his brigade that come from the region occupied by Mosby. “They see
these men living at their ease and enjoying the comforts of home, allowed to
possess all that they capture, and their duties mere pastime pleasures compared
with their own arduous ones; and it is a natural consequence in the nature of
man that he should become dissatisfied under these circumstances.” He
recommends abolishing this “partisan” service, with its privileges. “If it is
necessary for troops to operate within the lines of the enemy, then require the
commanding officer to keep them in an organized condition, to rendezvous within
our lines, and move upon the enemy when opportunity is offered.
“Major Mosby is of inestimable service to the Yankee army,
in keeping their men from straggling. He is a gallant officer, and is one that
I have great respect for; yet the interest I feel in my own command and the
good of the service coerces me to bring this matter before you, in order that
this partisan system, which I think is a bad one, may be corrected.” General
Rosser says that General Early and General Fitzhugh Lee can testify to these
evils.
On General Rosser's communication, General J. E. B. Stuart,
the friend and admirer of Mosby, indorses: “Major Mosby's command is the only efficient band of rangers I
know of, and he usually operates with only one fourth of his nominal strength.
Such organizations, as a rule, are detrimental to the best interests of the
army at large.”
The above communication was referred by General Lee to the
government at Richmond, with this comment: “As far as my knowledge and
experience extend, there is much truth in the statement of General Rosser. The
evils resulting from their organization more than counterbalance the good they
accomplish.'” Miles, the chairman of the Confederate Military Committee, on
February 14, 1864, returns this document to the Secretary of War, saying the
House of Representatives has passed a bill abolishing Partisan Rangers.
Yet, in spite of Lee's indorsement of Rosser's
communication, he wrote to the Secretary of War, C. S. A., asking that Mosby be
made a lieutenant-colonel, and wishing to show him that “his services have been
appreciated, and to encourage him to still greater activity and zeal.” (Rebellion Record, vol.
xxxiii.)
In April, Lee enumerated to his government the bands of “partisan
rangers,” recommending bringing them under the rules and regulations of the
regular cavalry, disbanding most of them as organizations, but keeping the men;
and adds, with regard to Mosby's battalion, the recommendation that, if they
cannot be mustered into the regular service, “they be retained as partisans at
present,” expressing his belief that their discipline and conduct is better
than that of the other bands.
Mosby's and McNeill's commands were retained as partisan
rangers.
But the evil went on increasing through 1864. Two days after
General Sheridan's report of the killing of his Lieutenant Meigs, he sends
another: “Lieutenant-Colonel
Tolles, my Chief Quartermaster, and Assistant Surgeon Emil Oelenschlager,
Medical Inspector on my Staff, were both mortally wounded by guerrillas to-day,
on their way to join me from Winchester. . . . The refugees from Early's army, cavalry
and infantry, are organizing guerrilla parties, and are becoming very
formidable. . . . I know of no way to
exterminate them except to burn out the whole country, and let the people go
North or South.”
Yet, bushwhacking aside, Mosby had done great military
service to the Confederacy — to quote his own words as to his kind of warfare —
“by the heavy details it compels the enemy to make in order to guard his
communications, and, to that extent, diminish his aggressive strength.” In
August, when Sheridan with his army had gone up the Valley, Mosby with a small
force made a dash upon one of his supply-trains proceeding to the front,
dispersed a large force of “hundred-days men,” and ran off three hundred and
fifty mules, and burned the wagons and what spoil they could not carry off. In
October, Colonel Stevenson wrote to Secretary Stanton, that a supply-train of
five hundred and sixty-one wagons, which he was despatching to Sheridan's army,
would have a guard of two thousand men “unless
this should be too few.”
Throughout the campaign, Early was most anxious to keep the
rail communications of the Union Army broken, and Mosby harassed the working
parties that tried to keep them open. Major John Scott, in his Partisan Life
with Mosby, gives the following edifying anecdote. It should be remembered
that these trains were used by the local inhabitants: Knowing that the only way
to prevent the progress of the work on the road was to keep the force stirred
up from below, on the 9th of October he (Mosby) sent a detachment under a
lieutenant to throw off the track a train of cars, as it passed between Salem
and the Plains. This duty was successfully performed, and many on board were
killed and many severely wounded. In retaliation, the Yankees resorted to the
inhuman experiment of arresting prominent citizens of the Southern type
residing in Fauquier and Alexandria, and making them ride on every train which
ran on the Manassas Gap Railroad. In addition, some of the captured prisoners
were sent along. But, with the spirit of an old Roman, Mosby declared, ‘If my
wife and children were on board, I would still throw off the cars.’”
SOURCE: Edward Waldo Emerson, Life and Letters of
Charles Russell Lowell, p. 352-4, 465-70
