War Crimes Against Southern Civilians

by Walter Cisco

  Mills at Mt. Meridian, Greenville, and Fairfield were burned by Hunter's army."' On June 11 began a two-day occupation of Lexington, characterized by one historian as "an orgy of destruction." Soldiers charged into homes looking for valuables and vandalized what they did not take. "Some persons were left destitute and almost starving," wrote one victim. Another resident remembered "dresses torn to pieces in mere wantonness: even the Negro girls had lost their finery." The barracks and classrooms of Virginia Military Institute were looted, then the entire campus was torched. Homes, including that of former governor John Letcher, were set on fire." Letcher's was singled out, according to Hunter, since the owner was guilty of "inciting the population" to resist invasion.'-'Yankees sacked Washington College, "pelting the statue of the father of their country," wrote an officer, "supposing it to represent Jefferson Davis." Viewing the progress of destruction from a nearby hill, that officer declared it "grand," noting that Hunter, too, "seemed to enjoy this scene.""'

  The Stars and Stripes was raised in the town of Liberty on June 16, and immediately plundering of residences and private property broke out. Wherever the blue-clad troops went, civilians were robbed. As an officer conversed with ladies at one home, "soldiers got into the house and commenced to plunder their trunks and bureaus." At another rural residence, the same officer asked directions of a professed Unionist but found troops already busy stealing all that he owned. Soldiers had broken into the loyalist's beehives and were "devouring great chunks of honey with brutal greediness. The honey as they ate it was streaming down their clothes and clotting in their beards.""

  By the end of June, wrote an historian, "Hunter was applying the torch without restraint or rule."` One civilian, a man named Leftwich, reported hearing of Union army defeats. "This irritated the General so much," wrote an officer, "that he had Leftwich arrested and ordered his house to be burnt. It was a very pretty country residence, and the man had a sweet daughter about sixteen and a nice family."" The general's artillery commander came to conclude that Hunter's "mentality was largely dominated by prejudices and antipathies so intense and so violent as to render him at times quite incapable of taking a fair and unbiased view of many military and political situations.""

  The following month, after Hunter was finally expelled from the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, Confederate lieutenant general Jubal A. Early marched his army northward into Maryland and Pennsylvania-even for a time threatening Washington, D.C. Early was careful to remind his men "that they are engaged in no marauding expedition, and are not making war upon the defenseless and unresisting."" But the Virginian took it upon himself to demand compensation for Hunter's house burning in the Shenandoah. Hagerstown, Maryland, was required to pay twenty thousand dollars. On July 24, Early demanded one hundred thousand dollars from Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, threatening the town's destruction if the money was not forthcoming. "The policy pursued by our army on former occasions had been so lenient, that they did not suppose the threat was in earnest this time," said Early; but when payment was denied, he ordered Chambersburg burned. Col. William Peters, commanding the Twenty-first Virginia Cavalry Regiment, refused to obey. Other Confederate officers actually ordered their men to disobey. Still, the deed was done. "For this act, I, alone, am responsible," confessed the general.

  Though Early believed retaliation might put a stop to Federal depredations," he would soon be disappointed. Hunter was no aberration. In coming months the Union war on Southern civilians only intensified. As the editor of the Staunton Vindicator pointed out, Yankee behavior demonstrated during Hunter's raid "has served simply to prove conclusively to us that we were not wrong in the estimate we placed upon them many years ago.""'

  Chapter 18

  "Nothing Left for Man or Beast"

  Sheridan's Devastation

  "In the recent temporary occupation of the Valley of Virginia," observed the editor of the Staunton Vindicator in the aftermath of Sheridan's raid, "the enemy again exhibited that malignant malice which characterized the invasion of Hunter."'

  Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan had replaced David Hunter as Federal commander in August, and Ulysses S. Grant expected greater results. "In pushing up the Shenandoah Valley ... it is desirable that nothing should be left to invite the enemy to return. Take all provisions, forage, and stock wanted for the use of your command; such as cannot be consumed, destroy."` Grant fired off a reminder a few weeks later. "If the war is to last another year, we want the Shenandoah Valley to remain a barren waste."' Victory at the Battle of Third Winchester on September 19, 1864, against badly outnumbered Confederates, gave Sheridan opportunity to achieve that objective. What followed came to be known by his victims simply as "The

  First there would be executions. Five of Lt. Col. John S. Mosby's Confederate Rangers were captured and put to death on September 23 to avenge the loss in combat of a Yankee officer. Also taken prisoner by Federals was civilian teenager Henry Rhodes from Front Royal who had hoped to join the partisans.' "Rhodes was lashed with ropes between two horses," recounted a friend who witnessed his death, "and dragged in plain sight of his agonized relatives to the open field of our town, where one man volunteered to do the killing, and ordered the helpless, dazed prisoner to stand up in front of him, while he emptied his pistol upon him.""

  Maj. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan

  Sheridan's Shenandoah Valley Campaign got underway days later.

  [Brig. Gen. George] Custer was to take the west and [Brig. Gen. Wesley] Merritt the east side and burn all barns, mills, haystacks, etc., within a certain area [remembered a Michigan colonel]. Merritt was provoked. He pointed to the west and one could have made a chart of Custer's trail by the columns of black smoke which marked it. The general was manifestly fretting lest Custer should appear to outdo him in zeal in obeying orders, and blamed me as his responsible subordinate, for the delay.

  There was no cause for concern, as flames were soon breaking out within Merritt's area of responsibility as well. Women and children begged to have a little flour before his troops burned the mill in Port Republic "on which their very existence seemed to depend." Tears and pleading were in vain.' From there Merritt's horsemen rode in the direction of Staunton to continue "burning forage, mills, and such other property as might be serviceable to the rebel army or Confederacy," in Sheridan's words." "The work of incineration was continued," wrote the Michigan colonel, "and clouds of smoke marked the passage of the federal army.""

  One Vermont soldier claimed to witness no houses set on fire, but "barns, mills, and stacks of hay and grain ... everything combustible that could aid the enemy during the coming winter was burned, and all cattle and sheep were driven away." That Vermonter and his comrades came upon a country store and a schoolhouse standing nearby. Soon both "suffered the same fate, though in a different way, the material of one being used to cook the contents of the other.""'

  An Ohio surgeon confessed that Union troops were in fact torching residences. "We are burning and destroying everything in this valley, such as wheat stacks, hay stacks, barns, houses," he reported in a letter home. "Indeed, there will be nothing but heaps of ashes and ruins generally.... Thousands of Refugees are fleeing north daily, as nothing but starvation would stare them in the face to stay in this valley the coming winter.""

  Many of those refugees were pacifists-members of religious sects such as Mennonites and Dunkers-who had for years tried to live above even the conflict of politics. Mennonite D. H. Landis, resettled in Ohio, wrote that the invaders destroyed Shenandoah Valley churches. "The Union army came up the Valley sweeping everything before them like a wild hurricane," said another, "there was nothing left for man or beast." Michael Shank fled to Pennsylvania and there described his experience with Sheridan's "prowlers," men who "commenced pilfering, robbing and plundering."

  [S]quads of them would go to citizens [sic] houses in almost frantic appearance, their faces speaking terror to the inhabitants, while they were searching every room from cellar to garret, breaking open burea
u drawers, chests and closets taking whatever suited their fancy, such as money, watches, jewelry, wearing apparel, etc., at the same time threatening to shoot the inmates of the house if they followed after them. In the meantime our horses, cows and cattle were taken, the grain house was broken open and robbed of its contents and when the body of the army passed up thousands upon thousands passed over my farm in a number of columns through corn and cornfields; thus they continued their work of destruction.... For several days before we left we saw great columns of smoke rising like dark clouds almost from one mountain to the

  Other Mennonites lost their homes-as well as barns, livestock, grain, and all they owned-when Sheridan demanded vengeance for the death of a favorite member of his staff. On October 3, Lt. John Meigs and two other Union soldiers came upon three Virginia cavalrymen, and in the skirmish that followed one Federal was captured and Meigs was killed. The escaping Federal was confused by the raincoats Confederates had been wearing, giving rise to the tale that they were "bushwhackers." Sheridan branded it "murder" and vowed to avenge the "foul deed" by torching everything within a radius of five miles.'' "Splendid mansions in great number, in the vicinity, were laid in ashes," remembered a New Yorker.' At least twenty houses went up in flames, many those of unoffending Mennonites. Most neighboring families spent the night outside, said a witness, the morning "marked by a dense blanket of smoke and fog that had settled over the country as [if] it were to hide from view the awful effect of the great holocaust of fire of the evening before.""

  A cavalryman from the Old Dominion described the scene he witnessed.

  On every side, from mountain to mountain, the flames from all the barns, mills, grain and hay stacks, and in very many instances from dwellings, too, were blazing skyward, leaving a smoky train of desolation to mark the footsteps of the devil's inspector-general, and show in a fiery record, that will last as long as the war is remembered, that the United States, under the government of Satan and Lincoln, sent Phil. Sheridan to campaign in the Valley of Virginia."

  Sheridan's incendiaries were characterized by one of Mosby's men as "demons of conflagration, rejoicing in the mischief they had The colonel's policy was to ruthlessly punish those who burned houses, if the guilty could be identified. When Rangers came upon the burning home of a citizen named Province McCormick, they were shown the direction the perpetrators had gone. The nearby Sowers' residence they found in flames, ladies and children in the yard under a downpour of rain. Again the Confederates galloped off in pursuit of the arsonists and soon found them-about ninety in number-torching the home of the Morgan family. Battle ensued, but the Yankees quickly broke and ran. Twenty-nine Federal prisoners were taken, including wounded. Having been caught in the act of house burning, all were put to death on the spot."

  "l have destroyed over 2,000 barns, filled with wheat, hay, and farming implements," Sheridan reported to Grant, along with "over 70 mills, filled with flour and wheat." That told but part of the story, of course, and only hinted at the suffering of civilians, but Sheridan was proud to point out his punishing of noncombatants for the death of Meigs.'y And he had done it all in less than two weeks.

  Unable to vanquish Robert E. Lee on the battlefield, Grant "has turned his arms against the women and children of our land," concluded the longsuffering editor of Staunton's newspaper. "Retribution will come. 11211

  Chapter 19

  "General Sherman Is Kind of

  Careless with Fire"

  The Burning of Atlanta

  "They came burning Atlanta today," wrote ten-year-old Carrie Berry in her diary. "We all dread it because they say that they will burn the last house before they stop."'

  William Tecumseh Sherman fought long and hard to conquer that city, but now in preparation for his March to the Sea, he determined to leave nothing for Confederates to recover. All railroad property, warehouses, mills, and factories in Atlanta would be leveled.' On Friday morning, November 11, 1864, he ordered engineer Orlando M. Poe to "commence the work of destruction at once, but don't use fire until the last moment." Demolition teams had for a week been undermining masonry walls, weakening chimneys, and burying explosive charges. A battering ram of railroad iron was required to shatter the stone walls of the railroad depot. That night flames broke out in several parts of the city, destroying more than twenty residences, "the works of some of the soldiers," according to witness David Conyngham, "who expected to get some booty under cover of the fires." Atlanta's fire engines were being loaded aboard freight cars, bound for Chattanooga, but went into action by order of Maj. Gen. Henry W. Slocum. "Though Slocum knew that the city was doomed," continued Conyngham, "according to his just notions of things it should be done officially. No officer or soldier had a right to fire it without orders."

  Those orders came three days later, as the Federal army marched out of the city. "All is solemnly desolate," noted Ohio captain George W. Pepper, commenting on the damage done to Atlanta by Federal shelling three months earlier. "Clouds of smoke, as we passed through, were bursting from several princely mansions. Every house of importance was burned on Whitehall street." Other buildings, public and private, were consumed. "This is the penalty of rebellion," concluded Pepper.'

  "I rode through the city while the fire was at its height," said artillery officer Thomas Osborn. "All the storehouses, manufactories, railroad buildings and such large blocks as might readily be converted into storehouses were burned." Though Osborn saw no residences deliberately fired, he conceded that advancing flames claimed nearby homes and "the center of the city was pretty thoroughly burned out."'

  That night an army band played "John Brown's Body" as the troops continued their trek south. Col. Adin Underwood of Massachusetts was awestruck by the scene.

  No darkness-in place of it a great glare of light from acres of burning buildings. This strange light, and the roaring of the flames that licked up everything habitable, the intermittent explosions of powder, stored ammo. and projectiles, streams of fire that shot up here and there from heaps of cotton bales and oil factories, the crash of falling buildings, and the change, as if by a turn of the kaleidoscope, of strong walls and proud structures into heaps of desolation; all this made a dreadful picture of the havoc of war, and of its unrelenting horrors.

  By seven o'clock the next morning Sherman's engineers estimated that 37 percent of the city had already burned, and the fire continued to spread. Several churches escaped, though most did not. Atlanta's first house of worship built for blacks, on Jenkins Street, went up in flames. The Medical College was spared when Dr. Peter D'Alvigny confronted soldiers igniting straw and broken furniture they had piled in the entrance hall. The doctor shouted that sick and wounded soldiers were still inside, throwing open the door to prove it.5

  On the evening of that second day Maj. Ward Nichols of Sherman's staff described what he saw:

  The heaven is one expanse of lurid fire; the air is filled with flying, burning cinders; buildings covering two hundred acres are in ruins or in flames; every instant there is the sharp detonation or the smothered booming sound of exploding shells and powder concealed in the buildings, and then the sparks and flame shoot away up into the black red roof, scattering cinders far and wide."

  An Ohio infantryman witnessed "an ocean of fire" sweeping over Atlanta, "leaving nothing but the smoldering ruins of this once beautiful city."7

  As darkness fell on the fire's second day, James Patten, surgeon with the Federal army, paused on a rural road south of the city. "We could see Atlanta burning," wrote the doctor. "I looked at my watch and could see the time very plainly at a distance of ten miles.""

  The Daily Intelligencer later made a detailed street-by-street report on the results of the fire, concluding that two-thirds of Atlanta lay in ashes, with much of the rest damaged by Sherman's earlier shelling. "The stillness of the grave for weeks reigned over this once bustling, noisy city."9

  Atlanta in ruins

  Major Nichols was told that the holocaust devoured no fewer
than five thousand buildings before burning itself out. "General Sherman is kind of careless with fire," observed the major."'

  Chapter 20

  "They Took Everything That Was Not

  Red-Hot or Nailed Down "

  March to the Sea

  "Can we whip the South?" wrote William T. Sherman to Henry W. Halleck in 1863. "If we can, our numerical majority has both the natural and constitutional right to govern. If we cannot whip them, they contend for the natural right to select their own government." To keep that from happening-to insure that Southerners not have the right to select their own government-"we will remove and destroy every obstacle-if need be, take every life, every acre of land, every particle of property, everything that to us seems proper."' A year later, on the eve of his march through Georgia, Sherman boasted, "I am going into the very bowels of the Confederacy, and propose to leave a trail that will be recognized fifty years hence." It would be, he assured Halleck, "a track of desolation."'

  Even before launching his March to the Sea, Sherman had begun making his mark on the people of Georgia. "We are drawing full rations, besides preying off the country," wrote a Union officer from Summerville, Georgia, in October.` Another remarked that same month how raiding parties returned with all manner of food taken from civilians. "The men lived high off the country and brought back lots of plunder."' Ike Derricotte, a black man living in Athens, remembered that "Yankees just went around takin' whatever they wanted . . . and laughed about it like they hadn't been stealin'."5 Though troops were officially prohibited from robbing civilians, officers almost always turned a blind eye when it happened. The men in the ranks well knew what "Uncle Billy" expected of them.