Loyalty, Military Occupation, and Irregular Warfare in a Northern Virginia Border County, 1861-1865
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Their Homes were in the Enemy’s Lines: Loyalty, Military Occupation, and Irregular Warfare in a Northern Virginia Border County, 1861-1865 by Scott Thompson, B.A. A Thesis In History Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts Approved Dr. Barton Myers Chair of Committee Dr. Gretchen Adams Dr. Barbara Hahn Dominick Casadonte Interim Dean of the Graduate School August, 2013 Copyright 2013, Scott Thompson Texas Tech University, Scott Thompson, August 2013 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am indebted to many who have helped me complete this project. Though I have used tremendous amounts of intellectual energy and spent countless hours researching and writing, completing this thesis would not have been possible without those who have assisted me along the way. I thank the Texas Tech University Department of History for providing me with much-needed funding for my research trip to Virginia and Washington, D.C., in the summer of 2012. I extend my gratitude to Loudoun County archivists/historians John M. and Bronwen C. Souders for letting me borrow and make copies of their private collection of diaries. I appreciate the help of the archivists at the Thomas Balch Library in Leesburg, Virginia, the National Archives in Washington, D.C, and the Museum of the Confederacy in the former Confederate capitol of Richmond. Their essential help enabled me to adequately capture the voices of my subjects. I could not have asked for a better graduate advisor/committee chair to help guide me through the beginning, course, and completion of this thesis. Dr. Barton Myers made sure that I had found a topic during my first semester here at TTU and that I had completed and defended my proposal by my second semester. His written guide for how to write a good thesis/dissertation proposal serves as the perfect model of its kind. Even before I decided that I wanted to write my thesis on loyalty, military occupation, and irregular warfare in Loudoun County, Virginia, he pointed me to and navigated me through various Civil War subfields in order to help me figure out how to ground my project in a scholarship whose massive number of works could fill an entire library. He gave me helpful advice on how to conduct a research trip. Myers’ critical comments regarding my arguments, methodology, sources, and writing style have made me a much better historian, scholar, and writer over the last two years. I thank him for setting aside great amounts of time in his busy schedule to talk with me about my latest progress and any questions I had. I hope to build on the skills Myers has taught me in my future work. I would also like to thank fellow graduate student and Army Ranger historian James Sandy for reading over an earlier draft of Chapter ii Texas Tech University, Scott Thompson, August 2013 III. I would also like to express my gratitude to other committee members Dr. Gretchen Adams and Dr. Barbara Hahn for their critical comments on the project and for their decision to work with me. In addition to those who directly helped me produce this work, I also deeply thank the individuals who provided me with encouragement and advice during the stressful yet rewarding life of a graduate student trying to write a thesis while also doing course work and grading exams and papers. The friends and colleagues here at Tech who have helped me in this way include Bennett Kimbell, Lorin Scott, Caitlin Guard, Amber Batura, Amanda Lancaster, James Sandy, Jenny Burns, and Tiffany González. The emotional support of old undergraduate friends also made this thesis possible: Chelsea McNerney, Victoria Miranda, Kristy Garry, Deann Lawrence, Jess Gagliardi, Gabby Aragon, and Kat Wilson. Finally, I am grateful for the support of my parents Janet and Rod Thompson, my brother David Thompson, my grandmother Mary Ulrich, my uncles Mike Qaissaunee and Paul Salerno, and my aunts Lau Qaissaunee and Beth Salerno. Much of the credit for my ability to endure the grueling work that went into writing this thesis goes to my parents, who instilled thrift and industry in me at a young age. I could not be happier that my successes in college and graduate school have made my family and friends extremely proud. iii Texas Tech University, Scott Thompson, August 2013 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ii I. INTRODUCTION 1 II. HOW LONG WILL SUCH TYRANNY AND ANARCHY PREVAIL?: THE UNIONIST AND SECESSIONIST CIVILIANS OF LOUDOUN COUNTY 13 III. MORE LIKE A SLAUGHTER PEN: THE IRREGULAR WAR IN LOUDOUN COUNTY 73 IV. EPILOGUE: RECONSTRUCTION LOUDOUN COUNTY 131 BIBLIOGRAPHY 152 iv Texas Tech University, Scott Thompson, August 2013 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Shortly before 3 a.m. on August 27, 1862, Captain Elijah V. White, with twenty of his Loudoun County Confederate irregulars, twenty-six regular Confederate soldiers, and six civilian pilots, galloped to the village of Waterford. Sometime earlier, a group of Waterford’s secessionist civilians, in an effort to rid their neighborhood of enemy soldiers who wanted to crush their government’s struggle for southern independence and who would harm their person and property, had informed White’s company about an encampment of the Loudoun County Independent Rangers, a Union irregular unit, in the town. An unidentified slave arrived at the Rangers’ camp and informed the commanding officer that this Rebel force was riding in the direction of the camp, but he gave no weight to the information.1 Several hours later, the regular Confederates evaded the Yankee pickets, surrounded the camp, and caught the attention of the Rangers, of whom twenty-three were present. In response, Lieutenant Luther W. Slater formed a battle line. Hidden behind buildings and vegetation, the Confederates were hardly visible to the Rangers. When Slater demanded that they identify themselves, they fired their carbines, wounding a proportion of the line, including Slater in several places. The Rangers answered with carbine fire of their own, before they fell back to the inside of a nearby Baptist church. Slater continued to command the Rangers while bleeding from his wounds on the church floor. When he began to undergo significant blood loss, he transferred command to drillmaster Charles A. Webster. White’s irregulars then arrived to the scene, dismounted, and fired through the church’s walls and windows. Private Briscoe Goodhart recalls how “the Rangers returned the fire as vigorously as circumstances would permit,” despite many laying “around in the church pews weltering in their blood, making the place look more like a slaughter pen than a house of worship.” Amidst this gruesome ordeal, the Rangers could hear their wounded 1 John W. Forsythe, Guerrilla Warfare and Life in Libby Prison, ed. Melvin L. Steadman, Jr. (Annandale: Turnpike Press, 1967), 11. 1 Texas Tech University, Scott Thompson, August 2013 crying for water. The Confederates used the house of secessionist Lydia A. Virts, located across the street from the church, as a cover from which they fired on the Rangers. Virts delivered two flags of truce to the Rangers, both of which they refused. The depletion of his force’s ammunition convinced Webster to accept the third offer of surrender, the conditions of which were immediate parole with the officers retaining their side arms.2 The unionist Quaker citizens of Waterford, who depended on the Loudoun Rangers to liberate them from Confederate persecution and to help restore the Union, nursed the wounded Federals. As soon as White’s force departed, physician Thomas Bond and other villagers proceeded to the church to gather the wounded. P. S. Chalmers treated Private Henry Dixon until his death. The Duttons’ cared for Private Edward Jacobs, who would later be discharged for his injuries. Lieutenant Slater received treatment from three residences. He first went to carpenter William Densmore’s home for one week, after which farm manager George Alders cared for him for three weeks. Ten of Alders’ neighbors then attached a pole on each side of his rocking chair, “in which position they carried him to his father’s residence, near Taylortown.” After two weeks, Slater was removed to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where he finished his recovery.3 This episode of a small, bloody engagement between two irregular units whose soldiers enlisted from the same area and received aid from loyal civilians living in the midst of two warring armies occurred in Civil War-era Loudoun County, Virginia. Scholars have, for the most part, neglected Loudoun in their numerous histories of the conflict. Other works treat events in the county as mere examples in broader studies of various aspects of the Civil War, but in no piece of scholarship yet produced has 2 Briscoe Goodhart, History of the Independent Loudoun Virginia Rangers. U.S. Vol. Cav. (Scouts) 1862-65 (Washington, D.C.: Press of McGill & Wallace, 1896), 33-34; Ibid., 11, 25; Frank M. Myers, The Comanches: A History of White’s Battalion, Virginia Cavalry, Laurel Brig., Hampton Div., A.N.V., C.S.A. (Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co., Publishers, 1871), 99; D. S. Miles to Halleck, August 27, 1862, O. R., Volume 12, Part 3, 705. 3 Goodhart, History of the Independent Loudoun Virginia Rangers, 35-36; John E. Divine, The Virginia Regimental Histories Series: 35th Battalion Virginia Cavalry (Lynchburg: H. E. Howard, Inc, 1985), 9. 2 Texas Tech University, Scott Thompson, August 2013 Loudoun been the sole geographic area of study and in no work has the county’s ordeals in the war been the sole focus. Since concentrating on this particular county provides insights into multiple themes related to the Civil War that cannot be covered in a more extensive work, a complete and thorough community study concentrating on Loudoun is warranted.