It was the latter part of January, 1863, when I crossed the
Rappahannock into Northern Virginia, which from that time until the
close of the war was the theatre on which I conducted partisan
operations. The country had been abandoned to the occupation of the
Federal army the year before, when Johnston retired from Centreville,
and had never been held by us afterward, except during the short time
when the Confederate army was passing through in Gen. Lee's first
campaign into Maryland. I told Stuart that I would, by incessant
attacks, compel the enemy either greatly to contract his lines or to
reinforce them; either of which would be of great advantage to the
Southern cause. The means supplied me were hardly adequate to the end I
proposed, but I thought that zeal and celerity of movement would go far
to compensate for the deficiency of my numbers. There was a great stake
to be won, and I resolved to play a bold game to win it. I think that
Stuart was the only man in the army of Northern Virginia, except two or
three who accompanied me and knew me well, who expected that I would
accomplish anything. Other detachments of cavalry had been sent there
at different times that had done little or nothing.
Nearly every one thought that I was starting out on a quixotic
enterprise, that would result in doing no harm to the enemy, but simply
in getting all of my own men killed or captured. When at last I secured
an independent command, for which I had so longed, I was as happy as
Columbus when he set forth from the port of Palos with the three
little barks Isabella had given him to search for an unknown continent.
My faith was strong, and I never for a moment had a feeling of
discouragement or doubted my ability to reap a rich harvest from what
I knew was still an ungleaned field. I stopped an hour or so at
Warrenton, which has always been a sort of political shrine from which
the Delphian Apollo issues his oracles. After the war I made it my
home, and it is generally supposed that I resided there before the war;
the fact is that I never was in that section of Virginia until I went
there as a soldier. The Union soldiers knew just as much about the
country as I did.
I recall vividly to mind the looks of surprise and the ominous shaking
of the heads of the augurs when I told them that I proposed going
farther North to begin the war again along the Potomac. Their criticism
on my command was pretty much the same as that pronounced on the
English mission to Cabul some years ago--that it was too small for an
army and too large for an embassy.
When I bade my friends at the Warren-Green Hotel "good-by," I had their
best wishes for my success, but nothing more. They all thought that
I was going on the foolhardy enterprise of an Arctic voyager in search
of the North Pole. My idea was to make the Piedmont region of the
country lying between the Rappahannock and Potomac Rivers the base of
my operations. This embraces the upper portion of the counties of
Fauquier and Loudoun. It is a rich, pastoral country, which afforded
subsistence for my command, while the Blue Ridge was a safe point to
which to retreat if hard pressed by the superior numbers that could
be sent against us. It was inhabited by a highly refined and cultivated
population, who were thoroughly devoted to the Southern cause. Although
that region was the Flanders of the war, and harried worse than any of
which history furnishes an example since the desolation of the
Palatinates by Louis XIV.,[1] yet the stubborn faith of the people
never wavered. Amid fire and sword they remained true to the last, and
supported me through all the trials of the war. While the country
afforded an abundance of subsistence, it was open and scant of forests,
with no natural defensive advantages for repelling hostile incursions.
There was no such shelter there as Marion had in the swamps of the
Pedee, to which he retreated. It was always my policy to avoid fighting
at home as much as possible, for the plain reason that it would have
encouraged an overwhelming force to come again, and that the services
of my own command would have been neutralized by the force sent against
it. Even if I defeated them, they would return with treble numbers. On
the contrary, it was safer for me, and greater results could be
secured, by being the aggressor and striking the enemy at unguarded
points. I could thus compel him to guard a hundred points, while I
could select any one of them for attack. If I could do so, I generally
slipped over when my territory was invaded and imitated Scipio by
carrying the war into the enemy's camps.
[1] [_Telegram._]
KERNSTOWN, VA., Nov. 26, 1864.
SHERIDAN TO HALLECK:--"I will soon commence work on Mosby.
Heretofore I have made no attempt to break him up, as I
would have employed ten men to his one, and for the reason
that I have made a scapegoat of him for the destruction of
private rights. Now there is going to be an intense hatred
of him in that portion of the valley which is nearly a
desert. I will soon commence on Loudoun County, and let
them know there is a God in Israel. Mosby has annoyed me
considerably; but the people are beginning to see that he
does not injure me a great deal, but causes a loss to them
of all that they have spent their lives in accumulating.
Those people who live in the vicinity of Harper's Ferry are
the most villainous in this valley, and have not yet been
hurt much. If the railroad is interfered with, I will make
some of them poor. Those who live at home in peace and
plenty want the duello part of this war to go on; but when
they have to bear the burden by loss of property and
comforts, they will cry for peace." When Sheridan started
in March, 1865, from Winchester, to join Grant in front of
Petersburg, he left my command behind him, more flourishing
than it ever had been. The "_intense hatred_" he had hoped
to excite in the people of the valley for me, by burning
their homes, was only felt for him. They were not willing
that I should be a scapegoat to bear another's sins.
I have seen it stated in the reports of some Federal officers that they
would throw down the gage of battle to me in my own country and that I
would not accept it. I was not in the habit of doing what they wanted
me to do. Events showed that my judgment was correct. After I had once
occupied I never abandoned it, although the wave of invasion several
times rolled over it.
News of the surrender, or, rather, the evacuation, of Richmond came to
me one morning in April, 1865, at North Fork, in Loudoun County, where
my command had assembled to go on a raid. Just two or three days before
that I had defeated Colonel Reno, with the Twelfth Pennsylvania
Cavalry, at Hamilton, a few miles from there, which was the last fight
in which I commanded. Reno afterward enjoyed some notoriety in
connection with the Custer massacre. My purpose was to weaken the
armies invading Virginia, by harassing their rear. As a line is only
as strong as its weakest point, it was necessary for it to be stronger
than I was at every point, in order to resist my attacks. It is easy,
therefore, to see the great results that may be accomplished by a
small body of cavalry moving rapidly from point to point on the
communications of an army. To destroy supply trains, to break up the
means of conveying intelligence, and thus isolating an army from its
base, as well as its different corps from each other, to confuse their
plans by capturing despatches, are the objects of partisan war. It is
just as legitimate to fight an enemy in the rear as in front. The only
difference is in the danger. Now, to prevent all these things from
being done, heavy detachments must be made to guard against them. The
military value of a partisan's work is not measured by the amount of
property destroyed, or the number of men killed or captured, but by the
number he keeps watching. Every soldier withdrawn from the front to
guard the rear of an army is so much taken from its fighting strength.
I endeavored, as far as I was able, to diminish this aggressive power
of the army of the Potomac, by compelling it to keep a large force on
the defensive. I assailed its rear, for there was its most vulnerable
point. My men had no camps. If they had gone into camp, they would soon
have all been captured. They would scatter for safety, and gather at my
call, like the Children of the Mist. A blow would be struck at a weak
or unguarded point, and then a quick retreat. The alarm would spread
through the sleeping camp, the long roll would be beaten or the bugles
would sound to horse, there would be mounting in hot haste and a rapid
pursuit. But the partisans generally got off with their prey. Their
pursuers were striking at an invisible foe. I often sent small squads
at night to attack and run in the pickets along a line of several
miles. Of course, these alarms were very annoying, for no human being
knows how sweet sleep is but a soldier. I wanted to use and consume the
Northern cavalry in hard work. I have often thought that their fierce
hostility to me was more on account of the sleep I made them lose than
the number we killed and captured. It has always been a wonder with
people how I managed to collect my men after dispersing them. The true
secret was that it was a fascinating life, and its attractions far more
than counterbalanced its hardships and dangers. They had no camp duty
to do, which, however necessary, is disgusting to soldiers of high
spirit. To put them to such routine work is pretty much like hitching
a race-horse to a plow.
Many expeditions were undertaken and traps laid to capture us, but
all failed, and my command continued to grow and flourish until the
final scene at Appomattox. It had just reached its highest point of
efficiency when the time came to surrender. We did not go into a number
of traps set to catch us, but somehow we always brought the traps off
with us. One stratagem was after the model of the Grecian horse, and
would have done credit to Ulysses. They sent a train of wagons up the
Little River turnpike from Fairfax, apparently without any guard,
thinking that such a bait would surely catch me. But in each wagon were
concealed six of the Bucktails, who would, no doubt, have stopped my
career, if I had given them a chance. Fortunately, I never saw them,
for on that very day I had gone by another route down to Fairfax. When
the Bucktails returned, they had the satisfaction of knowing that I had
been there in their absence. At that time Hooker's army was in winter
quarters on the Rappahannock, with a line of communication with
Washington, both by land and water. The troops belonging to the
defences at Washington were mostly cantoned in Fairfax, with their
advance post at Centreville. West of the Blue Ridge, Milroy occupied
Winchester. From my rendezvous east of the ridge I could move on the
radius and strike any point on the circumference of the circle which
was not too strongly guarded. But if I compelled them to be stronger
everywhere than I was, then so much the better. I had done my work.
Panics had often occurred in the camp when we were not near; the
pickets became so nervous, expecting attacks, that they fired at every
noise. It was thought that the honor as well as the safety of the army
required that these depredations should no longer be endured, and that
something must be done to stop them. Of course, the best way to do it
was to exterminate the band, as William of Orange did the Macdonald of
Glencoe. A cavalry expedition, under a Major Gilmer, was sent up to
Loudoun to do the work. He had conceived the idea that I had my
headquarters in Middleburg, and might be caught by surrounding the
place in the night-time. He arrived before daybreak, and threw a cordon
of pickets around it. At the dawn of day he had the village as
completely invested as Metz was by the Germans. He then gradually
contracted his lines, and proceeded in person to the hotel where he
supposed I was in bed. I was not there; I never had been. Soldiers were
sent around to every house with orders to arrest every man they could
find. When he drew in his net there was not a single soldier in it. He
had, however, caught a number of old men. It was a frosty morning, and
he amused himself by making a soldier take them through a squad drill
to keep them warm; occasionally he would make them mark time in the
street front of the hotel. All this afforded a good deal of fun to the
major, but was rather rough on the old men. He thought, or pretended to
think, that they were the parties who had attacked his pickets. After a
night march of twenty-five miles, he did not like to return to camp
without some trophies, so he determined to carry the graybeards with
him. He mounted each one behind a trooper, and started off. Now, it so
happened that I had notified my men to meet that morning at Rector's
Cross Roads, which is about four miles above Middleburg. When I got
there I heard that the latter place was occupied by Federal cavalry.
With seventeen men I started down the pike to look after them. Of
course, with my small force, all that I could expect to do was to
cut off some straggling parties who might be marauding about the
neighborhood. When I got near Middleburg I learned that they had gone.
We entered the town at a gallop. The ladies all immediately crowded
around us. There were, of course, no men among them; Major Gilmer had
taken them with him. There was, of course, great indignation at the
rough usage they had received, and their wives never expected to see
them again. And then, to add to the pathos of the scene, were the
tears and lamentations of the daughters. There were many as pure and
as bright as any pearl that ever shone in Oman's green water. Their
beauty had won the hearts of many of my men. To avenge the wrongs of
distressed damsels is one of the vows of knighthood; so we spurred on
to overtake the Federal cavalry, in hopes that by some accident of war
we might be able to liberate the prisoners.