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THE COMANCHES:
A HISTORY OF
=WHITE’S BATTALION, VIRGINIA CAVALRY,=
LAUREL BRIG., HAMPTON DIV., A. N. V.,
C. S. A.
Written by FRANK M. MYERS. Late Capt. Co. A, 35th Va. Cav.
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_Approved by all the Officers of the Battalion._
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BALTIMORE:
KELLY, PIET & CO., PUBLISHERS,
174 and 176 Baltimore Street.
1871.
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Entered, according to an Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by
KELLY, PIET AND COMPANY,
in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
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_Exeter, Loudoun Co., Va., Dec. 2, 1870._
_Captain F. M. Myers:_
_Dear Sir,—We, the undersigned, officers of the Thirty-fifth
Battalion, Virginia Cavalry, C.S.A., having examined the MSS. of your
history of the same, do most heartily endorse the said history, and must
congratulate you upon the graphic manner in which you have related the
story of their deeds of daring, their trials and sufferings for the
“Lost Cause.”_
_Most respectfully, your old comrades and companions in arms,_
_ELIJAH V. WHITE,
Late Lieut.-Col. Thirty-fifth Va. Cav._
_J. R. CROWN,
Late First Lieut. Co. B, White’s Bat._
_BENJ. F. CONRAD,
Late Second Lieut. Co. A, Thirty-fifth Va. Cav._
_GEO. W. CHISWELL,
Late Captain Co. B, White’s Battalion._
_ED. J. CHISWELL,
Late Second Lieut. Co. B, Thirty-fifth Va. Cav._
_WM. F. BARRETT,
Late First Lieut. Co. A, White’s Battalion._
_WM. F. DOWDELL,
Late Captain Co. C, Thirty-fifth Va. Cav._
_J. MORT. KILGOUR,
Late Capt. and A.Q.M., Thirty-fifth Va. Cav._
PREFACE.
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_To the Members of the Thirty-Fifth Virginia Cavalry_:
The following pages have been prepared under many and great
difficulties, and while they exhibit the history of the command we were
so proud of in the dark days of the war for States Rights and the old
Constitution, they are very far from presenting a _full_ history of our
Battalion.
Almost all the papers relating to the operations of the “Comanches,”
whether belonging to the field and staff or to company officers, were
lost at the surrender of the army, in consequence of which I have been
compelled to draw nearly all that is recorded from my own memory,
assisted materially by Col. White, in the account of the “battle of
Brandy Station,” and of the raids in Fairfax and Loudoun in 1863.
To Mr. John O. Crown I am under obligations for the use of his MSS.,
giving an account of the operations in the autumn of 1862, and of the
last winter of the war, and to Lieuts. J. R. Crown and E. J. Chiswell
for much that is interesting in the history of Company B; to the former
especially, for a report of his fight with Cole’s battalion in Maryland,
and of his capture by the same command in 1863.
The lists of killed and wounded for Company B were prepared by Lieut.
Chiswell; for Company C, by Capt. Dowdell; for Company E, Lieut.
Strickler, and for Company A, by myself.
From Company F, I regret exceedingly that I have not been able to obtain
any information whatever.
As for the _manner_ of the work, while I am free to confess that the
story is by no means well told, yet, the men of the Battalion who, by
education and talent, were well qualified for the task of preparing it,
would not, and it has thus fallen to my lot to write this history; and,
such as it is, I submit it to your judgment for approval or not, as you
may decide; but among its faults I claim that violations of the
"historian’s religion"—truth—will not be laid to its charge; and the
thoughts, feelings, and impressions, unbiassed by the warpings of after
events, have been presented as far as possible.
It is a story altogether of the past, and, as soldiers of the “Lost
Cause,” we have nothing to do with the efforts of politicians, North or
South, to galvanize the Confederacy into spasmodic action, and then cry—
"There’s life in the old land yet."
There is no attempt either to conceal or parade the grief we, as
Confederate soldiers, felt at the furling of the “conquered banner.”
“For though conquered, we adore it,
Love the cold, dead hands that bore it.”
But while we do love so dearly the battle-flag of “Dixie,” we regard it
only as the emblem of the “storm-cradled nation that fell,” and as the
winding-sheet of its dead and buried glory, over whose gloomy tomb the
brave, true-hearted men of the southland have raised a monument of noble
deeds, which will defy malice, oppression, and time.
We know that the Southern Confederacy is dead, and all its mourning
lovers ask is permission to bury their dead reverently.
“Hushed is the roll of the Rebel drum,
The sabres are sheathed, and the cannon are dumb,
And fate with pitiless hand has furled,
The flag that once challenged the gaze of the world.”
But the fame of its soldiers deserves to live on the pages of history,
and, if I have aided in rescuing from oblivion the story of the gallant
deeds performed by the men that followed Col. Elijah V. White through
the bloody years of that desolating war, I am satisfied.
F. M. MYERS.
LOUDOUN COUNTY. VA., Nov. 27, 1870.
THE COMANCHES.
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CHAPTER I.
In commencing the story of the brave deeds performed during the dark
days of the great civil war in America by the gallant band known as
"White’s Battalion," it will be proper to give a short sketch of the
man who, as chief of the “Comanches,” gave to the Thirty-fifth
Battalion, Virginia Cavalry, its existence, and led it through so
many campaigns, battles and raids, to occupy a place in the history
of the war second to no command of its numbers, and distinguished
under the special notice of such men as “Stonewall” Jackson, Richard
S. Ewell, J. E. B. Stuart, William E. Jones, Thomas L. Rosser and
the gallant Butler of South Carolina; besides receiving the highest
encomiums from the greatest cavalry commander since the days when
Murat led the squadrons of Napoleon—General Wade Hampton—and of
Robert E. Lee, before whose fame the most splendid garlands of glory
that wreathe the brows of the noblest men of earth in all time, pale
as does the silver moon-beam before the radiant rays of the noon-day
sun.
Elijah V. White was born near Poolsville, Montgomery County,
Maryland, on the 29th of August, 1832, and continued at his father’s
home until he was sixteen years of age, when he was sent to Lima
Seminary, Livingston Co., N. Y., to be educated. Here he remained
for two years, at the expiration of which he attended Granville
College, in Licking Co., Ohio, for two more years, when he returned
to his home in Maryland.
During the war in Kansas, in 1855 or ’56, he went to that territory,
and joining a company from Missouri, took an active part in the
troubles that then threatened to overthrow the pillars of the old
Constitution in the terrible maelstrom of abolitionism that
afterwards swept away their foundations.
After the Kansas war closed, young White came home, and shortly
afterwards bought a farm on the south bank of the Potomac, in
Loudoun county, Virginia, where he took up his residence in 1857,
and on the 9th of December of the same year married Miss Sarah
Elizabeth Gott.
At the first signal of war, given by John Brown at Harper’s Ferry,
in October, 1859, White was a Corporal in the Loudoun Cavalry, a
company then commanded by Capt. Dan. T. Shreve, with which he took
part in the scenes of excitement that followed this mad attempt of
Northern fanaticism to sweep the twin scourges of fire and blood
over the South. At the breaking out of the war in 1861, White was
still a member of this company; but owing to a change of its
officers, which, to a great extent, damaged its efficiency, he left
it and attached himself to the company of Capt. Frank Mason, in
Ashby’s Legion, with which he served until the autumn of that year,
being engaged principally in scouting, much of which he did under
the orders of Col. Eppa Hunton, who, during the summer, commanded in
Loudoun county. On one of his scouts for Col. Hunton, in Maryland,
he captured the first Yankee prisoner of the war in the person of
one Costine, of Gen. McCall’s staff. When Gen. Evans took command in
Leesburg, “Lige White,” as he was familiarly known, reported to him,
and the night before the fight at Bolivar, the General asked “Lige”
"if he didn’t want some fun," at the same time informing him that
Ashby intended to attack Geary on the following morning; whereupon
“Lige” started at 9 o’clock, reaching Ashby’s camp just as that
commander was marching out to make his demonstration on Harper’s
Ferry. In this brilliant affair he bore his full share, and when it
was over returned on a furlough, to Loudoun, to make necessary
arrangements for leaving his family in as comfortable circumstances
as possible, while he followed the fortunes of the battle flag of
Dixie. Early on the morning of the 21st of October, while driving to
Leesburg from Mr. Henry Ball’s, in a buggy, with Miss Kate Ball, he
heard the firing of the opening fight at Ball’s Bluff, and hastily
returning to Mr. Ball’s, he mounted his horse and reported at once
to General Evans for duty.
The General, who was somewhat the worse for whiskey, gruffly asked
him what he could do; to which “Lige” replied that he could scout,
could carry dispatches, or could go into the ranks and fight. After
a few moments of study, Evans exclaimed, “Well, sir, go to the front
and fight like hell and damnation;” and “Lige” rode off and reported
to Col. Hunton, who was the actual commander in this battle.
The Colonel requested White to remain with him and scout for him
during the day; and shortly after, when returning from a scout to
the left to learn if the enemy was attempting any movement on the
flank, he found fully one-third of the 8th Virginia Regiment in
utter rout, caused by a misunderstanding of an order for that part
of the regiment, which had been considerably advanced, to retire on
the main line, and they taking it to be an order to retreat. With
great difficulty the order was explained and the men rallied and
brought back to the line, when Col. Hunton ordered an advance of his
regiment which vigorously attacked the enemy, driving his whole
right wing back to the woods bordering on the bluff, and capturing
two brass howitzers, but the left of his line stood firm, and White
was ordered by Col. Burt, of the 18th Mississippi, to go into the
woods and bring up two companies of his regiment that had been
stationed on the extreme right of the Confederate line to guard
against a flank attack in that quarter, and form them on the right
of the 17th.
As soon as this order had been executed, Col. Burt ordered his
regiment to advance, which it did, the Colonel and White riding in
rear of the line, and when in about fifty yards of a skirt of timber
that grew along a ravine in the old field, the enemy, who till that
moment had lain concealed, raised up and poured a most terribly
destructive volley into the Mississippi line, by which about one
hundred and thirty men were killed and wounded; in fact, by far the
largest part of the Confederate loss on that day was caused by this
one murderous fire. Col. Burt was mortally wounded by White’s side
and the latter represents himself as being terribly frightened but
untouched, and says the men of the 18th stood unflinchingly in the
storm and soon drove the enemy from his position. Col. Burt, who was
held on his horse by two of his men, asked White to ride to Col.
Jenifer and inform him that he (Burt) was mortally wounded and must
leave the field.
On his return he found Col. Hunton in front of the 18th Regiment
instructing its Major to advance through the woods upon the enemy,
but the Major objected, saying he did not know the ground; when
Hunton said, "Come on, I’ll lead you;" to which the Major replied,
“No, sir; I can lead my own men, all I want is a guide;” and Col.
Hunton turned to White, saying, "Lige, my boy, won’t you go with
them?" which settled the question of a guide, and “Lige” rode
forward in front of the Mississippians, soon finding himself between
two fires, the foe in front and friends behind; but the Yankees soon
gave way, leaving a splendid brass 24-pounder rifle gun as a trophy
to the gallantry of the noble 18th Mississippi. This closed the
battle, and Col. Hunton again sent “Lige” on a scout to the left to
see what the enemy was doing in that direction. It was now dark and
White had not gone far before he was halted by a voice which he knew
to belong to a Yankee, and replying in a low tone, “halted;” the man
asked who he was; “Lige” answering by asking the same question, and
the fellow replied—“I belong to the New York Tammany Regiment.”
White, still speaking very low, called out excitedly, “You do!”
“Come to me, come to me!” and the Yankee advanced close to him with
gun at a charge bayonet, when White said to him, “Surrender, or you
are a dead man;” at the same time levelling his pistol on him, but
the Yankee was pluck, and exclaiming, “Never, to any man!” stepped
back to bayonet his foe, and “Lige” at the same moment drew trigger
but his pistol missed fire; hastily cocking it again he was just in
time, and sent a bullet crashing through the Yankee’s brain just as
he was in the act of driving his bayonet through him.
“Lige” now satisfied himself that the enemy had retired all along
the line, and returned to Col. Hunton, who now marched his people
back to their camp, ordering White to remain with Lieut. Chas.
Berkeley, who with fifteen men was to remain on picket near the
river during the night. The ladies of Leesburg had sent a kingly
supper to the soldiers, and after satisfying their appetites, which
had been sharp-set by a day of fasting and fighting, White proposed
to Lieut. Berkeley that they take a scout to the river, for, strange
as it may appear, not a single Confederate had been _to_ the bluff,
although they had fought to within a few yards of its edge. To this
Lieut. B. readily agreed, and passing quietly along over the dead
and dying, they reached the river, and soon heard a boat crossing
over from the opposite bank. In a few minutes it struck the Virginia
shore, and leaving Berkeley and his men, White walked up to the
landing place where he found himself among a great crowd of Yankees,
all eager to get aboard the one gondola, and terribly excited. To
return to the Lieutenant and report was the next move, and “Lige”
declared that he believed there were 800 to 1,000 Yankees down under
the bluff, and asked Berkeley what they were to do, to which he
replied, “We will capture the whole of them.”
White agreed to it, provided the fifteen would all promise to carry
it through or die trying, when one of the men said to him that
Lieut. B. was a rash man and he, for one, was not willing to follow
him, as he feared they would all be killed; upon which “Lige”
started to the camp of the 8th Virginia for reinforcements. On
arriving there he found Lt.-Col. Tebbs in command, who said that if
any of the men chose to do so they might go, but advised them to let
the enterprise alone. On telling his story and asking for
volunteers, Captain W. N. Berkeley said, "I’ll follow you," and at
once some of Capt. B’s men responded with, "Yes, and we’ll follow
_you_." So that in a short time quite a force had volunteered,
composed as follows:—Captains, W. N. and Edmund Berkeley;
Lieutenants, R. H. Tyler, L. B. Stephenson and R. Coe; Sergeants, F.
Wilson, J. O. Adams and —— Gochnauer; Corporals Aye, B. Hurst, W.
Fleshler, B. Hutchison and Wm. Thomas; and Privates, A. S. Adams, J.
W. Adams, F. A. Boyer, J. L. Chin, G. Creel, R. S. Downs, W.
Donnelly, G. Insor, C. R. Griffin, John George, D. L. Hixson, T. W.
Hutchison, J. F. Ish, R. I. Smith, W. C. Thomas, J. W. Tavenner, J.
M. McVeigh, L. W. Luckett, C. D. Luckett, M. H. Luckett, A. M.
O’Bannon, Rev. Chas. Linthicum, R. O. Carter, George Roach, E.
Nails, Howard Trussell, D. Rourke, Thomas E. Tavenner, P. Gochnauer,
F. Tinsman, T. H. Benton, T. Kidwell, C. Fox, V. R. Costello, Will.
Moore, J. Ellis, William McCarty, J. McClanahan, E. Herrington and
R. Julian. With this force White started back to the river, where he
had left Lieut. Berkeley watching the enemy, and on reaching it,
after an absence of nearly two hours, found the situation unchanged,
except that the number of the enemy was perceptibly lessened, the
gondola having made several trips. Hastily arranging his forces,
“Lige” posted Lieut. Berkeley on top of the bluff, just over the
Yankees, while he moved the remainder down to the edge of the river
and charged at once upon the enemy, firing and yelling like demons,
when at the same moment Lieut. B. opened fire from the bluff with
his party. The consternation was terrible among the Yankees, some
leaping into the river and drowning themselves, some wading out in
the water as far as they could, some running up the river bank, and
some, too much paralyzed with fear to act at all, just fell down and
screamed.
Very soon an Irish Captain, a gallant fellow, appeared and called a
parley, when the firing ceased and the Captain asked who was in
command, to which Capt. William Berkeley replied, “Gen. White,” and
the Captain at once asked upon what terms his men would be allowed
to surrender, and when told they should be treated kindly as
prisoners of war, he called them up from their hiding places,
saying, “the General assures me you shall be kindly treated; come
out and give yourselves up.” This had the desired effect and they
all came up, to the number of 320, and surrendered to the “brigade
of General White.”
A few days after this, a recommendation was drawn up and signed by
the regimental commanders, asking that White be commissioned in the
Regular Army of the Confederate States, for meritorious conduct at
the battle of Leesburg. This was approved by Gen. Evans, and
cordially endorsed by Gen. Beauregard, but when “Lige” presented it
to the Secretary of War, he was informed that no commissions in the
Regular Army were being granted then, but that his name should be
registered for the first vacancy. This did not suit him and learning
that his old friend, Col. Hunton, was in Richmond, called upon him,
and was advised by that officer to apply for permission to organize
an independent company for service on the border, which he did, and
through Col. Hunton’s influence succeeded without any difficulty in
getting the appointment of Captain in the Provisional Army, with the
authority to raise a company as proposed, and he now returned to
Leesburg where he opened a recruiting office under very favorable
auspices, the militia of the county having been called to that point
by Gen. D. H. Hill, (who succeeded Evans in command of the
Department soon after the battle,) to work on the fortifications in
course of construction there, and it was natural to suppose that
many of them would prefer ranging service on the border to wielding
the shovel and the hoe in the breast-works.