THE CIVIL WAR: THE TRUE STORY BOOK 1

The Union Army's Heinous Forgotten War Crime

GEORGE ORWELL WROTE in 1945 that "the nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them." The same moral myopia has carried over to most Americans' understanding of the Civil War. While popular historians have recently canonized the war as a veritable holy crusade to free the slaves, in reality civilians were intentionally targeted and brutalized, particularly in the final year of the conflict. The most dramatic forgotten atrocity in the Civil War occurred a little more than 150 years ago when Union Gen. Philip Sheridan laid waste to a hundred mile swath of the Shenandoah Valley leaving vast numbers of women and children at risk of starvation. Surprisingly, this scorched earth campaign has been largely forgotten, foreshadowing how subsequent brutal military operations would also vanish into the Memory Hole. "We burnt some sixty houses and all most of the barns, hay, grain and corn in the shocks for 50 miles [south of] Strasburg... It was a hard-looking sight to see the women and children turned out of doors at this season of the year." In August 1864, supreme Union commander Ulysses S. Grant ordered Sheridan to "do all the damage to railroads and crops you can... If the war is to last another year, we want the Shenandoah Valley to remain a barren waste." Sheridan set to the task with vehemence, declaring that "the people must be left nothing but their eyes to weep with over the war" and promised that, when he was finished, the valley "from Winchester to Staunton will have but little in it for man or beast." Grant ordered Philip Sheridan in August of that year to destroy the crops and farms of the Shenandoah Valley, an area which provided large amounts of food to the southern people and armies. Grant told Sheridan that the destruction should be total and as long lasting as possible. "If the war is to last another year, we want the Shenandoah Valley to remain a barren waste," Grant wrote in his orders. Sheridan burned a path over 100 miles wide through the Valley, vowing to destroy everything in his path "...from Winchester to Staunton." Many of the diaries and journals recorded by the troops who performed the destruction – often farmers themselves, impressed with the fertility of the Valley –  complained of the wasteful nature of their work. Sheridan's men burned not only the planted fields but sheds, silage, barns, and houses. After one of Sheridan's aides was shot by a Confederate sniper the Union general ordered the destruction of all buildings within five miles of where he stood. Orchards bearing fruit nearing ripeness were destroyed, eliminating the crop for that fall and for the next several years. Following Grant's orders to the letter, Sheridan ensured that not only would the Valley not produce crops to feed the rest of the South, but its residents would not be able to sustain themselves off the land where they had lived. Homeless and starving refugees streamed out from the Valley, many to never return. The damage done in the Shenandoah was a precursor to that which would be done in Georgia. Both actions are described as being a necessity of modern total warfare. Up until that time the willful destruction of the personal property of non-combatants had been considered to be outside of the rules of war, a crime by vengeful troops akin to the pillaging of the Huns or Mongols. By noon on September 26, 1864, the population of Rockingham County, Virginia, more than doubled overnight. Close to 28,000 men of Maj. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan's triumphant Union army went into camps around Harrisonburg, the county seat. During the previous six days Confederate Gen. Jubal Early had been defeated in two successive battles. In the Union lines around Petersburg Ulysses S. Grant ordered 100-gun artillery salutes in honor of Sheridan and his men and their victories in the Shenandoah Valley. Between the Battle of Fisher's Hill on September 22 and the Battle of Cedar Creek on October 19 another campaign took place in the Valley. It was largely forgotten in the annals of military history because it involved intentionally taking the war to the civilian population. After the war, the thirteen-day burning of the richest agricultural counties in Virginia was only mentioned in passing, if at all, in the regimental histories of the units who had an active part in it. After detailing the Battle of Fishers Hill in their accounts, historians went almost directly to the cavalry battle at Toms Brook, which took place on October 9, perhaps to forget the time in between those two fights and what they had been required to do. Even in more modern times the devastation of such a large part of the Shenandoah Valley has been overshadowed by other campaigns, but recently scholars have taken note. Stephen Starr wrote in his Union Cavalry in the Civil War: "The deliberate planned devastation of the Shenandoah Valley has deservedly ranked as one of the grimmest episodes of a sufficiently grim war. Unlike the haphazard destruction caused by (Gen. William T.) Sherman's bummers in Georgia, it was committed systematically, and by order." The residents of the Valley remembered. If nothing else stuck in their minds, the time the burners came did, and individual stories of the sufferings of the people were passed from generation to generation. Almost from the beginning of the Civil War Union authorities had seen the Valley as a region from which Confederates could easily threaten Washington and the North. Even feints toward the Potomac River line could draw U.S. troops away from other theatres where they were needed most. For a while, after he took command of all Union troops and oversaw the war effort, U.S. Grant had looked at the resources of the Shenandoah Valley as a military dilemma. The Valley fed, clothed, and provided materials to help keep the Confederate war machine alive. On July 14, 1864, Grant wired army chief of staff Henry Halleck in Washington that a force should be assembled "to eat out Virginia clear and clean . . . so that crows flying over it for the balance of the season will have to carry their provender with them." Grant's subsequent actions showed he was more interested in coming to mortal grips with Southern armies. Unwittingly, his appointment on August 6 of Philip Sheridan to command in the Valley would cause his earlier communication with Halleck to rematerialize. As Sheridan and his army moved south after Fisher's Hill they passed through rich farmland—fields, barns, and mills filled with hay and grain and corn waiting for the harvest. When he entered Rockingham County Sheridan beheld the abundance in one of the nation's top ten agricultural counties. After establishing his headquarters in Harrisonburg, he began to petition Grant to allow him to change the direction of his campaign. His original orders were to take and wreck the Confederate supply base at Staunton in Augusta County, tear up the Virginia Central R.R. while moving east, and then destroy the rail center at Charlottesville before rejoining the main army. He had already sent more than a division of cavalry south to Staunton to do as much damage to that important rail center as could be done. One squad came upon a Confederate bakery going "in full blast" as one Northern trooper put it. They urged the Southern bakers to renew their efforts so there would be bread to go around. With that goal reached they proceeded to dismantle the ovens. The Confederates were extremely sad, it was reported, "because they had worked hard for their dough." The railroad tracks were torn up as far east as Waynesboro where Confederate cavalry drove the federals back. Before this detachment of Sheridan's cavalry returned to Rockingham County they had burned a great number of barns and mills in the northern half of Augusta County in addition to the damage in Staunton. Sheridan argued with his superior that if they did not destroy the Valley's harvest and everything that supported it, they would have to deal in the future with other Confederate armies using the Valley to threaten the North. For a while Grant held rigid. He wanted Sheridan to follow the original orders, but Sheridan was persistent. Eventually Grant gave in and told his subordinate to perform a retrograde movement back to Strasburg, burning as he went, and then to send some of his troops on rail cars there and at Front Royal to be returned to the Union lines at Petersburg. Grant did not realize Sheridan had already started his campaign of devastation. From September 26 to the close of October 8 there were thirteen days of continuous burning of property and confiscation of livestock in four Valley counties; Augusta, Rockingham, Shenandoah, and Page. As the top two wheat-producing counties in Virginia, Augusta County and Rockingham County deserved the nickname of the Breadbasket of the Confederacy. A tremendous amount of Valley grain was processed in Richmond in eight mills, including the Gallego Mill, the world's largest. Much of what passed through them came from the Shenandoah Valley. In one three-week period a Confederate purchasing agent bought 32,000 pounds of corn from just one Valley farmer. Other Virginia farmers in the Shenandoah Valley were just as productive. By the time of the Civil War many belonged to agricultural societies, corresponded with farmers in other parts of the country, even with producers overseas, about modern techniques in land use, crop cultivation and animal husbandry. In 1864, Shenandoah Valley grain, livestock, iron, wool, and leather were making a strong contribution to keeping the Confederacy alive. Union commanders were starting to see the Shenandoah Valley as more than campaigning ground. Its agriculture and industries were also dangerous enemies. The campaign of destruction, misunderstood from the very beginning, continues to be little understood today. It is often referred to as a "raid," although it was well planned and involved 5,000 cavalrymen and a brigade of infantry doing the actual destruction, while thousands of additional soldiers in blue were called upon to drive off or kill livestock. To an individual farm family watching hogs slaughtered in the pens and barn and other outbuildings going up in smoke, it must have seemed a random orgy of destruction. In reality, Sheridan had given specific orders: barns and mills containing grain or forage were to be reduced to ashes; but, the properties of widows, single women, and orphans were not to be molested and private homes were not to be harmed. Evidence shows that most of the soldiers followed orders, though there were a number of instances of looting.