"The injury done to them by this army is very slight, the injury they have indirectly inflicted upon the people and upon the rebel army may be counted by millions.
"The reserve brigade of your division will move to Snickersville on the 29th. Snickersville should be your point of concentration, and the point from which you should operate in destroying toward the Potomac.
"Four days' subsistence will be taken by your command. Forage can be gathered from the country through which you pass.
"You will return to your present camp, via Snickersville, on the fifth day.
"By command of Major-General Sheridan.
James W. Forsyth,
Lieutenant-Colonel and Chief of Staff.
"Brevet Major-General Merritt
Commanding First Cavalry Division."
In pursuance of these orders Federal soldiers in three bodies entered the county on their devastating work. Williamson, himself a member of Mosby's band and an eyewitness of what followed, writes:
"The Federals separated into three parties, one of which went along the Bloomfield road and down Loudoun, in the direction of the Potomac; another passed along the Piedmont pike to Rectortown, Salem and around to Middleburg; while the main body kept along the turnpike to Aldie, where they struck the Snickersville pike. Thus they scoured the country completely from the Blue Ridge to the Bull Run Mountains. From Monday afternoon, November 28th, until Friday morning December 2nd, they ranged through the beautiful valley of Loudoun and a portion of Fauquier County, burning and laying waste. They robbed the people of everything they could destroy or carry off—horses, cows, cattle, sheep, hogs etc; killing poultry, insulting women, pillaging houses and in many cases robbing even the poor negroes. They burned all the mills and factories as well as hay, wheat, corn, straw and every description of forage. Barns and stables, whether full or empty, were burned—Colonel Mosby did not call the command together, therefore there was no organized resistance, but Rangers managed to save a great deal of livestock for the farmers by driving it off to places of safety. In many instances, after the first day of burning, we would run off stock from the path of the raiders into the limits of the district already burned over, and there it was kept undisturbed or in a situation where it could be more easily driven off and concealed...."[177]
The loss to the county was enormous. Although many old and well-built mills, and barns of brick or stone were not destroyed, as is conclusively proven by their survival to this day, and the devastation did not equal that in the Valley,[178] yet how great was the aggregate damage is suggested by a report submitted to the second session of the Fifty-first Congress (1890-91) in which sworn claims of adherents to the Union alone amounted to $199,228.24 for property burned and to an additional $61,821.13 for live stock taken; the report adding that there had been no estimate of the losses sustained by those whose sympathies were with the Confederates.[179] That the total loss to the people of the County, as a result of Sheridan's order, was over a million dollars well may be believed—and this in a community which had been raided and robbed and levied upon by both armies, as well as many outlaw bands for over three years of warfare! The privations and suffering of the following winter and spring can but be imagined. It may be noted that a Federal Brigade, under General Deven, established its headquarters at Lovettsville about Christmas time and that, although his soldiers patrolled all parts of Loudoun during that winter, yet in spite of all the war-time strain and hatreds, their relations with the people of the county were far better than usually prevailed.