Secrets of the Late Rebellion, Now Revealed for the First Time

by Jacob R. Freese

"I purpose," said the officer, "that you do no such thing; that these officers be sent under guard to Richmond, and that you yourself report there at once under arrest." Of course a good deal more was said, and a great many oaths uttered on both sides, but the above is about the substance. The Union officers heard and saw all that was said and done, but were so dumbfounded that they could not say a word or utter a cry even to each other. When they did finally comprehend it all, they regarded their deliverer as one sent from heaven, and were ready to fall down and worship him. The transition from death to life was so sudden, so unexpected, that it was some time before they could fully realize whether they were in the body or out of the body, whether their natural senses were still of the earth, earthy, or whether they had been suddenly translated to another sphere, where angels only sing "peace on earth and good will towards men!"

In pursuance of the commanding officer's orders, the six Union officers were next day forwarded, as prisoners of war, to Richmond; while Moseby himself soon after reported at the Adjutant General's office under arrest, to await such action as the authorities might think proper in his case. And thus, and thus, were the lives of six more men saved from the infernal clutch and ravenous maw of this hyena in human form.

Not many days after, the same officer who had released from Moseby's clutch the six Union officers above spoken of, chanced to be riding along a public highway when he observed, at considerable distance off, in a deep gully, a man entirely naked, dodging from place to place, as if in fear or distress. The sight was so strange that the officer turned his horse's head and quickly rode to the place where he had first seen the man. Here he found not the one only, but three, all entirely naked, and all huddled together, as if to protect themselves from each other's sight. The officer demanded what it all meant. It was some moments before the men could answer at all, but when they did, they told the Confederate officer that they were three Union officers who had been gobbled up the day before by Moseby's guerillas, stripped of everything they had on earth, even to their shirts, and then left in that woods or ravine to do as best they might, with the warning, however, that if they made the least alarm they would be again caught and either hung or shot; that they had feared to approach any house in their nude state, lest they might be shot at as ghosts or wild men; that they had not had a morsel of food for a long time, and that even death was preferable to longer enduring such suspense and torture. The officer had seen inhumanity in almost every possible shape, but this, he said, was a refinement of cruelty which shocked him more than anything he had ever seen before. He went to a house, not far off, and obtained shirts for two, and a woman's chemise for one, with such other clothing as they chanced to have. Thus, partially dressed, he then took them to the house, where they remained while the officer went to other houses of the neighborhood to get enough additional clothing to cover their nakedness. He then had them accompany him to the nearest military command, where he turned them over as regular prisoners of war. And thus were three more clutched from the grasp of these bloodthirsty hyenas. Clutched from death, too, for had they not been seen and rescued by this officer, they would, in all human probability, have been sought for by the guerillas next day, and either shot or hung.

There was no month, and probably but few weeks or days, during the entire war that Moseby's guerillas were not planning or executing some villanous enterprise against the Union army or Union men; but we have room only for a few more, and these we will select from his operations in the Shenandoah Valley and vicinity during the summer and fall of 1864.

In August, 1864, General Sheridan was assigned to the command of the Middle Military Division, comprising the Middle Department and the Departments of Washington, the Susquehanna, and West Virginia. Occupying the Shenandoah Valley, in front of Sheridan, General Early lay, with about eighteen thousand Confederate troops. To drive these troops out of, or at least further up, the Valley, and to keep them so employed that no part of them should be detached from Early to send to Hood in his defence of Atlanta against the attack of Sherman, was Sheridan's first concern during the summer and fall of '64. In pursuance of this plan, on the 10th of August, Sheridan began to move out his forces from Halltown for the possession of the Shenandoah Valley. When Early's positions were reached, he fell back, and continued to fall back, until he reached Fisher's Hill, beyond Strasburg. In pursuing Early, Sheridan had passed several gaps in the mountains which skirt the Valley, and left them unguarded. Moseby, learning of this, hastily got together as many of his guerillas as possible, dashed through Snicker's Gap on the 13th, struck Sheridan's supply-train, which was only guarded by Kenly's brigade of one hundred days' men, at Berryville, and, before the guard had fairly recovered from the panic, Moseby had captured the entire train, consisting of seventy-five wagons, from five to six hundred horses and mules, two hundred beef cattle, and a large quantity of stores. He also secured over two hundred prisoners. His own loss was only two killed and three wounded.

The attack and loss were so sudden, so unexpected, and so exaggerated in the telling from one soldier to another, that they seemed for the moment to paralyze Sheridan's entire army; so much so that he deemed it expedient to make a retrograde movement, which he continued until he reached, on the 21st of August, a position about two miles out from Charlestown. While Sheridan was thus falling back from day to day, Moseby's guerillas hung upon his rear and flanks, treacherously capturing and killing whenever opportunity offered. In one instance, it is alleged, after taking some Union cavalrymen prisoners; after, indeed, they had fully surrendered as prisoners of war and been disarmed, Moseby ordered every one of them brutally murdered on the spot, in pursuance of his maxim that "dead men never bite." In retaliation for this terrible outrage, Sheridan ordered that from thenceforth every house and barn of these half-guerillas, half-farmers in the Valley, that could possibly be# reached by his cavalrymen, should be destroyed.

Not only in retaliation for this one act, but for scores of other acts of a like or worse character, of which they were cognizant, and with a view to strike terror into the minds of such men as had been, and still were, harboring and encouraging these guerillas—men who were farmers by day and robbers by night—both General Grant and General Sheridan determined to inaugurate a wholesale system of devastation in the localities where these outrages had been mostly carried on—especially in the Virginia counties of Shenandoah, Rockingham, Loudon, and Fauquier. As a result of this policy—or, more properly speaking, as a result of the outrages which had been perpetrated by Moseby's guerillas (for the policy would never have been thought of but for these outrages)—the following destruction of property is reported to have occurred in the four counties named, between the 1st of October, when the policy was inaugurated, and the forepart of December (1864), when Merritt's cavalry division crossed the Blue Ridge, and made a grand raid through the upper part of Loudon and Fauquier counties:

In Shenandoah and Rockingham counties—according to the official report of a commissioner of the revenue to the Richmond authorities—"there were burned 18 dwelling-houses, 215 barns, 11 grist-mills, 9 water saw-mills, 2 steam saw-mills, 1 furnace, 2 forges, 1 fulling-mill, besides a number of smaller buildings, such as stables, etc. The quantity of grain destroyed is immense. I cannot give you any idea of the amount of grain, hay, fodder, etc., destroyed, but the quantity is very large."

In Loudon and Fauquier counties—according to the official report made by General Sheridan to General Grant at the time—the property burned and captured was as follows: Burned—barns, 1168; mills, 49; tanneries, 1; factories, 2; distilleries, 6; tons of hay, 27,620; bushels of wheat, 51,500; bushels of corn, 62,900; bushels of oats, 2000; haystacks, 1121; wheatstacks, 57; stacks of other grains, 104. Captured—horses, 388; mules, 8; cattle, 5520; sheep, 5837; swine, 1141. Total estimated value of property destroyed and captured in these two counties, $2,508,756.

It should be added, as a further reason for the destruction of wheat, corn, hay, etc., that General Lee had been drawing his supplies largely from these four counties, and it was therefore for the purpose of crippling Lee's army, as well as to punish these farmers for harboring and aiding Moseby's guerillas, that this wholesale destruction of property was planned and executed.