CHAPTER XXXVI
THE VALLEY
Early’s task in the Valley throughout this summer and autumn was to preserve a threatening attitude toward blue territory on the other side of the Potomac, to hinder and harass Federal use of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and to render the Northern Capital so continuously anxious that it might at any time choose to weaken Grant in order to add to its own defences. In addition he had presently Sheridan to contend with, Sheridan strengthened by Hunter, returned now from the Kanawha Valley to the main battle-grounds.
Sheridan’s task in the Valley was to give body to the Northern reasoning as to the uses, at this stage of the game, of that section. With war rapidly concentrating as it now was, the Northern Government saw the Valley no more as a battle-ground, nor as of especial use to the blue colour on the chessboard. But it was of use to the grey, especially that rich portion of it called the Shenandoah Valley. Moreover it was grey; scourge it well and you scourged a grey province. Make it untenable, a desert, and the loss would be felt where it was meant to be felt. Sheridan, with Hunter to aid, devastated as thoroughly as if his name had been Attila. McCausland made a cavalry raid into Pennsylvania and, in reprisal for Hunter’s burnings, burned the town of Chambersburg. It did not stop the burnings across the river; they went on through the length and breadth of the Valley of Virginia. Over the mountains, in Northern Virginia, in the rolling counties of Fauquier and Loudoun, was “Mosby’s Confederacy,” where the most daring of all grey partisan leaders “operated in the enemy’s lines.” Mosby did what lay in man to do to help the lower Valley. He “worried and harassed” Sheridan by day and by night. But the burning and lifting went on. When late autumn came, with winter before it, a great region lay bare, and over it wandered a vision of drawn faces of women and a cry of small children.
Sheridan in person did not come until the first week in August. Late in July Early fought the Army of West Virginia, Crook and Averell, at Winchester—fought and won. Here the Golden Brigade did good service, and here the “Fighting Sixty-fifth” won mention again, and here Steve Dagg definitely determined to renounce the Confederate service.
Life had taken on for Steve an aspect of ’62 in the Valley—only worse. In a dreadful dream he seemed to be recovering old tints, repeating old experiences from Front Royal to Winchester—but all darkened and hardened. In ’62 the country was still rich, and you could forage, but now there was no foraging. There was nothing to forage for. Then the old Army of the Valley had been ill-clad and curiously confident and cheerful, with Mr. Commissary Banks double-quicking down the pike, before Old Jack! Now the Second Corps was worse-clad, and far, far from the ancient careless cheer. It still laughed and joked and sang, but less often, and always, when it did laugh, it was with a certain grimness as of Despair not far off. On night and day marches, you heard song and jest, indeed, but you heard heavy sighs as well—a heavy sighing in the night-time or the daytime, as the army moved on the Valley Pike. Now confident good cheer in others was extraordinarily necessary to Steve. When it flagged, it was as though a raft had sunk from beneath him. Yes, it was ’62 over again, but a homesick, strange, far worse ’62! Daily life grew to be for him a series of shocks, more or less violent, but all violent. Life went in magic-lantern slides—alternate blackness and frightful, vivid pictures in which blood red predominated. Steve developed a morbid horror of blood.
August came. At Moorefield occurred a cavalry fight, Averell against McCausland and Bradley Johnson, the grey suffering defeat. On the seventh came Sheridan with the Sixth and the Nineteenth Army Corps and Torbert’s great force of cavalry. The blue forces in the Valley now numbered perhaps forty-five thousand, with some thousands more in garrison at Martinsburg and Harper’s Ferry. Lee sent in this month Kershaw’s division and Fitzhugh Lee’s cavalry, but in a few weeks, indeed, Kershaw must be recalled to Petersburg, where they needed every man—every man and more! In the Valley August and the first third of September went by in marchings and counter-marchings, infantry skirmishing and cavalry raids. The third week of the latter month found the grey gathered behind the Opequon.
Mid-September and the woods by the Opequon turning red and gold. “Ah,” said the Sixty-fifth, “we camped here after Sharpsburg, before we went over the mountains and fought at Fredericksburg! But it isn’t as it was—it isn’t as it was—”
Gordon and Breckenridge and Ramseur and Rodes, with Fitz Lee’s cavalry sent up from Tidewater, all camped for a time beside the Opequon. The stream ran with an inner voice, an autumn colouring was on the land. “But it isn’t bright,” said the men, “it isn’t bright like it was that fall!”—“Isn’t time yet for it to be bright. Bright in October.”—“Yes, of course—but that fall it was bright all the time! The seasons are changing anyhow.”—“What’s that the Bible student’s saying? ‘The lean kine and the lean ears of corn—’” Opequon flowed on, brown and clear, but much of the woodland by Opequon had been hewed away, and the bordering lands were not now under cultivation. All were bare and sorrowful. There were no cattle, no stock of any kind. The leaves turned red and the leaves turned yellow and the wind murmured through the hacked and hewed forest, and the nights were growing chill. “Do you remember,” said the men, “the day that Heros von Borcke brought Old Jack the new uniform from Jeb Stuart?”—“Do you remember the revival here?”
“We’re tenting to-night on the old camp-ground.
Give us a song to cheer—”