In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Clifford Dotvdey is equally well-known as novelist and historian. Among his books are The Land They Fought For, Experiment in Rebellion, and Bugles Blow No More. In preparation for 1958 publication is The Death of a Nation, a detailed historical and interpretative account of the Confederates ' Gettysburg campaign. In the Valley of Virginia CLIFFORD DOWDEY THE IMMENSELY FERTILE AND BEAUTIFULLY CX)NTOUBED rolling Country of the Shenandoah Valley spans about thirty miles from the Blue Ridge Mountains to the Alleghenies; and from Lexington in the south to the Potomac (including the northernmost county then in Virginia). The Valley Pike ran along the floor for about 165 miles. The old pike, originally called the Big Trail, had a century and a quarter history of its own before Stonewall Jackson's "foot cavalry" gave it another fame. It was an Indian trail originally, then the road to the Cumberland Cap and on to the West, followed by the early pioneers—the Boones and Lincolns and the fabled John Sevier. Later it was the highway from the West to Washington ; Andrew Jackson traveled it on the journey to his first inaugural. From the time of the first settlers in the early eighteenth century, the Valley Pike was the principal artery for the industrious farmers and townspeople. Germans, Irish, and Scotch-Irish coming down the familiar route from Pennsylvania, Quakers and Mennonites, and Virginia yeomanry leaving the tidewater section, all the earliest settlers followed the pioneering pattern more typical of the American West Though there were a few large slaveholders in the northeast end, the people were predominantly farmers, and the section was not characterized by plantations. The people did not waste their rich, limestone soil for quick cash-crops. To feed the population during wartime, they produced grain of all kinds, beef cattle and horses, apples, and poultry. They lived a frontier democracy as opposed to the aristocratic pattern of eastern Virginia, and yet in customs, manners, and basic standards they were Virginians—Valley Virginians. They comprised the bulk of Jackson's own división and the backbone of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. 401 402CLIFFOBD DO WDE Y The place-names of the Shenandoah Valley belonged to the little market towns and to the smaller cities which had grown from the original status without changing character. Some of the names which loom so large on maps were no more than a crossroads, where one general store served the countryside. The military importance of most of the places was caused by their communication situation—though the hospitable tables of the townspeople served to break the monotony of the soldiers' sparse diets, and homes served as hospitals and ladies as nurses for the illy equipped medical department. No doubt, too, the enthusiastic affection of the people served the morale of the soldiers and kept before them the reality that they were fighting for their own land. What has caused confusion in reading the Valley campaign is the range of mountains, the Massanuttens, which rises abruptly within the valley, precisely like an island in the shape of a parallelogram. This bleak and uninhabited range runs north for roughly fifty miles between the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Valley Pike. In the 1860's it was crossed at one place by a winding mountain road from New Market on the pike to Luray, the central town of Page Valley, the smaller valley within the Shenandoah. At the southern end of the Massanuttens, a road ran from the small city of Harrisonburg on the pike to Conrad's Store, at the foot of the Blue Ridge; the road continued to Swift Run Gap across those mountains and on to Richmond. At the northern end of the Massanuttens, a road from Strasburg on the pike ran twelve miles to Front Royal (also the juncture of the two forks of the Shenandoah River) and on to Manassas Gap across the Blue Ridge. From the old battlefield of Manassas Junction to the east, the Manassas Gap R.R. also ran to Front Royal and on to Strasburg. Strasburg and Front Royal at the north, then, and Harrisonburg and Conrad's Store at the south, formed the corners of...

pdf

Share