Mennonites, Amish, and the American Civil War

CHAPTER 10. Burning the Shenandoah Valley

K฀chapter 10฀L Burning the Shenandoah Valley The Advent of Hard War O n Tuesday, June 7, 1864, Gideon Hildebrand stopped at the Augusta County, Virginia, home of his parents, deacon Jacob R. and Catherine Hildebrand. Gideon was in the area on a fifteenday “horse detail” from the 1st Virginia Cavalry, which he had joined in February. But military maneuvers closed in on the area, and Gideon’s opportunity for rest and family was short-lived. The next day he and three other Confederates were sent out scouting. Surprised by several Yankees, Gideon “shot one of them.” In the melee that followed, Hildebrand lost his horse and pistol, but escaped with his life.1 Father Jacob described these events in his journal but left the outcome of the encounter ambiguous: Did Gideon kill the Union trooper, or merely wound him? Or was Gideon himself unsure of what happened to his opponent? Although the deacon’s diary was filled with war news, never had an entry been this dramatic or immediate. Yet if Gideon’s lethal actions at close range troubled father Hildebrand, the journal did not reveal it. Perhaps by now the tangled web of war that involved so many of Hildebrand’s kin and community had broadened his approval of the means needed to defend the Confederate cause. In any case, his son’s skirmish was only the first in an accelerating series of incidents soon to engulf the area. Death and destruction would press even closer on the Mennonites of the Shenandoah Valley, especially during the Union’s campaign of indiscriminate burning in the autumn of 1864. For those 198฀ K฀mennonites, amish, and the american civil war L฀ in the Valley, the events would be a nightmare long seared into their memories. The series of failed Union raids into the Valley during the spring of 1864 had left Confederate forces there in complete control. Lieut. General Jubal Early was able to move freely and use the Shenandoah’s shelter as a staging ground for a surprising thrust into Maryland and Pennsylvania , including the burning of Chambersburg. Early’s July incursion into the North frustrated Union commander Grant. His own march through the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and Petersburg—a Virginia campaign he had promised to finish “if it takes all summer”—was getting bogged down, as was the Union drive toward Atlanta, further South.2 Confederate claim to the Shenandoah Valley only added to the Federals’ burgeoning morale problem. By mid-summer the best-selling sheet music in the North was the wistful “When This Cruel War Is Over.” Then too, national elections were looming, and if Union leaders did not produce some decisive military results, ballot box prospects for the Republican administration were dim.3 With all this in mind, the Union’s commanding general created a new Army of the Shenandoah, with the goal of following Early “to the death” and taking control of the Valley.4 More specifically, on July 14, 1864, Grant dispatched a message to Washington, D.C., promising to “eat out Virginia clear and clean as far as they go [into the Shenandoah Valley ], so that crows flying over it for the balance of the season will have to carry their provender with them.”5 “I do not mean that houses should be burned,” Grant clarified the next day, but stressed that the Valley should nonetheless be made “a desert” and “all provisions and stock should be removed , and the people notified to move out.”6 To carry out the project, Grant selected an enterprising and enthusiastic young officer, Maj. General Philip H. Sheridan, to lead the campaign. Sheridan saw his chance to become famous and wasted no time in setting about the task of decimating the “breadbasket” of the Confederacy.7 As much as twenty-five miles wide, the Valley and its fertile fields comprised the northern portion of the so-called Great Valley of Virginia. Angling northeastward for 125 miles toward the Potomac River, the Shenandoah was bounded on the east by the Blue Ridge Mountains and on the west by the Alleghenies, with the maverick Massanutten Mountain range boldly puncturing the valley from Harrisonburg to Front Royal. Throughout the war the Valley had contributed a great deal to Virginia’s economy and had directly and indirectly supplied Southern armies. In one sense, the Valley’s peace church population of Dunkers and...