Embattled Winchester: A Virginia Community at War, 1861–1865 (review)

Students of the Civil War recognize Winchester, Virginia, as a critical town during the 1862 and 1864 Shenandoah Valley campaigns. Throughout and between these well-known struggles, Winchester’s residents endured battles, military occupation, hardship, and loss. Richard R. Duncan has written the first major scholarly work on Winchester, arguably the most important town in the lower Shenandoah Valley during the Civil War.

Duncan’s study focuses on two themes. It shows how Winchester residents faced the transition of Union military practice toward civilians from a conciliatory policy to the “hard war” measures that triumphed with Philip Sheridan’s occupation in 1864. The residents’ struggle to survive the various ups and downs of life on a contested border constitutes Duncan’s second theme.

When Winchester first became an occupied town in March 1862, Union commander Nathaniel Banks adopted a conciliatory policy toward the town’s civilians. Even though Banks strove to protect property, his army’s mere presence began the process of slavery’s destruction. In short, Duncan notes that threats to civilians’ property (including slaves) trumped any official Union policy of conciliation.

Secessionists’ freely expressed joy as Banks’s forces abandoned Winchester in May, along with rumors that civilians fired at Union soldiers as they fled, caused future invaders to be less conciliatory. Harsher Union policies reached their apogee under the hated Robert Milroy, who occupied Winchester in the spring and summer of 1863. Under Milroy, civilians were required to take loyalty oaths to obtain travel passes and to acquire food and other necessities. Milroy’s confiscation of the house of Lloyd Logan and the family’s subsequent exile left a deep impression on Winchester’s civilians—they were still bitter in 1867 when the general returned to speak at the national cemetery. He was mercilessly heckled.

Although Sheridan’s burning of the Shenandoah Valley is often cited as a key example of hard war, Duncan argues that Sheridan was more reasonable toward civilians than Milroy and that his presence in Winchester actually led to the most stable period in the town since the war began. Despite this increased stability, Duncan concludes that Sheridan’s occupation completed the transition to hard war.

Duncan covers the transition clearly and effectively. His second theme, civilians’ struggle to survive in an uncertain and destructive environment, suffers from its subtle presentation. As large numbers of troops entered Winchester, residents faced problems ranging from sickness to the scarcity of necessities. These would continue throughout the war; it made little difference whether the army was Union or Confederate. By 1863, many residents dreaded the continued presence of either army in the town because of the great strain on resources that resulted. Residents of Winchester faced an extremely volatile situation, as the town changed hands frequently throughout the war and on more than one occasion changed hands several times in a day. Duncan argues that this frequent disruption made it difficult to transform Southern sectionalism into Confederate nationalism—as the war continued, even the most ardent secessionists became pragmatic survivalists. This pragmatism manifested itself in the toleration of unionists and eventually Union soldiers. While Duncan makes a valuable contribution here, these arguments quickly become lost in the narrative of events he describes.

Duncan successfully captures the sense of chaos and uncertainty that surrounded Winchester during the war and provides a compelling narrative of a community riding out the ebb and flow of a hotly contested area. He admirably succeeds in portraying Winchester as a case study that supports the pioneering work of Mark Grimsley on the evolution of hard war and Stephen V. Ash on occupied territories. While his discussion of Winchester civilians and their struggle to adapt lacks analytical rigor, and his heavy-handed discussion of secondary works frequently distracts the reader, Duncan reminds us of the severe challenge southern civilians faced in regions that frequently blurred the line between home front and battlefield.