Guarding Prisoners During the Gettysburg Campaign

   The June 1863 battle of Winchester was a resounding Confederate victory and a good start to the Gettysburg campaign. Confederate forces under Richard Ewell were assigned the job of capturing or pushing out the 6,900 Federals garrisoning in and around Winchester, Virginia. The Federal force was under the command of Gen. Robert Milroy. One historian writes that the Federal soldiers, largely from Ohio and West Virginia, “had done little since their enlistments but guard duty on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and their fortifications were badly suited to resist a determined attack.”[1] 

Richard Ewell 

   Milroy believed that the gathering Confederate forces south of him were merely staging for a cavalry raid. When news arrived that a large Confederate force had near by, it was really too late to escape. The Confederates broke through the outer defenses on the evening of June 14, and Milroy ordered a retreat that began at 2:00 am the next morning. Four miles from Winchester, Milroy ran into Confederate forces at Stephenson’s Depot. It was an “ambush cleverly laid by Ewell.”[2] Leading the ambush were the three brigades under Allegheny Johnson. After three failed attempts to break through the Confederate lines, Milroy ordered his regiments  to each “leave to look out for itself, and what had once been Milroy’s command broke up in desperately fleeing fragments.”[3]

   Based upon returns from the Federal regiment, the loses were approximately 3,856 captured, although it is unclear just who was captured in Winchester and who was captured at Stephenson’s Depot. The heaviest-hit were the 67^th Pennsylvania Infantry, losing 714 men, the 18^th Connecticut, with 513 men captured, and the 123^rd Ohio, losing 445 men captured.[4]

   Following the battle, the prisoners were marched to the recently captured Federal forts. It would take several days to move all of the prisoners to Richmond. On June 16, captured Federals began to make the trip to Richmond. They, with their guards, would travel over 200 miles, part of it on foot, and part via rails. The 58^th Virginia and the 54^th North Carolina were assigned the task of escorting the prisoners. Colonel Francis H. Board, 58^th Virginia, addressed the guards: “Men, these Yankees have fallen into our hands by the fortune of war. I want them treated like gentlemen. If I hear of any insults or abuse, it will be punished.” The men would walk from Winchester to Staunton, where they boarded the cars to Richmond. According to one Federal, it took six days, from June 18 to June 24, to reach Staunton.[5]

   The Federals often had harsh words about their captors and the citizens they met. The chaplain of the 12^th Pennsylvania Cavalry complained that turnpike seemed to burn and blister his feet. “Half-clad, many shoeless and hatless and unfed, the cavalcade was a sorrowful one. The sufferings of the trip I cannot express. Nothing to eat but what we begged or bought off citizens who hated us intensely, shut their doors in our face, and from appearances would have been far better pleased with a visit from even his Satanic majesty himself. Indeed, unless the guard had [not] interfered in our behalf, we should have fared very badly.”[6] A captain in the 123^rd Ohio was even harsher, writing that during the march to Staunton, “we were necessitated, by our unfortunate condition as prisoners of war, to submit to the most contemptible treatment, and outrageous insults, that an enraged and diabolical enemy could heap upon us. This detestable treatment was not confined, neither was it most rampant among the soldier guards; but the citizens outrivaled even the soldiers in the exhibition of hate and virulence. They seemed to take great intense delight in hurling their anathemas upon us with unmitigated fury, such as ‘d----d Yankees,’ Milroy’s thieves and robbers,’ ‘black abolitionists,’ ‘every one of you, out to be hung,’ &c. &c.” Of course, some vitriol might be expected. But at one point, the colonel of the 58^th Virginia asked if their were any musicians among the Federals captives. When the answer was yes, he ordered them to the front, provided them with a fife and drum, and allowed them to play what ever airs they wanted, which included “Yankee Doodle” and “The Star Spangled Banner.”[7]

   David Parker, 54^th North Carolina, was one of those detailed to guard the prisoners. He wrote home that his column contained 2,200 Federal prisoners. “We had to march ninety two miles by land to Stanton. It took us five days. . . I tell you that we have had a hard time getting them here [Richmond]. We scarcely got to sleep any on the road. We had to stand guard two hours and only sleep two hours through the night and then march hard the next day.” On arriving in Staunton, the prisoners were placed in the cars, fifty per car. The guards were likewise divided up. Parker was assigned to continue the trip on to Richmond. “They then detailed twenty eight out of our regt to guard seven hundred of them to Richmond. We left Staunton a Tuesday evening about half an hour by sun and landed here the next evening.”[8] The Federal officers were sent to Libby Prison, while the enlisted men were sent to first to Castle Thunder, and then to Belle Island.

   The almost 4,000 men captured during the second battle of Winchester are not often counted as Confederates captured during the Gettysburg campaign. As Gettysburg concluded, General Lee placed “several thousand” Federal prisoners in charge of Maj. Gen. George Pickett, with orders to escort these men back to Virginia.[9] Kent Masterson Brown places the number at 4,000.[10] Stephen Sears places the number at 3,800.[11] If coupled with the 1,300 that Lee had paroled, and the couple of hundred that JEB Stuart had captured and paroled, the number of Federal soldiers captured during the Gettysburg  campaign probably came close to 10,000.

   If you are interested in this part of the Gettysburg Campaign, let me highly recommend The Second
Battle of Winchester: The Confederate Victory that Opened the Door to Gettysburg (Savas Beatie, 2016) by Eric J. Wittenberg and Scot L. Mingus, Jr. It is a fantastic book at this overlooked part of the history of the war.

---

[1] Guelzo, Gettysburg, 60.

[2] Coddington, Gettysburg, 89.

[3] Guelzo, Gettysburg, 62.

[4] ORs, Vol. 27, pt.  2, 53.

[5] Wittenburg and Mingus, The Second Battle of Winchester, 379.

[6] Wittenburg and Mingus, The Second Battle of Winchester, 385.

[7] Wittenburg and Mingus, The Second Battle of Winchester, 382-383.

[8] Henry, Pen in Hand, 91.

[9] Hess, Pickett’s Charge, 354.

[10] Brown, Retreat from Gettysburg, 177.

[11] Sears, Gettysburg, 479.

The Confederate She-Devil Diarists.

   William H. Seward, Lincoln’s Secretary of State, once said after visiting Winchester, Virginia, that “The men were all off in the Rebel army. The women were she-devils.”[1] Winchester has a pretty phenomenal war-time history, one that has been explored in several books and many articles over the years. The old town was settled in 1732 and was once home to George Washington. There were six battles fought nearby, and the town changed hands over seventy times during the 1860s.

   Seward visited the area in late March 1862, following the first battle of Winchester. Someone asked Seward about Unionist sentiment in the town, and Seward made his now-famous “she-devils” remark. The question is an interesting one. Many in the North believed that the South was largely Unionist, controlled by a few rabid-fire eaters that had pushed weak-minded politicians into secessionist and war. And there were Unionist pockets and people, even in Winchester. But in early 1862, the South was firmly behind the movement for a separate country.[2]

   What led Seward to proclaim the women in Winchester “she-devils”? Seward was in Winchester to personally thank Brig. Gen. James Shields for holding off Stonewall Jackson’s forces at Kernstown on March 23. Seward, with his son and daughter, and Mrs. Ellen Stanton (wife of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton), spent about a day in the town and on the battlefield. While his time there was short, Seward undoubtedly had time to talk to the generals in the area and to base his assumption on their observations.

   Later, Seward’s “she-devils” came to be known as the “devil diarists.” Who were these “she-devils”?

(wikipedia)

   Mary Greenhow Lee (1819-1907) is considered the most combative and notorious of Winchester Confederate women. Her dairy is considered “one of the most informative records of daily life in Civil War Virginia.”[3] Lee nursed Confederate wounded at the hospital on Cameron Street and later nursed Federal soldiers as well, often giving the wounded soup and bread from her own kitchen. She later ran out of firewood. Lee and other ladies were known to veil their faces with bonnets, and when veils were outlawed, to use their parasols to shield themselves from the obtrusive views of Federal soldiers. In February 1865, Union general Phil Sheridan banished Lee from Winchester. She would settle in Baltimore, Maryland, after the war, where she ran a boarding house.

   Emma Riely (1847-1942) was just fourteen when the war began. She left a memorable quotation – writing that “People used to have a basket to carry their money to market in but it bought so little they could carry their provisions home in their pocketbooks.” When forced to board Federal soldier officers in 1864, Riely slipped into their rooms while they were out and stole brandy, lemons, and sugar which were smuggled to Confederates in a local hospitals.[4]

   Kate Sperry (1843-1886) was eighteen when the war commenced. Her father was a Winchester merchant who joined the Confederate army. In her diary, she kept accounts of the work she did in local hospitals and of the depredations committed by Federal soldiers when they occupied the town. On March 17, 1862, she noted that the Federals “steal everything they lay their hands on…” and in April wrote “How I detest these dreadful invaders, they are without exception the meanest set of poor white trash I have ever beheld!” Kate eventually married a soldier, moved to Goldsboro in 1864, and then to Mississippi after the war.[5]

   Cornelia Peake McDonald (1822-1909) wrote the earliest published diary of the “Devil Diarists of Winchester” (1875), having a profound impact on Civil War histography. McDonald noted that Federal soldiers stole the meal she was fixing her children on Christmas Eve 1862, then in May 1862, took her fence and firewood. While she refused to take the oath that would allow her to purchase foodstuffs for her family from the Federals or sutlers, she did work out deals to trade flour for coffee, sugar, and bacon.  The McDonald family would flee Winchester in 1863, settling in Lexington. She eventually made her way to Louisville, Kentucky.[6]

   There were others – Laura Lee, Portia Baldwin Baker, Ann Cary Randolph Jones, Margaretta Miller, and Mary Tucker Magill. There are even two who supported the Union, Julia Chase and Harriet Hollingsworth Griffin, who wrote from Winchester during the war. While there are other dairies and reminiscences from other Southern cities written or concerning the war, the “she-devils” undoubtedly have contributed more per capita than any other group, making the war-time experience of Winchester unrivaled in the annals of Confederate history.  What began as a nasty misogynist slur is now a title for informal historians who left behind critical records for the future study of the civilian experience in our nation’s great struggle.

   If you were like to learn more about civilians in Winchester during the war, check out Laura Jane Ping’s 2007 master’s thesis, “Life in an Occupied City: Women in Winchester, Virginia during the Civil War,” here.

 

---

[1] The Pittsburg Gazette, April 7, 1862.

 
[2] The New York Times, March 30, 1862.

[3] The Winchester Star, November 4, 2014.

[4] Riely, Reminiscences of the Civil War, 107.

[5] https://witnessinghistory.org/kate-sperry-wartime-reports-from-winchester-virginia/

[6] McDonald, A Woman’s Civil War.

William Young Farthing

In the mass of email I have answered today (did I get to yours?) I had someone ask about William Young Farthing. Here is what I know about him:

William Young Farthing was born June 29, 1812, in Orange County, North Carolina. His father was John Farthing, and his mother was Lucy Goss. William Y. Farthing married Annie Watkins on October 29, 1840. He had these children: John S., Mary H., Reuben P., Rachel L., Winfield S., Harriet N., Lucinda W., James E., and Martha E. He was a farmer and lived in the Beaver Dams area of Watauga County. On September 18, 1861, he enlisted in Watauga County in the Watauga Minute Men. He was elected Captain the same day. The Minute Men became Company E, 37th North Carolina Troops, on November 20, 1861. Farthing was captured during the battle of Hanover Court House on May 27, 1862. He was confined at Fort Columbus, in New York Harbor. Later, he was transferred to Johnson’s Island, Ohio, where he arrived on June 21, 1862. He was then transferred to Vicksburg, Mississippi, arriving on September 20, 1862. On November 10, 1862, he was declared exchanged. On November 12, 1862, Farthing submitted his resignation to his superiors, stating that

In 1861 I brought into service my Co. and enlisted it for twelve months. Last April I re-enlisted ‘for the war’ and induced most of my company to follow me. I am fifty years old and have two sons; one of my sons is now a member of my Co. and the other is about to enter the army being subject to the Conscription law. I own no slaves, therefore my wife and daughters are left without any male assistance on the plantation.

Farthing’s resignation was accepted on November 12, 1862. However, he most likely did not know about his release from the army. He died that same day, and is buried in the Stonewall Cemetery in Winchester, Virginia.

A tragic fate for one of North Carolina’s soldiers.