A Stillness at Appomattox (139 page)

Most
Federal
soldiers
would
have
endorsed
the
words
and acts
of
a
Union
officer
in
northern
Alabama,
where
troop trains
were
fired
on
and
railroad
telegraph
lines
were
cut
by anti-Unionists
in
a
little
country
town.
This
officer
assembled the
townsfolk
and
told
them
that
henceforth
"every
time
the telegraph
wire
was
cut
we
would
burn
a
house;
every
time
a train
was
fired
on
we
should
hang
a
man;
and
we
would continue
to
do
this
until
every
house
was
burned
and
every man
hanged
between
Decatur
and
Bridgeport."
He
went
on to
put
the
army
viewpoint
into
explicit
words:
"If
they wanted
to
fight
they
should
enter
the
army,
meet
us
like honorable
men,
and
not,
assassin-like,
fire
at
us
from
the woods
and
run."
He
concluded
by
warning
that
if
the
citizens let
the
bushwhackers
continue
to
operate,
"we
should
make them
more
uncomfortable
than
they
would
be
in
Hell."
Having
said
all
of
this
he
burned
the
town,
arrested
three
citizens as
hostages
for
the
good
behavior
of
the
rest,
and
went
his way.
He
wrote
that
this
action
was
spoken
of
"approvingly by
the
officers
and
enthusiastically
by
the
men."
¹⁹

Now
it
should
be
remembered
that
ordinarily
the
soldiers were
the
least
bloodthirsty
of
all
the
participants
in
the
war. Secretary
Welles
might
write
fondly
of
hangings,
and
the Chicago
Board
of
Trade
might
ask
that
Confederate
prisoners be
allowed
to
die
of
hunger
or
disease,
and
it
could
be
washed off
as
part
of
the
inevitable
idiocy
of
superpatriotism
in
time of
war.
But
when
the
soldiers
themselves
began
to
feel
an
interest
in
creating
a
hell
on
earth
for
enemy
civilians
the
moon was
entering
a
new
phase.
The
tragic
part
about
it
now
was that
this
was
happening
in
an
army
one
of
whose
functions was
to
ravage
and
lay
waste
a
populous
farming
area
until even
a
crow
could
not
support
himself
in
it.
The
hand
that was
about
to
come
down
on
the
Shenandoah
Valley
was
going to
be
heavy
enough
anyway.
What
the
guerillas
did
was
not going
to
make
it
come
down
any
more
lightly.

It
was
mid-August,
and
the
Axmy
of
the
Shenandoah
had marched
more
than
a
third
of
the
way
up
the
Valley.
Lee
sent reinforcements
to
Early,
and
the
number
of
them
was
exaggerated
by
rumor,
and
Sheridan—still
feeling
his
way
with his
new
command,
and
behaving
with
unwonted
caution-decided
to
move
back
to
Halltown
and
wait
for
a
better time
and
place
to
strike.
The
army
paused,
and
then
it
moved slowly
back
in
retreat,
and
as
it
moved
innumerable
squadrons
of
Federal
cavalry
spread
out
from
mountain
to
mountain
in
a
broad
destroying
wave
and
began
methodically
and with
cold
efficiency
to
take
the
Valley
apart.

They
were
not
gentle
about
it.
The
chaplain
of
the
1st Rhode
Island
Cavalry
wrote
grimly:
"The
time
had
fully come
to
peel
this
land
and
put
an
end
to
the
long
strife
for its
possession,"
and
he
had
found
the
precise
word
for
it.
²⁰
The
cavalry
peeled
the
Shenandoah
Valley
as
a
man
might peel
an
orange.
The
blue
tide
ebbed,
leaving
wreckage
behind
it,
pillars
of
smoke
rising
by
day
and
pillars
of
fire
glowing
by
night
to
mark
the
place
where
they
had
been.

The
general
idea
was
simple.
All
barns
were
to
be
burned, and
crops
were
to
be
destroyed.
Farmers
were
to
be
left enough
to
see
themselves
through
the
winter,
although
the definition
of
"enough"
was
left
to
the
lieutenants
and
captains
commanding
the
detachments
which
had
the
matches, and
there
was
no
right
of
appeal.
Anything
that
could
benefit the
Confederacy
was
to
be
destroyed,
whether
it
was
a
corn-crib,
a
gristmill,
a
railroad
bridge,
or
something
that
went
on four
legs.
It
was
hoped
that
nobody
would
starve
to
death, and
no
violence
was
to
be
offered
to
any
civilian's
person,
but the
Valley
was
to
feed
no
more
Confederate
armies
thereafter.

The
Rhode
Island
chaplain
looked
back
on
it,
a
dozen years
later,
and
wrote:

"The
17th
of
August
will
be
remembered
as
sending
up to
the
skies
the
first
great
columns
of
smoke
and
flame
from doomed
secession
barns,
stacks,
cribs
and
mills,
and
the driving
into
loyal
lines
of
flocks
and
herds.
The
order
was carefully
yet
faithfully
obeyed.
.
.
.
The
order
led
to
the destruction
of
about
2,000
barns,
70
mills,
and
other
property,
valued
in
all
at
25
millions
of
dollars."
The
chaplain went
on
to
say
that
many
guerilla
bands
had
lived
in
this region
and
that
it
had
finally
been
"purified"
by
fire:
"As
our boys
expressed
it,
'we
burned
out
the
hornets
"
²¹