Civilians: August 2009 Archives

Thursday September 3, 2009 from 7:30pm - 9:00pm
Maple Shade Barn
35 Greenbriar Lane
Dillsburg, Pennsylvania 17019

Civil War author and tour guide Scott L. Mingus, Sr. presents a PowerPoint presentation on Confederate Major General J.E.B. Stuart's controversial ride through western York County to Dillsburg while the Battle of Gettysburg raged to the west. The talk is FREE and open to the public!

Sponsored by the Northern York County Historical and Preservation Society.

Mingus will have copies of his latest book, Gettysburg Glimpses: True Stories from the Battlefield available for purchase and autographs.

On July 1, 1863, concurrent with the afternoon fighting on the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg, more than 5,000 Confederate cavalrymen passed through Carroll Township in northwestern York County, Pennsylvania. They were commanded by Major General J.E.B. Stuart, who was marching toward Carlisle and a hoped for rendezvous with the infantry of Ewell's Corps. Stuart, hoping to get some definitive word on the location of the Army of Northern Virginia, sent out various scouting parties.

He also sent out foragers, scouring the countryside for horses, mules, and supplies. They were hard to come by in this largely rural region. A previous raid by Rebel cavalry under Brig. Gen. Albert G. Jenkins had taken some of the horses, while hundreds of other animals had been taken to safety or hidden in the woods. A half dozen or so Carroll Township farmers had taken their horses down to Warrington Township to supposed safety on the imposing heights of Round Top mountain, but the Southerners had already found them. Several men had hidden their horses in the thick woods owned by John Cook on a farm off today's Route 74 just north of the township line; they were among the first horses discovered and seized by Stuart's column as it entered Carroll Township.

The Rebels weren't finished.

This impressive old stone mansion in downtown Wrightsville, Pennsylvania, has a storied history, once serving as a hotel and tavern. During the June 28 - 29, 1863, occupation of the town by a Confederate expeditionary force under Brig. Gen. John B. Gordon, the house was threatened by flaming embers from the conflagration that was engulfing the nearby Columbia-Wrightsville covered bridge. Rebel soldiers from an unidentified regiment labored to pass water uphill from the Susquehanna and Tide Water Canal to help douse the flickering flames on the roof of this house, as well as several others in the immediate hilltop vicinity. They were successful in stopping the spread of the fire that eventually destroyed most of the lower riverfront portions of Wrightsville.

There are several accounts left behind by the Rebels of their efforts to save the private homes of Wrightsville. Some Confederates later grumbled about obeying these orders, preferring instead to have watched the town burn down in retribution for Union atrocities committed at Darien, Georgia (events depicted in the movie Glory). One embittered soldier from the Darien vicinity later commented that if he ever got back to Wrightsville, this time he would personally torch the town.

William Smith (September 6, 1797 - May 18, 1887) was a lawyer, U.S. and Confederate congressman, two-time Governor of Virginia and one of the oldest Confederate generals in the Civil War.

In the early 1831, Smith received a Federal contract from the administration of President Andrew Jackson to develop and oversee mail routes between Washington D.C. and the capital of Georgia, Milledgeville. On his own initiative, he set up numerous side routes, which generated extra income. A subsequent investigation revealed his shenanigans, and he became widely known as "Extra Billy." During the Gettysburg Campaign, he commanded the Virginia brigade led earlier in the war by his divisional commander, Major General Jubal A. Early. He left two of his five regiments back in Winchester, Virginia, to help process and guard thousands of Union prisoners after the Second Battle of Winchester.

General Smith was known for his unorthodox field uniform, which often included a tall beaver hat and a blue cotton umbrella. Personally brave, although requiring close supervision on the battlefield, Smith had a penchant for making loud speeches.One of these orations has become fairly common in Gettysburg Campaign overviews, appearing in several leading secondary sources that are among the best-selling tomes on the battle. An artillery major named Robert Stiles wrote a post-war account of "Extra Billy" Smith making a spectacle in downtown York, Pennsylvania, as Early's division first occupied the town. Stiles, whose battery (Carrington's Courtney Battery) camped in the old York Fairgrounds, was certainly in the column of troops that entered York.

However, was Extra Billy there to make the rambling speech that Stiles claimed he did in his classic 1904 book Four Years Under Marse Robert? So many talented authors, many of them quite well known in Civil War circles, take this somewhat questionable account as fact.

Here is Stiles' rather colorful account of the Virginian's pause in York:

Back in November of 1907, the citizens of Dover, Pennsylvania, commissioned a copper-plated cast iron plaque commemorating the July 1, 1863, raid by Major General J.E.B. Stuart's Confederate cavalry on the town and its environs during the Gettysburg Campaign. That plaque was later moved to the Dover Fire Hall when it was built and is now on one side of a small rectangular brick pillar, along with an old fire bell and a flag pole.

The Stuart marker was one of the earliest memorials to the events surrounding Stuart's Ride unveiled in southern Pennsylvania, and it remembers the suffering of the residents of that day while their small town was occupied by three full brigades of Rebel cavalry, concurrent with the opening of the Battle of Gettysburg some 30 miles to the southwest.

During the June 30, 1863, Battle of Hanover, Pennsylvania, Confederate horse artillery deployed on a low hill just off the Littlestown-Frederick Road southwest of Hanover. The guns were unlimbered, loaded, and aimed at a distant target - mounted Union cavalry along Frederick Street at the outskirts of the town. The lanyard was pulled and the gun discharged, hurling its iron shell toward the horsemen.

It missed its intended target.

Instead of striking the enemy troopers, the shell found a much different target - a house occupied by terrified civilians.

On Monday, June 29, 1863, Col. William H. French's 17th Virginia Cavalry ranged throughout Dover Township and West Manchester Township in west-central York County, Pennsylvania, while foraging for horses, mules, and supplies. One patrol of the "Night Hawk Rangers" canvassed the region around the York Turnpike / Bairs Road / Wolf's Church area (today's commercial strip on U.S. Route 30 immediately west of the intersection with Route 462 Lincoln Highway).

Shown is 39-year-old farmer Henry S. Stambaugh's house, which is still in excellent condition despite being more than 150 years old. The Stambaugh name is still quite common in York County, and several members of the family filed damage claims with the state following the Civil War. Like the other victims of the Rebel raiders, they had to provide sworn testimony as to what was taken from their farms and include eyewitness depositions if available as to the thievery and/or testimony as to the known value of the horses lost. In several cases, neighboring farmers provided affidavits concerning how much the stolen horses would have been worth on the retail market had they been sold.

This historic marker was installed last year as part of the Pennsylvania Civil War Trails program. It commemorates the efforts by Georgia Confederate soldiers under Brig. Gen. John B. Gordon to extinguish a series of fires in downtown Wrightsville, Pennsylvania, caused by flaming embers from the burning Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge. That conflagration occurred on Sunday evening, June 28, 1863, during the Gettysburg Campaign when Union militia set fire to the bridge after crossing it into Lancaster County; their goal was to deny its usage to the Army of Northern Virginia.

As the fire from the massive mile-and-a-quarter long covered bridge spread westward with the prevailing winds from a rainstorm, Wrightsville's citizens and merchants produced buckets, pails, tubs, pitchers, and anything else suitable to carry water up from the Susquehanna River and/or the adjacent Susquehanna and Tide Water Canal. A bucket brigade of Rebel infantrymen helped save individual homes and businesses and helped arrest the fires that were burning out of control in the Westphalia district of Wrightsville and in the industrial section north of Hellam Street.

In this Cannonball blog entry, let's look at just a few of the buildings the Confederates labored to save. Their efforts paid off, as the structures are still intact 146 years after the inferno that destroyed many adjacent or nearby buildings such as the post office, a millinery and store, apartments, houses, a lumberyard, and other factories.

Bond certificate issued by the Northern Central Railway in 1917, not too many years after its long-time employee and chief engineer George Small retired from its service. He piloted the last train out of York, Pennsylvania, before elements of Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia occupied and ransomed the town.

With the threat of the Confederate infantry forces marching through south-central Pennsylvania the last week of week, the various railroads in the region began moving their rolling stock and locomotives to safety across the Susquehanna to Harrisburg or Philadelphia. Here in York County, the Northern Central Railway was still in the process of transporting its trains to Lancaster County and on to Philly when Major General Jubal Early's troops entered York County. Some of its rail cars (many of which were built in York) were still down by the Maryland line as Rebel cavalry began threatening the NCR's infrastructure. Railroad officials knew that the Confederates would destroy the bridges and cripple the route, as the Rebs had done to the Cumberland Valley Railroad a few days earlier.

For one York railroad engineer, Walnut Street resident George Small, the arrival of the Rebels coincided with a mad dash he was making to get the last of the NCR's cars to Philadelphia.

Here is his story, as told by the York Dispatch in 1905 (courtesy of the library of the York County Heritage Trust; many thanks to Ray Kinard of the Codorus Valley Historical Society for calling my attention to a transcription donated to the library early in the 20th century).

This old photograph is courtesy of theunfinishedwork.com, a website for a recent fictional book on the Gettysburg Campaign by Hanover native Frank Meredith. His well crafted novel includes the Battle of Hanover on June 30, 1863, and other York and Adams county venues.

The picture from the Hanover Historical Society shows an old, deteriorating rail car of the long defunct Hanover Branch Railroad, which was operational through the latter half of the 19th century into the early part of the 20th. Tradition suggests this is the exact car that Hanover Branch Railroad president A. W. Eichelberger deployed as the private car for President Abraham Lincoln and his traveling party during their trip to and from Baltimore to Gettysburg for the dedication ceremony of the National Cemetery in mid-November 1863. The director's car was eventually scrapped, according to some local sources.

Lincoln's party included his friend from his Illinois days, Ward Hill Lamon, who was serving as his personal bodyguard and advisor. Also in the party were members of his staff, including his private secretary John G. Nicolay, adviser John Hay, and a bevy of reporters and politicians, including Secretary of War Edwin McM. Stanton and Secretary of State William H. Seward.

This story is excerpted from my manuscript for Gettysburg Glimpses 2: More True Stories from the Battlefield, being published in early 2010 by Ten Roads Publishing (a new company associated with the American History bookstore in Gettysburg).

A group of volunteer ladies from Lancaster County who termed themselves as the "Patriot Daughters" decided to travel to Gettysburg to offer their services as nurses and relief workers. On the way there, they had encountered several difficulties, including finding suitable transportation across the rain-swollen Susquehanna River because the Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge had been burned by retreating Union militia on June 28. They waited in line for hours and finally took their seats on a boat that was ferrying people between the two towns.

As they rode between York and Adams counties, one lady noted, "All around was in the height of summer beauty; the birds sang in the clear morning sky, and the stately hills looked down on orchards laden with their crimson fruit. Though late in the season, the harvest was just yielding to the sickle. All here, was beauty, quietness and peace, whilst all beyond was desolation, destruction and war.

Here we listened to the sweet songs of birds whilst within a few miles, the air was laden with shrieks of the wounded and groans of the dying. We were but a few miles from Gettysburg, when we met the first ambulance. In it was a wounded Captain, who had received permission, (as his home was in Lancaster County), to try and reach there if he could; and although severely wounded, and the motion of the ambulance caused him great pain, still he said he was willing to endure it if he could only get home. He had been in the hands of the enemy until they retreated; they had been very kind to him and, in return, he begged us to take good care of one Reb. I promised him that I would, and the promise was kept."

The Lancaster ladies ministered without prejudice to both fallen Yankee and Confederate.

The Patriot Daughters of Lancaster County, Hospital Scenes after the Battle of Gettysburg. (Lancaster, Pennsylvania: Daily Inquirer, 1864).