Confederates: 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 line of artillery is in Willard Park on the grounds of the Washington Navy Yard. While most of the tubes were made on-site at the Naval Foundry and sent to Union Navy ships or land installations, the one second from the right served the Confederacy during the Civil War.

According to WIkipedia, the Washington Navy Yard is the oldest shore establishment of the U.S. Navy and currently serves as a ceremonial and administrative center, home to the Chief of Naval Operations. It is headquarters for the Naval Historical Center, the Department of Naval History, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps, Naval Reactors, Marine Corps Institute, and numerous other naval commands.The Washington Navy Yard was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973, and designated a National Historic Landmark on May 11, 1976. nearly 400,000 people visit the U.S. Navy Museum annually.

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.

Dr. Charlie Fennell poses by a monument on Culp's Hill at Gettysburg National Military Park. A professor at Harrisburg Area Community College in Gettysburg, Dr. Fennell is one of the recognized experts on that portion of the Battle of Gettysburg. A long-time friend of the York Civil War Round Table, he will present a talk at the upcoming CWRT meeting on the July 1, 1863, fighting on Oak Ridge in Gettysburg and then will lead a battle walk / field study on the same topic in mid-September.

Photo from Gettysburg Daily, the most informative Gettysburg blog currently on the Internet, and a good friend of this Cannonball blog.

One of the most entertaining public speakers and educators in this general area will be the featured speaker at the August 19, 2009, monthly meeting of the York Civil War Round Table in historic York, Pennsylvania. Gettysburg Licensed Battlefield Guide, Dr. Charles C. Fennell, Jr., will present what promises to be a great presentation, "Confederate Disaster on Oak Ridge: The Demise of Brig. Gen. Alfred Iverson's Brigade on July 1, 1863 at Gettysburg."

The topic of the night will focus on Confederate Brig. Gen. Alfred Iverson's North Carolina Brigade, which included the 5th, the 12th, the 20th and the 23rd North Carolina. They were in Maj. Gen. Robert Rodes' division of the Army of Northern Virginia's Second Corps (commanded by Lt. Gen. Richard S. Ewell).

The presentation is FREE and open to the public! Charlie will unleash his high energy, charismatic style at 7:00 PM on August 19 at the York County Heritage Trust at 250 E. Market Street in downtown York, Pennsylvania. Parking is free; the area is well lit and safe, and the camaraderie and Civil War discussion both educational and fun!

See you there!!

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.