Gettysburg Campaign: April 2008 Archives

The new book is available from Borders in York and at leading retailers in Gettysburg. It's also for sale at Internet retailers such as amazon.com and target.com.

Here is an anecdote from my recent Human Interest Stories of the Gettysburg Campaign, Volume 2, which was published by Colecraft Industries of Ortanna, PA. This is just one of more than two hundred such true stories from Gettysburg. You will not find any ghosts of Gettysburg or other such tales in this book, but rather stories as related directly by the participants themselves about their experiences. Nothing supernatural, just extraordinary in many cases.

The 102nd Pennsylvania was among the Union reinforcements that helped clear the "Valley of Death" late on July 2.

The York Civil War Round Table is sponsoring a National Park Service-sanctioned battlefield clean-up activity on Saturday morning, May 3, 2008. To further entice folks to turn out, in the early afternoon, there will be a free battle walk and tour of East Cemetery Hill led by Scott Mingus, who has written a new book covering the topic. There is no charge for either activity, and the public is welcome to participate, although a free-will donation is suggested to the York CWRT to help defray expenses for the speakers at future monthly meetings. Volunteers for the Adopt-a-Position work day need to bring gloves and clippers.

Meet at 10 a.m. at the monuments to the 102nd Pennsylvania / 62nd New York on the John Weikert / Althoff Farm Lane, just northeast of the Wheatfield Road intersection with Crawford Avenue (near Houck's Ridge / Devil's Den). Lunch is on your own. Then, at 1:00 p.m., meet at the Evergreen Cemetery Gatehouse for the 90-minute battle walk, which will involve only modest walking.

As the spring of 1863 began, the last thing many York Countians expected was that the Civil War would roll northward into this lush agrarian region. The war was down in Virginia, and in places way out west where names like Murfreesboro had been in the news over the winter. Yet, as April and May rolled into June, little did the locals dream that they would soon play host to two separate major Confederate incursions within a three-day period, as well as smaller raids.

Heidelberg Township merchant George Zinn was among the dozens of merchants and shopkeepers who were visited by Confederate troops.

A 1911 newspaper offered a lengthy account of the occupation of York by parts of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. York would be the largest town in the North to be occupied by the Confederates.

M. L. Van Barman was just a kid in 1863 when Jubal Early and his powerful division of battle-tested veteran soldiers occupied York following a decision by civic officials to peacefully cooperate with the oncoming Confederates rather than try to resist. It was a decision that was not immediately challenged openly, but one that sparked considerable second-guessing and questioning in the following decades. Chief Burgess David Small would be at the center of this firestorm of controversy. Young businessman A. B. Farquhar would have an audience with Abraham Lincoln in which the president would teasingly introduce Farquhar to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton as the chap who surrendered York.

In 1911, as we conclude Van Barman's narrative of Early's Raid, he offers his retrospective and opinion on the actions of town leaders 48 years before. Many of the leading participants, both Pennsylvanian and Confederate, were by now dead, but the arguments continued as to whether or not York made the right call in "surrendering."

1909 postcard showing the Codorus Creek and the modernized flour mill once owned by the prosperous firm of P.A. & S. Small. Reports on June 29, 1863, reached businessman Samuel Small, Jr. that the infamous Louisiana Tigers were destroying the operations and gumming up the mill race and equipment by dumping flour into the water.

How far would you go in wartime to protect your own private property, or that of your neighbors and friends? During Early's Raid in 1863, local residents reacted in a mixture of ways that reflects the diversity of human emotions and personalities. Many Yorkers packed what they could and fled eastward to Lancaster County. Some of these refugees drove flocks of sheep, herds of cattle, horses, and other livestock and animals across the toll bridge over the Susquahanna to presumed safety.Other people hid their valuables and horses (and sometimes themselves as well) in woods, hollows, barns, and other hiding places in an attempt to escape detection from roving patrols of Confederate foragers.

A few bold residents confronted the Rebels and refused to allow them to steal property or livestock. Several men even insisted on personal audiences with leading Confederate generals, including Jubal Early, to ensure the safety of their property and possessions. M. L. Van Barman relates one such story.

A typical old swimming hole from the 1930s

When I was a kid, our southeastern Ohio village was uniquely blessed with a very popular regional tourist attraction known as Lake Isabella. A sprawling complex of former limestone quarries, the Columbia Cement Company spent huge amounts of cash to dam a nearby creeek and convert the former quarries into a horseshoe-shaped lake, with shelter houses, a dance hall, recreational facililties, basketball and tennis courts, shuffleboard, boat docks, a marina, and best of all, a very nice swimming area replete with a diving board, a high dive tower, and a distant metal raft to rest upon after distance swims. It was a fantasy, as we lived on the bluff overlooking the lake, and I spent my youthful summers at the complex.

We also had an old-fashioned watering hole at the nearby Jonathan Creek, where some people would go skinny-dipping, an act obviously forbidden at the Lake Isabella beach. Somebody fixed up a rope and old tire, and swinging out over the hole and jumping in became popular.

Somewhat similar to my hometown of East Fultonham, York in 1863 had its own two water attractions, as we will see from the latest entry from M. L. Van Barman's 1911 recollection of the Gettysburg Campaign and Jubal Early's Raid.

Civil War messages were conveyed by telegraph where the service was available, but most often were delivered in person by mounted couriers. A messenger sent from Carlisle by Richard Ewell rode through northern York County down to York to find Major General Jubal Early and give him updated orders, cutting short his raid.

Confederate general Jubal Early had planned to seize the long covered bridge over the Susquehanna River at Wrightsville, march his veteran division into Lancaster County, and threaten Harrisburg from the rear. This was in contrast to his original orders to destroy the bridge and then march to Dillsburg to link up with the rest of Richard Ewell's corps. However, in the early evening of June 28, 1863, "Old Jube's" plans were thwarted by the state militia's burning of the bridge. High water prevented any possibility of simply fording the rain-swollen river.

As we pick up York resident M. L. Van Barman's narrative, it is late afternoon on Monday, June 29. John Gordon's brigade is marching back to York, having passed through Hallam after leaving Wrightsville and the smoldering bridge. The Lousiana Tigers and Extra Billy Smith's brigades are camped between Loucks Road and Emigsville, along with artillery on the heights along the Codorus Creek. Ike Avery's North Carolinans patrol downtown York, and more cannons frowning from Webb's Hill south of town. Jubal Early has threatened to burn certasin railroad buildings if York does not fully comply with a ransom he has levied on the town, and he is meeting with York authorities. A few railcars and small shops are already on fire.

However, events in Maryland will now change forever the course of the Gettysburg Campaign, even as Early argues with one of the railroad officials...

York's old county courthouse served as the temporary headquarters for the Confederate army division that occupied York in June 1863.

In several previous posts, we have looked at the Confederate invasion of York through the eyes of resident M. L. Van Barman, in an account not fully republished since 1911. Backgrounds posts: Introduction, Jubal Early arrives in Gettysburg, The Rebels Approach York, Farquhar Steps Up, York "Surrenders" at Farmers.

My wife and I enjoy popping a DVD into the player and watching movies together, a joy we indulge in a couple of times a week. We recently watched Denzel Washington's interesting movie Man on Fire, in which he plays a downtrodden bodyguard assigned to protect a little girl in Mexico from political kidnappers. He initially fails, and she is taken and held for ransom. Eventually, as with many Hollywood flicks, she is released and the movie has a happy ending. Unfortunately, ransom money has been around almost as long as humanity, The paying of tribute money was a common practice in the ancient Middle East, where an invading army might be dissuaded from sacking a village or town through the payment of crops, slaves, gold, or other valuables. That practice was still intact during the 1863 Gettysburg Campaign.

Here is Van Barman's account of Jubal Early's ransom of York...

Confederate troops from Georgia haul down York's huge flag in this Lewis Miller sketch, courtest of YCHT. York became the largest town in the North to be occupied by the Confederates. It was one of more than fifty such towns and villages in Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania to see Rebels marching through the streets during the summer of 1863.

In several previous posts, we have looked at the Confederate invasion of York through the eyes of resident M. L. Van Barman, in an account not fully republished since 1911. Backgrounds posts: Introduction, Jubal Early arrives in Gettysburg, The Rebels Approach York, Farquhar Steps Up, York "Surrenders" at Farmers.

I cannot imagine what it would be like for an enemy army to march through the streets of your hometown, and then to physically occupy it. Millions of people throughout history have experienced such events, sometimes with horribly tragic results. Some time ago, I studied the Roman occupation of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, one of the more brutal occupations. York would be spared any significant damage, and women and children would not be molested as terms of an agreement offered to York's delegation by John B. Gordon at Farmers, PA. In this case, the opposing army would enter town peacefully and no civilians would be injured or killed, unlike some places in Indiana and Ohio visited a few weeks later by Rebel raiders under John Hunt Morgan.

Here is the continuation of M. L. Van Barman's eyewitness account of Jubal Early's raid...

Photo of the house at Farmers, PA where York's four-man delegation met the night of June 27, 1863, with Confederate General Gordon to negotiate York's immediate future. This picture ran in a local York newspaper on the 100th anniversary of the event. Background post - Jim McClure's entry on the farmhouse.

M. L. Barman was an eyewitness to the Confederate invasion of York. His 1911 newspaper account is comprehensive and offers a broad overview of the occupation from a civilian perspective. In the last installment, he recounted the uncertainty among York's leaders as the Rebels approached, and the impulsiveness of young industrialist A. B. Farquhar, who dashed westward in his buggy to meet with the Confederates, without waiting for authorization. Now, as we pick up the story, Farquhar is heading out the turnpike (Route 30) again, only this time with the mayor, a former army colonel, and another leading citizen to legalize the terms offered to Farquhar by Confederate General John Brown Gordon earlier in the day just outside of Abbottstown...

With the Confederates threatening in late June 1863, York's civic officials and other leading citizens took action. Among them was Arthur Briggs Farquhar, a young man not yet 25, who owned a fledgling agricultural implement company in York. Impetuous and full of energy, Farquhar had ridden down into Maryland in September 1862 to meet an old classmate, Confederate general Fitzhugh Lee. Farquhar, a Marylander by birth, before the war had attended school in Virginia with Lee. They discussed ways to ensure that Farquhar's business would be spared should the Rebels invade Pennsylvania and enter York. Luckily, that threat had not materialized.

Now, nearly a year later, as the Rebel vanguard marched eastward from Gettysburg along today's Route 30, the impulsive Farquhar again trusted his instincts that he could again intervene.

Here is the latest installment of York resident M.L. Van Barman's article that first appeared in the Gettysburg Compiler nearly a century ago.

The old Gettysburg Compiler continues with considerable detail on Early's occupation of Gettysburg and some information on the march to York County... we now pick up the narrative as it deals with a York resident's brief description of the chaos on the roads leading through the borough as hundreds of refugees rushed eastward to escape the oncoming Rebels.

Background post - Introduction to the Compiler article

In my last post, I introduced an article from an old issue of the Gettysburg Compiler that revisited the 1863 raid of Jubal Early through Gettysburg into York County, Pa. Here is the second installment from this old news article, reprinting in 1911 the original words of the editor when first published in the days immediately after the raid (and before the Battle of Gettysburg)...