Franklin County: "The Burning of Chambersburg," by A. K. McClure, 1905
Summary: Description of the burning of Chambersburg that hiasizes the connection between General Hunter's harsh treatment of Lynchburg and his incompetence and the Confederate motive and opportunity to attack the town.
Chambersburg Destroyed by the Brutal Vandalism of Hunter in the Lynchburg Campaign-Its Destruction Made Possible by Hunter's Military Incompetency-Reports of McCausland's Movement from Mercersburg to Chambersburg-The Vandalism of Many Intoxicated Confederates While the Town Was Burning-A Heroic Woman Saves One of the Author's Houses and Barn-Chambersburg Could Have Been Fully Protected by the State Force Organized by Governor Curtin, but It Was Sent to the Potomac to Save Hunter.
NEXT to the battle of Gettysburg, the echoes of the most thrilling event of the Civil War in the North come from the burning of Chambersburg on the 30th of July, 1864, by a Confederate cavalry force under the command of General McCausland, and it is only in vindication of the truth of history that I state that the destruction of Chambersburg was chiefly, or wholly, provoked by the brutal vandalism of General Hunter in the Lynchburg campaign, and its execution was made possible by his military incompetency.
Hunter succeeded Sigel in command of the Shenandoah Valley in the spring of 1864, and was ordered by General Grant, then battling with Lee south of Spottsylvania, to advance upon Lynchburg and destroy the enemy's lines of communication and resources at that point. On the 5th of June General Hunter met a comparatively small force of the enemy at Piedmont, and defeated it, and after its retreat he formed a junction with Crook and Averill at Staunton and marched toward Lynchburg by way of Lexington, where he arrived on the 10th. Hunter lost his opportunity to capture Lynchburg by his delay at Lexington, where he was guilty of many brutal acts of vandalism, such as the burning of the private residence of Governor Letcher, the Military Institute, and taking away or destroying memorable statues connected with the university founded by Washington and bearing his name. When Hunter arrived in front of Lynchburg, he found that General Earley had been ordered by Lee to make a forced march to meet him, and Earley occupied a position of such strength that Hunter declined to give battle. He explained that his failure to engage Earley for the capture of Lynchburg was his want of adequate ammunition, but if the statement is to be accepted as the true one, it simply proved the incompetency of a commander going into an enemy's country, so far from his base, with an army helpless for want of ammunition.
Hunter retreated along the Gauley and Kanawha Rivers to the Ohio, and returned to his base at Harper's Ferry by the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. His circuitous retreat uncovered the valley, and enabled Earley not only to take possession of it, but to advance upon Washington, defeat General Lew Wallace at the Monocacy on the 9th of July, and compelled Grant to send Wright's corps from the Army of the Potomac to save the Capital. When Earley reached the outer defenses of Washington he found that General Wright was there with his corps, and that it was impossible for him to make a hopeful assault upon the Capital. He hastily fell back and reached Martinsburg with a vast train of supplies that had been gathered in his march. Hunter had arrived from the West when Earley reached Martinsburg, and he crossed the river and gave battle to Earley, but was defeated and compelled to recross the river and place his command in a defensive position between Hancock and Harper's Ferry. General McCausland's cavalry brigade was on Earley's left, and General Averill's Union cavalry brigade on Hunter's right.
On the 28th of July General Earley directed McCausland to take his own mounted brigade and the cavalry brigade of General Bradley T. Johnson, numbering in all nearly 3,000 men, and proceed to Chambersburg, where he was ordered to levy a tribute of $100,000 in gold or $500,000 in United States currency, and to burn the town if the requisition was not responded to. On the 29th McCausland crossed the Potomac at Cherry Run and McCoy's Ford, and advanced by way of Clear Springs and Mercersburg upon Chambersburg. The people of the town were advised by telegrams from Mercersburg of the advance of McCausland's command, and a scene of indescribable confusion ensued. The money in banks and as much of the property in stores as could be gotten away were hurriedly shipped to distant points, but it was known that General Averill's command was somewhere near Hagerstown with railway communication, and General Couch, who was in command of the department with his headquarters at Chambersburg, confidently expected to have General Averill's force there before McCausland could arrive, if he continued his advance toward the town.
When McCausland started on his raid the enemy's division of Rhodes and Ramsler, and the cavalry brigade of Vaughan, crossed the river at Williamsport. Vaughan moved on as far as Hagerstown, Md. Averill was thus threatened on both flanks, and fell back into Pennsylvania, reaching Greencastle, only twelve miles from Chambersburg, by sundown of the day that McCausland marched from Mercersburg to Chambersburg. Averill's command could easily have been brought to Chambersburg in two or three hours. When General Couch found that McCausland was continuing his march to Chambersburg, having passed through Mercersburg to the Pittsburg pike, he sent three urgent despatches to Averill, at Greencastle, which were given to Averill's own orderlies for immediate transmission to him, but to these Couch received no reply, and near daylight, when McCausland had his command in line on Federal Hill, where his guns commanded the town, Couch was compelled to hurry away in the last train held for the purpose, with his staff and a few orderlies, they being the only force he had in the place. He had a home guard in the town, of which I was a member, and we were sent out to picket the road along which McCausland was supposed to be advancing. As we were expected to hide in fence corners, I changed my dress for an old suit that could not be damaged by any amount of exposure, and left my watch, pocket-book, etc., in the bureau drawer at home. We remained out on the picket line for two or three hours, when General Couch sent word for us to return, as the enemy was approaching, and we should not be exposed to danger, as we could accomplish nothing.
I went directly to the headquarters of General Couch, and remained with him until early the next morning, when McCausland's command was within a few miles of Chambersburg. Couch had no force at Chambersburg beyond a little squad of less than twenty men under the command of an Irish corporal. They were sent out early in the day, and they advanced until they saw the signs of the enemy's approach, but they did not permit themselves to be seen, nor their presence made known to the enemy until after dark, when the gallant corporal so maneuvered his handful of men that McCausland supposed he was confronted by a regiment, and so stated in his official report. The corporal knew the roads perfectly, and he had his men scattered, and every now and then fired as the enemy appeared to be approaching. So admirably did he manage his little force that McCausland was not able to advance between Mercersburg and Chambersburg any faster than two miles an hour. Toward daylight the corporal returned to headquarters and reported that the enemy's force was about 3,000, and was then within two miles of the town. As Couch could get no communication from General Averill, he was entirely helpless and notified his staff and the little band of men who had been fighting all night, that the train he had had in readiness for some time would leave in half an hour.
I had left my home the year before, when Lee's army came, because of reliable admonitions that I should avoid capture, but as this was only a raid that could, at the most, last for a few hours, as we hoped to have Averill come to our aid at any time, I refused General Couch's earnest appeal to accompany him, and started out to my home, only to find my wife and family much more concerned about getting me away than about the advance of the enemy. Couch sent a staff officer to my house renewing the appeal for me to leave, and just then a close friend drove up in front of my house in a buggy, stopped and insisted upon me going with him. I accepted his invitation, as I hoped to be able to return to Chambersburg the following day, and we drove to Shippensburg, but before noon we had the first reports from Chambersburg that the town was in flames and vandalism running riot. In the evening my wife and family joined me at Shippensburg and reported that only the family Bible had been saved from the house, as it was picked up by Mrs. McClure's mother as she took her departure, and an oil portrait of myself that hung in the parlor had been hastily torn from the hook by Miss Reilley, who escaped with it through the back door.
The Rev.Dr. Niccolls, then pastor of the Chambersburg Presbyterian church, resided quite close to my home, and when he found the squad enter it he hastened to the house and gathered up a number of my clothes, but they were rudely taken from him and thrown into the fire. The work of burning the town was performed in the most hurried and brutal manner. Many of the command became wildly intoxicated from the liquors they found in the saloons and cellars, and while a large portion of the command revolted at the vandalism exhibited by many, they were powerless to prevent it, and for several hours the command was engaged in plundering and firing all the buildings in the center of the town. Bradley Johnson was the active commander, and he was most vindictive and merciless. He had left his home at Frederick, where he was a lawyer in good practice, to join the Confederacy, and when Lee's army marched through Frederick two years later, by Johnson's order his own home was burned, as he never expected to be able to occupy it again, and his lot was cast with the people who regarded all in the North as implacable foes.
Fortunately, this burning of Chambersburg occurred in daylight of a sunny midsummer day, and the sick and feeble were all removed from the peril of the flames. When the work of the destruction of the town had been well under way, two squads were ordered out to destroy the property that belonged to me on a farm at the edge of the town. Captain Smith, son of ex-Governor Smith, of Virginia, headed the squad that burned my residence and barn. Mrs. McClure was ill, but able to be about in her room; and Captain Smith himself entered her chamber and notified her that she must be out of the house within ten minutes. She asked permission to take some valuable mementoes from the home, but it was rudely denied. She then reminded him that the same command, or part of it, had camped on the place under General Jenkins, who commanded the advance of Lee's army in the Gettysburg campaign, that the barn was their hospital, and that she herself ministered to them, and handed him a letter written to her by one of the sufferers when they moved toward Gettysburg; but in ten minutes both barn and house were enveloped in flames-the barn containing the entire crops from the large farm. Mrs. McClure and those with her walked several miles in the country, where they were finally taken charge of by a neighbor and driven to Shippensburg.
On the southern end of the farm there was a brick residence and small barn, and Colonel Gilmore, of Baltimore, commanded the squad that was ordered to destroy the buildings. He rushed into the house and found Mrs. Boyd and her two children at breakfast. They were rudely and peremptorily ordered to leave the house at once, as he had orders to burn it and could not delay for a minute. She asked permission to finish her breakfast, but it was refused. She was a woman of heroic mold, and the wife of one of the most gallant troopers of the border, Colonel Boyd, later known in Philadelphia as connected with the publication of our "City Directory." She arose from the table, bidding her children to prepare at once to leave, and while they were gathering their little belongings, she said to Colonel Gilmore: "Do you know whose house this is?" To which he answered "Certainly, it is Colonel McClure's," and Mrs. Boyd replied: "The house belongs to him, but it is now the home of myself and children, and of my husband, Captain Boyd, of the Pennsylvania cavalry," to which she added that Colonel Gilmore could now proceed to the destruction of the property. He at once lifted his hat and answered that he would not burn the home of so gallant a soldier, and he made a hurried retreat from the place.
Captain Boyd was the most notorious scouting trooper on the border, and his name was as familiar in Virginia as Moseby's was in Pennsylvania. Gilmore well knew that if he burned the home of Captain Boyd, a score or more of Virginia homes would pay the penalty. Fifty suburban houses were passed on the outskirts of the town by the squad of burners to reach my home and destroy it, and a like number of suburban houses were not disturbed by the Gilmore party that went to destroy the improvement at the southern end of the farm. At eleven o'clock in the morning McCausland received word from the scouts that Averill was approaching, and he gathered up his force hastily, and moved rapidly across the North Mountain into Fulton County. Averill reached Chambersburg a few hours after McCausland had left the town, and he pursued McCausland, finally brought him to bay after three days of pursuit and defeated and scattered his command. He found in the enemy's camp many of the valuables which had been taken from the homes of Chambersburg.
The actual losses sustained by the people of Chambersburg in the destruction of personal and real property were finally adjudicated by a State commission that gave $1,628,431.58 as the aggregate value of individual property destroyed. Such a loss in a town of 4,000 population made up entirely of residences and business places, without any large manufacturing establishments, plunged the entire community into the starless midnight of despair. Many were at once hopelessly bankrupted, many more struggled to rebuild their homes and places of business at a time when everything commanded inflated prices, and struggled for years to save themselves, but finally had to yield, as property depreciated while debts accumulated. The few who had wealth in country farms or securities could afford to rebuild their homes, but that number made up a very small percentage of the sufferers of the town.
The burning of Chambersburg would have been utterly impossible if the steps the State had taken, under Governor Curtin's earnest efforts to protect the border, had been allowed to serve their purpose. The Governor had a number of regiments organized solely for border defense within the State, but they were accepted in the military service of the government only on the very proper condition that in any emergency they should be subject to the orders of the government. More than enough of these regiments than would have been needed to defeat McCausland in Chambersburg passed through the town within a few days before its destruction to reinforce Hunter on the Potomac, as he was then threatened by Earley, and Averill, whose force alone would have been sufficient to protect the town, was not at his headquarters near Greencastle when the despatches reached there, but was finally found, when too late to be of any service, sleeping alone in a fence corner some distance from his command, and his orderlies did not know where to find him. He was a gallant soldier, had been making forced marches to save his own command that he supposed was threatened on one flank by Vaughan, and on the other by McCausland, and he never dreamed of McCausland making the raid by Mercersburg to Chambersburg. He was doubtless exhausted, and thought that the only duty he could have for immediate performance was to save his command from destruction.
I stated at the outset of this chapter that the destruc-tion of Chambersburg was chiefly or wholly provoked by the vandalism of Hunter in his Lynchburg campaign, and that its execution was possible because of his incapacity. Already sufficient facts have been given in this statement to show that he was utterly incompetent to handle his army, not only up to the time when McCausland started on his raid, but if he had been equal to his important trust McCausland never would have been permitted to escape on any such mission. In his march through the Valley from Lexington to Lynchburg he had been guilty of the most flagrant violation of the rules of civilized warfare. He had burned the homes of Senator Hunter, of Charlestown, his own first cousin, and bearing the name of General Hunter's father; of Confederate Congressman A. R. Boteler, whose wife was a cousin of General Hunter; of Governor Letcher, then Governor of the State; of J. T. Anderson, connected with the great Tredegar Iron Works, in Richmond; of E. I. Lee, a leading private citizen of the State, and the Virginia Military Institute. All of these were grand old colonial homes, and they were destroyed without any warrant or even decent excuse whatever. In addition to these, many private homes were gutted by his troops, their contents wantonly destroyed, and the historic statues at Lexington were broken or taken away. Of course, he destroyed all the mills and factories on the line, as is common when a movement is made to impair the resources of an enemy, but from the time he started on his campaign until he was driven into retreat by a circuitous route, there were unmistakable marks of the most brutal vandalism along his entire track.
Earley had driven Hunter from Lynchburg, where he retreated without accepting battle. With Lee's crippled condition in front of Grant, it was not possible for Earley to remain on the Potomac, and he gave the order to McCausland to proceed to Chambersburg and demand a ransom sufficient to cover the private property wantonly destroyed by Hunter in his raid, or failing in that to inflict a like punishment upon Chambersburg.
General Earley, in a pamphlet published some time after the war, entitled "A Memoir of the Last Year of the War for Independence by the Confederate States of America," speaking of the burning of Chambersburg, said: "For this act I alone am responsible, as the officers engaged in it were simply executing my orders and had no discretion left to them."
In the same paper he recites in detail many acts of vandalism committed by Hunter in Virginia without excuse or provocation, and adds that it was necessary to carry the same method of warfare into the North to insure the safety of homes and properties in the South.
While Earley does not give any special reasons for selecting Chambersburg on which to inflict this retribution, it was well known then that throughout the South it was believed that John Brown made his base in Chambersburg, where he planned his wild raid on Harper's Ferry in 1859, solely because the people of Chambersburg were in sympathy with him. It was a natural supposition, but entirely untrue. There was not a single citizen of Chambersburg who knew John Brown as John Brown, during the six weeks or two months he made that town his residence. He was known only as Dr. Smith, and not a single resident of the place had any suspicion of his real purpose, as he announced to all that he was planning important mineral developments in Virginia. I saw John Brown a score of times or more during his stay there, conversed with him on several occasions, and never doubted that he was the man he represented himself to be; but the fact that Chambersburg was made his base created deep-seated prejudice in the South against the town, and it is more than probable that, but for the John Brown raid, Chambersburg might not have been decreed to crucification for General Hunter's vandalism and incompetency.
General Earley doubtless believed that he would halt the destruction of property in the South by the burning of Chambersburg, but from the 30th of July, 1864, until the close of the war, not a single State in the South, where our armies penetrated, entirely escaped fearful retribution for the destruction of the old Cumberland Valley town. On the slightest pretext the Union soldiers, then scattered all through the South, were urged to deeds of vandalism when some desperate leaders would give out the cry: "Remember Chambersburg." I met a Southern lady in Columbia five years after the war, whose home and all it contained were burned by Sherman's army. She told that the squad rushed into her home, ordered her to leave it, and to the cry: "Remember Chambersburg," applied the torch and left it in ashes; and a hundred Southern homes were destroyed for every half-score that were destroyed in Chambersburg. It was a costly retribution to Chambersburg, but it was a twenty-fold more costly retribution to the South. Fortunately, before another year had passed away peace came at Appomattox, and the inmates of Southern homes no longer shuddered at the cry: "Remember Chambersburg."
Bibliographic Information: Source copy consulted: Old Time Notes of Pennsylvania, Vol. 1, Ch. LXVI (pp. 158-169), 1905
