October 8 — We renewed our march this morning, in pursuit of the Yankee barn-burners, down the Valley. We struck the North Mountain road at Cross Roads Church, about eight miles northwest of Mount Jackson. We then moved down on the North Mountain road the remainder of the day, and passed Columbia Furnace on Stony Creek, six miles northwest of Edenburg; the furnace and some other buildings were burning when we passed. We heard some artillery firing this evening, in front. About to-morrow we will have some work on hand for our battery. We are camped tonight on the North Mountain road some five or six miles north of Woodstock.
General Sheridan is the boss burner of this continent, so far as destroying barns is concerned. It is estimated that his troops have burned two thousand barns in Rockingham and Shenandoah counties, and I have no idea how many mills; all that they could find, I suppose.
The principal object in this highly civilized warfare is the wanton destruction of hay and grain, and nearly all the wheat that was in the Shenandoah Valley for a distance of thirty miles is in ashes this evening. If the destruction of wheat is considered to be a military necessity by the powers that be at Washington, then it is an open acknowledgment that the United States feels itself too weak and incompetent to crush the great rebellion by the fair and simple force of arms and has resorted to the torch, a mode of warfare down level with savagery, for this destruction of bread means almost and perhaps actual starvation to hundreds, yes, thousands of women, children, and old men throughout the burnt district.
It is true, General Sheridan, that you are now in the land of the swarthy captive; but if you will lift the curtain of the past and look well in the sands of time you will see the footprints of a Washington and a Jefferson who dwelt in this same land that held the dusky captive in bondage. And, moreover, these same mountain peaks that now silently look down on your hellish work of destruction once echoed the inspiring drum-tap that summoned our grandsires to the plains of Boston, where they willingly, voluntarily, and patriotically rushed to assist their New England brethren in tearing the claws of the British lion from the bleeding flesh of the young American eagle. Ah, but you scornfully say that we are Rebels. That is the same ugly word that George the Third’s red-coated Britishers used on the field of Concord and Lexington, and applied it also to General Washington, Putnam, Patrick Henry, and the whole host of American patriots; that epithet of itself surely puts us in no mean company, and surely not so as to deserve the cursed calamity that you are now heaping on the women and children in the Shenandoah Valley.
In 1775 in yonder little town of Woodstock the Rev. Peter Muhlenberg, whose patriotism called him from the pulpit to the field, cast aside his clergyman’s gown after pronouncing the benediction to his last sermon, and stepped from the pulpit in the full uniform of an American soldier. And as he moved through the aisle toward the door, distinctly and impressively uttering the stirring words, “There is a time to pray and a time to fight,” and proceeded to the church door and ordered drums to be beaten, from his congregation on that memorable Sunday a large company of faithful men volunteered as recruits for the American army that was then struggling for independence. Colonel Muhlenberg marched his men north, and subsequently the crash of the rifles in the hands of Muhlenberg’s sturdy and valiant Virginians on the fields of Brandywine, Germantown, Monmouth, and Stony Point unmistakably proclaimed the gallant and unselfish patriotism and true fealty of the Virginians in the cause of American freedom and independence, and without the least trace of sectional hatred, envious jealousy, or mock philanthropy. But now all these recollections of past little favors lie buried in the ruins and wreck of two thousand barns and their valuable contents, and somebody is trying to crawl to fame through the ashes.
