Valley Spirit

The Signal Corps at the Ferry--Health of the Boys--The Late Invasion--Fighting and Skirmishing--Burning of Government Stores--Arrival of Col. Mulligan's Forces--What the Soldiers think of Sigel, &c., &c.

Correspondence of The Valley Spirit.

Signal Station on Stone Fort,
Maryland Heights,
July 14th, 1864.

Messrs. Editors: To-day while thinking of home and friends, many kind faces and familiar voices came to my recollection, and I thought I would while away dull time by penning a few lines for my favorite paper the "Valley Spirit." In the first place the boys with a few exceptions, are enjoying the best of health. There is but one of our number in Hospital and he is there because of a severe wound received in a skirmish with the Rebs on the evening of the 5th.

We do not now enjoy the luxuries of life as we did when encamped near your place. Our rations now consist of "salt pork," coffee and "Uncle Sam's" pies (and they are mouldy) yet strange as it may seem we relish them (hunger being one of the best cooks). We left our old camp under orders to report at Harper's Ferry. We encamped after our first day's march near Hagerstown in a clover field. It was our first night without any shelter yet I slept as soundly as if I had been in the best kind of a tent. On Tuesday morning we resumed our march by way of Sharpsburg (I am now speaking of those who were mounted, the rest of the boys went by way of Williamsport and Martinsburg where they had transportation furnished them to the Ferry.)

We passed over part of the old Antietam battle-field, and the same fields that on the 17th of September, 1862, were covered with the dead and dying are now covered with golden grain ready for the sickle of the husbandman, and leaving but few traces of the buried dead and the devastation of civil war. We arrived at the Ferry on the evening of the 28th weary and covered with dust and looking but little like the gay and happy boys we were while lying in camp near old Chambersburg, yet you must not think from what I have written that we are mourning over the change; for the boys are all full of life and jokes and repartees are the order of the day. At 6 P.M. we began to climb the mountain for the Fort which is situated 1200 feet above the level of the Potomac and found the rest of the boys in comfortable quarters awaiting our coming, they having prepared steaming hot coffee wherewith to greet us.

On Wednesday our reserve camp was moved to Fort Duncan. There was a signal station of nine men under Lieut. Kennedy left on the Heights. The view from the top of the mountain is magnificent and will well repay any lover of the grand and beautiful in nature for the exertion necessary to climb to the top of it. Standing on the walls of Stone Fort to the south west and apparently under the mountain is Harper's Ferry, acted as the place where John Brown made the first demonstration towards the freedom of the negro. Further in the distance is Charlestown where John Brown the Martyr met with his just fate, and I sincerely hope that every traitor to the Constitution which our fathers gave to us will meet with the same doom and his name become a by worn through all future time. Still further on and almost out of the reach of our field glass is Winchester a hot bed of secession. To the south you can follow the windings of the river a distance of thirty miles. The Forts are manned by the 5th N.Y. heavy artillery; they number 2700 men and are gentlemanly and sociable and have officers to command them that they may well be proud of.

On Sunday morning July 3d our attention was arrested by the sound of brisk cannonading in the direction of Martinsburg where Gen. Sigel's forces under command of Col. Mulligan came in contact with Earley's division of Ewell's corps. After a brief engagement of about an hour our forces retreated towards Martinsburg, burnt the government stores and continued their march towards Sheppardstown where they crossed the river hotly pursued by the Rebs. On the evening of the 4th at 6 P.M. Sigel's forces made their appearance in Pleasant Valley, Md., and during the night they entered the breastworks between Forts Duncan and Stone. On Tuesday the Rebs made their appearance in Sullivan's Valley about three miles from our Fort. They then threw out their skirmishers and at 4 P. M. they came in contact with our lines when a brisk fight ensued between the advanced skirmishers, the Rebs driving our forces back under cover of the guns of the Forts. They opened on our lines with two pieces of artillery but fired only six rounds when a shell from one of the guns by my side silenced them and dismounted theirs. I must here state that the citizens in the valley estimate the force of the rebels engaged at 8000 while at the same time the force under Sigel and the troops in and around the Forts with those sent from Baltimore numbered from 8 to 10,000. It is now apparent that the movement of the Rebs was only a feint to keep our men engaged while the larger portion of their troops were ravaging the country for [illegible] and cattle of which they got quite a [illegible] a brisk fire was again resumed between the advanced skirmishers and kept up all day our forces slowly falling back under cover of the Forts.

Thursday morning the firing was again renewed. Col. Mulligan's sixteen shooters having the advance. The firing was quite lively and the Rebs were compelled to fall back and in the evening the two armies occupied nearly the same positions they did when they first met.

On Thursday night the Rebs disappeared from our front and took up their line of march for Frederick City, Md.

The amount of damage done in Washington and Frederick counties is immense. And in my opinion had it not been for the imbecility or ignorance of the General commanding the whole rebel force engaged with us could have been captured. It is said Col. Mulligan plead with Sigel to have permission to bring on a general engagement but was peremptorily refused. The confidence the army had in Sigel (if they ever had any) is entirely gone. He is releived [sic] of his command and is superceeded by Gen. Howe.

On the morning of the 4th a small force of rebels estimated at 300 made their appearance on Bolivar Heights near where the 12th regiment of Pennsylvania Cavalry a small battery and one battalion of the 5th N.Y. were encamped and drove the whole force across the river. (I don't want the readers of this to think it was the fault of the men that they retreated for when the shoulder strapped gentry skeddaddle, privates would be foolish not to follow.) The number of killed and wounded of our men is estimated at one hundred the rebs losing about an equal number. We captured about 150 prisoners the rebs capturing about double that number of our men. Our communication has been cut off for the present so that we get no papers nor letters, and we do not know what has been transpiring in the vicinity of your place. I suppose the newspaper correspondents will call this a grand military movement but the soldiers here call it a perfect piece of cowardice on the part of the officers in command; and if this war is carried on all through the land as it has been here, I am under the impression that we may bid farewell to the old or new Union of States. While I am writing Sullivan's division of Hunter's command is coming down through Bolivar. Hunter's whole command will report at the Ferry in a few days. I this morning saw a number of the boys who were sent away from our corps during the latter part of April. Among the number was D.D. Fickes and J.W. Everett from our county. They have done some hard marching and are pretty well colored from the effects of old Sol.

With my kindest regards to all readers of the Spirit, I am respectfully yours,

Signal.

A lady correspondent, who assumes to know how boys ought to be trained, writes to an exchange as follows:

"O mothers! hunt out the soft, tender, genial side of your boys' natures. Make the most of any gentle taste or comely propensity. Encourage them to love flowers, pictures and all the beautiful things which God has made. Talk with them, read with them, go out with them into the fields and woods, and hallow pleasant scenes with holy memories. A daily ministration to their unfurnished, hungry minds, a daily touch to their unformed taste, shall make them more comely than costly garments. They will ever bear you witness in the character and conduct of your children; but your laces and embroideries will crumble to dust. Why don't mothers teach their children more, and dress them less!?"

Review of the Recent Invasion.
Stinging Article From The National Intelligencer.
What it Costs to Disregard Gen. McClellan's Advice.
Arraignment of the Administration.
[From the National Intelligencer.]

The valley of the Shenandoah has more than once been the valley of our national humiliation. After more than three years of gigantic war, our military administration has not learned to apprehend the relation of this valley to the defence of Washington, and the enemy, safely presuming on the ignorance and shiftlessness of that administration, has learned to practice in this quarter, a wearisome monotony of movement which only serves to show that he deems it safe at any time to hope for success by counting on our official stolidity as a standing substitute for his poverty of invention.

Talleyrand was wont to say that it is always better to rely on the folly of your antagonist than on your own sagacity, and it is certain that the enemy, in the use he periodically makes of the valley of the Shenandoah, has shown his own sagacity only in presuming always on our official want of that quality in the conduct of the war. Physical Geography has ordained that the occlusion, or at least the vigilant observation, on this side approach to the city of Washington, shall be a prime element to any campaign which starting from Washington, has the city of Richmond for its objective point. And yet, with a want of foresight which, in the absence of all conceivable motive for the wil[l]ful betrayal of a grave public trust, confounds the reason of ordinary mortals by its magnitude and by its inveteracy, our military authorities have for four successive summers permitted this valley to be used by the enemy at his pleasure for the purpose of bringing confusion on the well-laid plans of all our generals operating against Richmond. Whether it be at one time from failing to station in this valley a capable commanding officer; or at another from not retaining a sufficient force under his command; or at still another from not occupying the proper points of observation to descry the approach of danger in time to guard against positive mischief; or whether, as at some time, it be from committing all these blunders at once, certain it is that the military administration, in giving the country much sad experience of inefficiency, has nowhere made that inefficiency more egregious and deplorable than in this quarter.

The first battle of Bull Run was turned from victory into disaster by the failure of General Patterson to prevent the junction of General Joseph E. Johnston, through this valley, with General Beauregard in the very crisis of the conflict--a failure which, whether resulting from the incompetency of General Patterson, as some charge, or from the inadequacy of his aggressive force, as others represent, is one of which the responsibility must equally rest on the central power which appoints our commanders and directs the operations of the war.

The campaign of General McClellan was arrested and frustrated by the incursion of General Jackson into this valley in the latter part of May, 1862, compelling the abrupt retreat of General Banks, throwing our military authorities here into a most abject panic, and preventing the contemplated junction of General McDowell with General McClellan by the Fredericksburg railroad--he being diverted from this line of march to engage in what he knew to be the impossible chase of Jackson; and Jackson, in the meantime, after distracting all our combinations, succeeded in hurling his whole column against General McClellan's forces around Richmond at the very moment when our military authorities, relying on the reports of General Fremont after the battle of Cross Keys on the 8th of June, supposed him still to be detained in the valley by the threatening presence of that officer.

Then came the brief campaign of General Pope, in which, after having his flank repeatedly turned and his communication with Washington broken by an attack in his rear, he was badly repulsed, and driven into the defenses of Washington, while the enemy, with leisurely composure, turned from the pursuit of his broken and mishandled forces to proceed through this same valley, and make the formidable irruption into Maryland which was repelled by General McClellan in the battle of Antietam on the 17th of September, 1862.

We need not pause to describe the disgraceful events which preceded the occupation of Winchester by the enemy at this time, or which attended the surrender of Harper's Ferry--results all due to the incapacity which placed incompetent officers in important positions; and which, in the case of Harper's Ferry was made double conspicuous on this occasion by the retention of Colonel Miles at that post, under orders from General Halleck, after the military availibility [sic] of the position was entirely neutralized by the turn which events had taken. Official incapacity in Washington, thus combined with military incompetency at the post, to erect anew at the entrance of this valley, the caudine forks of an unspeakable humiliation, which largely modified the exultation justly produced by the victory of Antietam, and which, in all generous minds, was intensified by the attempt to throw on General McClellan the responsibility for the untoward events which he had the sagacity to foresee, but not the power to prevent after his advice in the premises had been contemned by the general-in-chief.

And next, in the summer of 1863, more than a month after the disaster of Chancellorsville under General Hooker, the confederate commander proceeded to project a new invasion of the north, via this same valley of the Shenandoah. From a failure on the part of our military authorities to occupy in this quarter the proper points of observation, and from their failure to place in the positions actually occupied the requisite military talent and skill, the country was again called to blush at the disgraceful stampede of Milroy which preceeded the irruption of the enemy into Maryland. Winchester was evacuated with John Gilpin speed; and eighteen field-pieces, five thousand five hundred muskets, and a large quantity of ammunition were left behind by the fugitives--a valuable gift to the invading enemy.

After such repeated experience of the military relations held by this valley to the safety of Washington and to the success of the impending operations against Richmond, it might have been supposed that military directors, with as little perspicacity as ours have shown themselves to possess, would not for the fourth time permit mismanagement in this valley to lay a stone of stumbling and rock of offense in the way of the campaign. And yet the illustration we have just had of the want of forecast which has been signalized by the conduct of the war in this quarter surpasses in its proportions anything we have yet been called to witness. Let us analyze the elements of the invasion which has just ended in the raising of "siege of Washington."

It is obvious to the most unmilitary mind that in order to guard the side approach to Washington via the Shenandoah valley, a post of observation should be selected at such a point in or near the valley as shall enable the force which occupies it to discern the approach of danger in time to guard against the descent of the blow and to calculate its probable weight wherever it may fall. Before starting out on the campaign against Richmond, in the spring of 1862, General McClellan was careful to take precaution on this score. Under date of March 16, in that year, he wrote to General Banks (who had been selected to watch the valley) as follows:

Your first care will be the rebuilding of the railway from Washington to Manassas and to Strasburg, in order to open your communication with the valley of the Shenandoah. As soon as the Manassas Gap Railway is in running order, intrench a brigade of infantry, say four regiments, with two batteries, at or near the point where the railway cros[s]es the Shenandoah. Something like two regiments of cavalry should be left in that vicinity to occupy Winchester, and thoroughly scour the country south of the railway and up the Shenandoah valley, as well as through Chester gap, which might perhaps be advantageously occupied by a detachment of infantry, well intrenched. Block houses should be built at all the railway bridges. Occupy by grand guards Warrenton junction and Warrenton itself, and also some little more advanced points on the Orange and Alexandria Railroad, as soon as the railway bridge is repaired.

Great activity should be observed by the cavalry. Besides the two regiments at Manasses, another regiment of cavalry will be at your disposal, to scout toward the Occoquan, and probably a fourth toward Leesburg.

To recapitulate the most important points which should engage your attention are as follows:

1. A strong force, well intrenched, in the vicinity of Manassus, perhaps even Centreville, and another force (a brigade), also well intrenched, near Strasburg.

2. Block-houses at the railway bridges.

3. Constant employment of the cavalry well to the front.

4. Grand guards to Warrenton junction, and in advance as far as the Rappahannock, if possible.

5. Great care to be exercised to obtain full and early information as to the enemy.

6. The general object is to cover the line of the Potomac and Washington.

We all know how these prudential arrangements of General McClellan were broken up by the military powers which undertook the direction of the war after he had been removed from his previous control of its operations. And since that date these prudential measures as respects the Shenandoah Valley, have never been re-established, for no other reason, as far as we can perceive, than that to re-establish them might be construed by somebody into a tribute to General McClellan's military sagacity in selecting a point of observation like Chester Gap, midway on the eastern border of the valley, where the approach of danger would be perceived in time to meet and check it at Harper's Ferry, instead of some point on the Upper Potomac, where with such officers as the military administration habitually stations there, the approach of danger is known to the country only by a stampede of our forces from Winchester, Williamsport, or Harper's Ferry, and by a panic of the authorities at Washington, who, knowing nothing with regard to the movements or magnitude of the invading forces, fall an easy prey to every idle and vagrant rumor which vexes the the [sic] atmosphere in a time of alarm and uncertainty. The unknown is always portentious [sic]. In the absence of the definite configurations revealed to the mind by assured knowledge, the startled imagination, while blindly groping in the dark, peoples all space with "gorgons, hydras, and chimeras dire." Even so brave a heart as that of King Richard, in the play of our great dramatist, was appalled by "shadows," as he exclaims:

"By the Apostle Paul, shadows to-night
Have struck more terror to the soul of Richard
Than can the substance of ten thousand soldiers
Armed in proof."

And so, during the last few days, we have seen the administration starting at specters, uttering panic cries of alarm, and with its hands palsied by imaginary terrors, simply because it had neglected to take the most ordinary precautions for properly watching and occluding the Shenandoah valley. Incompetent officers have been stationed at points actually occupied, and points which should have been occupied for purposes of observation have been left without any guard whatever. Military incompetence on the Upper Potomac has been reinforced by military incompetence in Baltimore, as illustrated by Major General Lew. Wallace, who is retained in command just long enough to lose the battle of Monocacy, and then superseded by a capable officer in the field, while he is needlessly retained in command of the department, as, if only to multiply the chances of confusion by the possible intrusion of his alacrity for blundering, and that too when it is no secret that in his "civil capacity" he has, by his illegal proceedings, brought down on his head, as we understand, the gravest censure of the Attorney-General of the United States.

What wonder that under such an administration of our military affairs a paltry squadron of two or three hundred bold riders can with entire impunity, cut railroads between Harrisburg and Baltimore, and Baltimore and Philadelphia; or that a mere squad of ten men can approach within four miles of a city containing two hundred thousand inhabitants, garrisoned by twenty thousand men, and burn at their leisure the mansion of the Governor of Maryland; or that five hundred men should, by simply sitting down before one of the forts of Washington and establishing a weak skirmish line, succeed in placing the capital of the nation under siege, cutting its telegraphic communications with Baltimore, burning the house of a cabinet minister within six miles of the city, and reducing the government to the necessity of relying on river and sea navigations for its connections with the great North? And all this, be it remembered happens in the fourth year of the war, with men by hundreds of thousands under arms!

And now we ask, the whole nation will ask, who is responsible for such humiliation? Is it the President, the Secretary of War, the chief of staff, or can it be that our military affairs are still left at such loose ends (as we know them to have been before) that sometimes one and sometimes the other of these functionaries assumes to exercise the direction of the war, selects the points of military occupation, and assigns the officers to their several commands? In the uncertainty resting on this subject we think there is no doubt about one thing, and that is, that if the President cannot discover and correct the source of these blunders, the people in the approaching election will not be slow to discover one method by which they can put an end to this reign of military incompetence in Washington, No respect for the President's "honesty of purpose" and no admiration for the purity, intelligence, and administrative skill which they may recognize in the other executive departments of the government, will stand in the way of ridding the War Department of the incubus which now visibly rests on it under its present management--making it a shame and a reproach to the nation. And in so saying we intend no particular personal allusion to Mr. Stanton, for we do not know to-day that he is responsible for these things. It may be that he confines himself strictly to the civil details of his office, and does not meddle in the matters which somebody under him or above him brings to such confusion. But we do know that somebody is responsible for the late gross malfeasance, which must ever stand in our military annals as a national disgrace, so long as posterity shall revert to the time when five hundred men laid Washington siege, for two days with ten or twenty thousand men behind its defenses! Such is the penalty which a nation pays for being ruled in any department by its ignorance rather than its intelligence.

Nor does the evil end with the disappearance of the last fright. Who, after such an exhibition of military incompetence in our counsels, can repose any confidence in the military administration so long as it shall remain subject to its present directors? What security can any man feel when the watchmen from the walls of our national capital lift up their voices only to expose their own ignorance of the nature and extent of the peril from which they call the people to save them? What governor of what state will be prompt hereafter to respond to the tap of the drum in Washington if its alarms are beaten with most vehemence when there is the least known about the necessity for disturbing the country? An immense clamor has been raised without cause during the last few days. Who is sure that while the conditions of our ignorance remain as they are, the next clamor may not come with cause, and find the War Department as little prepared to meet real danger as it has proved little prepared to face an imaginary one? Let all loyal people lay these things to heart, but above all and first of all, let the President of the United States be assured that for these things his countrymen will hold him to a strict account, and that they will exact full atonement for the great indignity which the nation has just suffered in the eyes of the world.

The president, we know, is ambitious to earn not only the good opinions of his fellow citizens, but also to receive their voices at the next election. If he would receive them he must be careful to deserve them; and if he should in this way vindicate his claim to the renewed confidence of the country, we are sure that we could sincerely rejoice in his success, not from any interest we take in his personal fortunes any more than in those of any other men of any other party, but because we desire the best welfare of the republic in this day, when she requires the highest statesmanship and the most exalted capacity to conduct a wise conclusion the affairs of the state. His merits and his pretensions are now trembling in the balance, held by the hands of a confiding and much enduring people, who have continued long to hope against hope under the military misrule of which they are only too painfully conscious, but to the patient endurance of which there is a limit set, equally by physical necessity and political prudence. The protraction of the war, long drawn out by divided military counsels, by injudicious civil policies, and by incompetent officers in the field, is seen by every body to be the precursor either of a disunion peace (rendered a physical necessity by the military imbecility which is breaking down the giant strength of the country) or of a change in the administration which shall at least afford to the people one last hope of saving the country, where, if things remain as they are, there is now none. If the President does not apply a corrective, at once timely and radical, to the evils of which the loyal States complain with just reason, they will not hesitate to apply the only corrective which lies within their reach, through the ballot-box.

We do not so write under any inspirations of passion or partisanship. We have used earnest words because the times called for them. We suppress even the utterance of that indignation which we feel it would be righteous to cherish in view of the recent abuse of the confidence reposed by the people in their civil rulers. We speak simply as to wise men. Let wise men judge what we say, and we abide their verdict, in the full assurance that they will pronounce us to have spoken words of truth and soberness, in a day when paltering and levity, whether in office or out of office, are certainly out of place.

It seems to be the settled purpose of the Administration to fight out this war on the Abolition line if it takes the last man and the last dollar, and results in the utter exhaustion and ruin of the country. They seem to be totally unconscious of the fact that there will be no country worth saving after the last man and the last dollar have been sacrificed. We have now reached a point in the prosecution of this horrid war when it becomes our solemn duty to pause and consider whither we are drifting. We should seriously inquire what is to be the end of this immense sacrifice of life and treasure? Is it a restored Union with the institutions of our fathers preserved intact? or an empoverished [sic], desolated, ruined country, with the Constitution and Government of our fathers crushed beneath the iron heel of a military despotism? Is a successful termination of the war, according to its original purpose, still within the range of possibility? If not, then every life lost in its further prosecution, is simply murder; and the call of the President for five hundred thousand more men is simply a demand for so many more victims to be offered up as sacrifices to appease the demon of Abolitionism.

Judging from the light of events which have transpired during the past three years, we can see no reasonable ground of hope for a successful termination of the war, prosecuted on the policy and for the purpose it now is. How any man, whose brain has not been completely turned by the madness of fanaticism, can believe otherwise is a mystery to us. We believe there was a time when the war could have been honorably closed and the Union restored to its integrity, but that time has certainly gone by. Two opportunities have presented themselves since the commencement of hostilities for bringing the war to a successful issue; but both were lost through the incapacity and intrigues of the administration. A victory at the first battle of Bull Run, or the capture of Bichmond [sic], by McClellan, in the summer of 1862, in our opinion would have accomplished the desired result.

The battle of Bull Run was prematurely fought, against the military judgment of the Commander-in-chief, to silence the "on to Richmond" clamor of the radical abolitionists; and the Peninsular campaign failed through the political intrigues and jealousies of the imbeciles and fanatics at Washington, and because the administration preferred failure to success achieved under the leadership of a General who refused to worship at the altar of abolitionism. A victory over the rebel forces in the early part of the war, as at the time of the battle of Bull Run, before their government was compactly organized and when everything was at loose ends yet, would have demoralized their cause and broken up their confederacy at once. And a blow so powerful as the capture of the rebel capital in the summer of 1862 would have gone very far towards winding up the rebellion. Since then however the rebellion, instead of growing weaker has been growing stronger. The fanatical war policy of the Washington dynasty has united the southern people as one man. The Government of the Confederate States by successfully waging a defensive warfare of gigantic proportions for over three years, has steadily acquired organization and stability at home and prestige abroad.

If then we were unable to suppress the rebellion when it was comparatively weak and unorganized, what ground of hope is there to accomplish it after it has become thoroughly organized and had time to develope [sic] its resources and strengthen its power? None whatever. The war is a total and complete failure, and the sooner the people realize the fact the better.