A small party of Confederate scouts rode down the side of the mountain. Off in the distance, they spied a group of riders moving toward them. The Southerners drew their pistols and rode toward the column. Within fifty yards, Rebel scout James M’Chesney let out a sigh of relief, realizing the men in front of him were clad in gray. These are our men, he thought. He and his fellow Confederate scout, William I. Kunkle, rode to the officer in the group and called out, “Good morning, gentlemen.” When asked if they had seen any Yankees, the captain responded, “No.”
M’Chesney’s gaze turned to the men in front of him. “Observing for the first time that the whole party, some twenty in all, had their pistols in hand as if expecting an enemy from our direction, I said to the captain that they had evidently taken us for enemies, to which he agreed.” The captain tersely asked where the Confederate scouts had come from while the men continued advancing in groups of four until they nearly surrounded the Confederates, so close their horses almost brushed one another. But the captain’s tone soon aroused the scout’s suspicions. “My eyes quickly took in the situation, and I observed that, while they wore gray coats or jackets and slouch hats like our men, they all wore blue pants, their horses were branded ‘U.S.,’ and their saddles, bridles, and all their equipment were such as the Yankee cavalry used.” The scout knew at once he was amid Jessie Scouts. He thought, “Either Camp Chase or the grave had opened before me.” The scout’s mind worked rapidly. By this time in the war, the Jessie Scouts had become renowned for their prowess, the name having been used for any Union scout wearing a Confederate uniform. As his fellow Confederate continued conversing with no idea of who they were speaking with, M’Chesney played along, answering Captain Richard Blazer’s questions. Having determined not to surrender, he slowly started to back up his mare and declared loudly that it would be useless to go any further since they hadn’t seen any Yankees. “My face-to-face talk and manner had made him careless, as he was sure that he had me.” As M’Chesney turned his back, he heard the captain shout, “Halt!”1
The Confederate spurred his horse and dashed through “a shower of bullets.” More than two dozen shots were fired at the fleeing Confederate, including several from less than ten feet away, all failing to reach their mark. Kunkle wasn’t so lucky. One bullet grazed the top of his head. “Fortunately, it was a pointed ball and striking obliquely the round surface of the skull, it did little damage.” Another bullet shattered one arm, and a final ball passed through his elbow. Unable to escape, Kunkle was captured, and the Yankees brought him before Blazer, who threatened, “Now, old fellow, we have you safe; and if you don’t tell me where [y]our general is and the number of his forces, I’ll damn soon put you up the spout.” Kunkle appealed to Blazer’s honor in pleading for his life: “Captain, I am a Confederate soldier, and as a natural consequence I intend to be true to my country. I have had the pleasure of guarding some of your men, and I have never spoken an unkind word to one of them; and if you were a gentleman and a brave man, you would not do it either.”2 The appeal worked. Despite being raw from losing several men days earlier, Blazer simply turned his horse and left the uncooperative Confederate scout to his captors, who took him to the rear.
The incident occurred while Blazer’s Scouts were in the vanguard of Crook’s forces. Once again, Blazer’s Scouts served as the general’s eyes and ears, leading his troops in a Federal advance on Staunton in the Shenandoah Valley.
The Shenandoah Valley stretches over 150 miles from the Potomac River in the North to the James River in the South. The rugged Alleghenies create the western wall of the valley, while the Blue Ridge forms the eastern border. The valley was the breadbasket of the Confederacy, critical for its farms, granaries, and depots. Both sides vied for control of the numerous passes and gaps that enabled points of egress into the valley. From March to June 1862, Major General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson conducted his successful Shenandoah Valley campaign. Winning numerous battles, his smaller force of roughly 17,000 troops engaged multiple Union armies, preventing their deployment in a Union offensive on Richmond. Most importantly, the valley acted as a back door to the North’s capital, Washington, DC, a route of invasion to the North: Lee’s campaigns that ended at Antietam and Gettysburg flowed through it.
“Here comes the main ‘tug of war.’ … We did not know how nigh was one of the hardest marches ever any set of men endured,” recalled Asbe Montgomery. “The time had come for all our skill and bravery to be tested. But our country lay bleeding before us, and we felt like offering our lives on its altar as a sacrifice if needs be. The time came, struck tents, the bugle sounded, and off for Staunton, through Lewisburg, and across the Greenbrier River. The scouts to the advance to clear anything that might be in the way.”3
Immediately after they raided the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad in May, Blazer’s Scouts and the Jessie Scouts were back on the move to the Shenandoah Valley. The Army of West Virginia had a new commander, Major General David Hunter, known to his troops as “Black Dave.” Hunter was appointed to command on May 21, 1864, following the disastrous Battle of New Market on May 15, where the former youngest-ever vice president of the United States, John Breckinridge, now a Confederate general, defeated Union general Franz Sigel with the assistance of Virginia Military Institute (VMI) cadets. Despite his superior numbers, Sigel lost the battle, prompting Grant, when asked for Sigel’s replacement, to tersely respond, “By all means, I would say appoint General Hunter, or anyone else, to the command of West Virginia.”4
Hunter hated secessionists, despite having deep family ties in Virginia. His appearance reflected his demeanor. He sported a coal-black wig and dyed his mustache. Somewhat a loose cannon, when in command of the southern districts of Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina in 1862, Hunter issued General Order 11 emancipating enslaved individuals in those territories four months before President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln rescinded and publicly repudiated the order as part of his effort to hold slaveholding border states in the Union. Order 11 also made Hunter a marked man in the South, a “felon to be executed if captured.”5 The radical ideologue, ahead of his time, also advocated for Black units within the Union Army.
Grant envisioned that Hunter, now in command of the Army of the Shenandoah, which included General Crook’s division and Averell’s forces, would then march on Staunton, Virginia, and go about dismantling the Confederates’ rail and supply lines as well as other critical infrastructure, ordering essentially a scorched-earth policy on May 21. Blazer’s Scouts led Crook’s division, while the Jessie Scouts and Arch Rowand spearheaded Averell’s 2nd Cavalry Division.
Once the commands united, Hunter divided his men into columns to confuse the Confederates regarding their intentions. As they pushed toward Staunton, they left a path of destruction in their wake, controversially burning homes and private property as well. Staying in contact with the other commands was essential; Averell sent out four men, including Rowand, before nightfall to find General Alfred Duffié, who was leading his brigade in one of the columns. Riding deep into Southern territory, they spied the light from a house as they searched for the Frenchman. Wearing Confederate uniforms, the Scouts offered to pay a woman tending to a sick child for something to eat. “Her eyes shining, ‘Pay?’ she said. ‘I do not charge our boys anything!’ ” Ravenous from the long ride, the men wolfed down bread and cold milk until jarred by the order, “Surrender!” Staring down a dozen gleaming carbine barrels a few feet away, Rowand called out, “Are you Yanks?” “No!” came the reply. “ ‘Oh’ as though relieved. ‘That’s all right, then; we surrender!’ ”6 he answered.
As the Confederates removed the Jessie Scouts’ weapons, Rowand concealed evidence that would have unmasked him as a Union Scout in his shirt sleeve. “I remembered that in my pocket there was a pass, naming me as a scout and passing me through the Union lines at all times; I managed to get the small pocketbook and, by a flip of my fingers, shoot it up my sleeve and hold it in the hollow of my arm. Then they took us into the house, and the inquisition began.”7
As Rowand recalled, the Confederates carefully placed the Scouts with the light of the fire “strong on my face, so that they could see the flicker of an eyelid or the twitch of a muscle, and the captain, with his back to the light, sits facing me, with our chairs close together.” Fortunately, Rowand and his fellow Scouts were close enough they could hear and coordinate their stories. “Townsend and I never even glanced at one another, but each strained his ear for the other’s answers.”8 The men would have been executed on the spot if they had contradicted each other’s stories.
Remarkably, one Scout, Townsend, had in fact deserted from Confederate general Jenkins’ command, which would have made him a traitor in their eyes and put him in especially “grave danger” of revealing their true identity as he was questioned by one of the Confederates. Surprisingly, however, “that very fact saved him.”9
“This man is all right, Captain,” his interrogator called out. Still unsure, the captain then turned to Rowand and grilled him about his background. Because he had been posted in West Virginia, Rowand was able to respond with great detail to the inquiry. Rowand then asked, “What is wrong with me?” The Confederate officer responded, “That is what puzzles me. You have answered all of my questions satisfactorily. You are a Southerner. I know you are not a Yankee.” With stunning confidence, Rowand brazenly laughed in the officer’s face and suggested, “Then to make sure what we are, you had better send us under guard to Breckinridge’s headquarters.” That comment melted the captain’s final doubts. He abruptly handed the Scout a letter saying, “For General Breckinridge. Take it and get through as quick as you can. Hurry.”10
“Hurry!” Rowand said with a sneer. “We’ll need to!—you’ve kept us here an hour and a half now.”11
The four Scouts rode as quickly as they could back to Union lines but ran into trouble when they were confronted by a picket of Ohio militia who could not fathom why a Scout would be in a Confederate uniform. A militia officer sized the two men up and down, swore, and threatened to hang them. Rowand sat on a tree stump and told the officer, “If he didn’t get us to headquarters, forthwith, he himself would be in trouble.” The officer made the Scouts walk to headquarters. Upon arrival the Jessie Scouts were recognized, and Rowand gleefully gave the Breckinridge letter to General Averell.* Rowand then told the general how the Union pickets treated them and “then somebody else got a scolding, and a pretty severe one.”12
Maintaining lines of communication among the commands, General Hunter sent Jessie Scout James White on a mission moving through Confederate territory to deliver cipher-coded dispatches to General Crook. Early in the journey, White killed a Confederate scout carrying messages but soon ran across a Rebel officer and four men. The Scout rode up to the party. White took on the identity of the Confederate scout he had recently killed, and displayed the papers he had just captured. The following day, while “leisurely riding along the road and thanking Dame Fortune,” he heard the men he encountered the day before shout, “Halt!” White put spurs to horse and galloped into West Virginia’s rugged Allegheny Mountains. The men followed “so closely” that, while riding, he intentionally tore off the address from Hunter’s dispatch. But amid “the dark screen of the forest trees,” White escaped from the Confederates. Avoiding roving patrols, bushwhackers, and Confederates on leave, he “plodded wearily up the mountain side, scrambling through briars and underbrush and over fallen and decayed timber.” Tired, wet, cold, and starving, White followed the Cheat River. Days passed until he encountered “ten of as villainous looking renegades as ever went unhung.” White knew to recognize a “foe and what he had to deal with, and scarcely had the echo of their voices died out amid the mountains,”13 when White jumped off his horse and ran for his life. Exhausted and emaciated, the Jessie Scout finally stumbled into Union-controlled Meadow Bluff, West Virginia, after a journey of nine days that spanned well over a hundred miles.
Back at camp, Scouts’ duties could include unsavory tasks. Arch Rowand recalled being ordered by an officer to execute Southern civilian David S. Creigh, who, months earlier, had killed a Union soldier with an axe who was ransacking his home. Creigh hid the corpse in a well. A court-martial found Creigh guilty. One of Averell’s staff officers palmed off the execution on the Jessie Scout.
“Rowand, you hang the prisoner.”14
“I’m not going to do anything of the kind, I didn’t enlist for an executioner,” Rowand responded. The captain angrily insisted that the orders were from General Averell, so the reluctant Scout obeyed. Using a rope from a bed, they hung the prisoner from a nearby tree. “I have witnessed civil executions since, but then [I] didn’t know enough to tie the hands and feet of the condemned.”15 Only later did the Scout discover that the captain had been ordered to perform the dreaded duty himself but foisted it on Rowand.
Creigh was not the only man executed during the raid. General Averell reported “a spy from the enemy who came into my camp shortly after my arrival and was killed by my order.”16 The Confederate made the mistake of claiming to be a Jessie Scout, and “he was executed by shooting without the formality of a drum-head court martial,”17 recalled Rowand. Life and death behind the lines could rest on a razor’s edge.
Far ahead of Crook’s army, wearing Confederate uniforms, Blazer’s Scouts skirmished with the enemy. “Come on, boys!” shouted Blazer. At full speed, wielding their Colt pistols to deadly effect, they dashed in and among a contingent of Confederate troops. “Some of them fall and breaking like quarter horses the rest took to the brush, but not til several had been killed, and several more taken prisoner,” Asbe Montgomery recalled.18
During the advance, Blazer’s Scouts sustained casualties, one of whom left a massive hole in the company. Sergeant Joseph Frith, while skirmishing with the enemy, died from an accidental discharge from an untrained fellow Yankee soldier, a clerk who had “no business” riding with the Scouts and who carelessly carried his “revolver in hand, directly in the rear of Joe. His horse stumbled and fell, causing the discharge of his pistol. The ball entered poor Joe’s back coming out at the pit of his stomach,” wrote one of the Scouts in a letter to Frith’s father. The surgeon examining Frith’s wound told him he would recover. “Joe would not believe it; he said he could not live. He did not fear to die but regretted to be shot by one of his own men.” Like many dying men, he spoke of his mother and “wanted to let her know he died like a soldier.” After an agonizing night, the next day seemed not as painful: “At seven o’clock he folded his arms across his breast, turning over on his side, and seemed to fall asleep—he was gone to his rest.” His father reflected on Joseph’s death, the second son he had lost during the war, sending a letter with these powerful words to the local newspaper: “In his own pure and unselfish life, he taught you a lesson how to live, and in his calm composure in the hour of death,† he has left you his example of how to die.”19
At Staunton, in southwestern Virginia, Crook’s forces combined with those of Averell and Hunter. Lacking discipline and leadership, Hunter’s men ravaged the town, destroying the railroad and warehouses. To Crook’s utter disgust, Hunter’s men committed many acts that he considered disgraceful. Staunton also contained one of the larger hospitals of the Confederacy and its patients bore the scars of war: Confederate soldiers missing arms and legs watched the destruction inflicted by the Yankees.
While Hunter’s men destroyed Staunton, Grant suggested that Hunter next attack Lynchburg, a vital rail hub, supply center, and hospital town over one hundred miles west of Richmond. For three days, Hunter dithered, waiting for supplies and ammunition. Crook urged Hunter to attack immediately—“Celerity was more important than numbers or ammunition”—and offered to lead the attack himself.20 Hunter dismissed the idea. Once he finally got underway, Hunter put Blazer’s Scouts in the vanguard, moving first to Lexington, Virginia. Here the Scouts faced more skirmishes: “We dismounted and deployed, and had some heavy firing, and as usual left some of them to lay quiet.” In the melee, Asbe Montgomery had “the best horse … I ever rode” shot from underneath him. “His loss to me was great.”21
The first to advance into Lexington, the Scouts received word from an enslaved individual that Confederate canal boats laden with artillery and supplies lay hidden nine miles away on the Maury River. Crook dispatched the Scouts on a mission to seize them that made national headlines. The Chicago Tribune reported, “To secure these, Capt. Blazer with his scouts was sent out, and, skirmishing the whole route, he found the boats as reported. Burning five of them, he dismounted his men and hauled the remaining two to Lexington. In them were six cannons—two six-pounders, one twelve-pounder, and three mountain howitzers.” The haul also included half a ton of powder, 9,000 rounds of artillery ammunition, and provisions.22
Returning from missions was dangerous since the Scouts had to pass through their own lines wearing the uniform of the enemy. One Union soldier recalled an incident seared in his mind: “We were ordered to open ranks to let Blazer’s Scouts pass through and then occurred another singular but ghastly event that will never leave my memory. While the Scouts were passing through our ranks the Rebel scouts [shot a Scout] in the forehead killing him instantly and knocking him from his horse so that he tumbled over on me, his crushed and mangled head striking my shoulder and smearing the blood and brains over my coat. I tell you that looked like war. I’ll never forget it.”23
A small Confederate force tried to save Lexington and VMI by burning the bridge over the Maury River, but Averell’s force forded the waterway and entered Lexington, where they torched numerous residences and VMI in revenge for their role in the Battle of New Market. Crook was aghast: “Hunter would have burned the Natural Bridge could he have compassed it.”24 One man who tried to stop the burning of VMI had a connection to it. Lieutenant William Henry Gillespie was a member of VMI class of 1862 and had served on Stonewall Jackson’s staff, but after he learned that Confederate authorities had arrested his father, he deserted and was now a member of Hunter’s staff. His appeal failed, and VMI went up in smoke.
With the Scouts in the lead, Hunter, Crook, Averell, and Duffié made their way toward Lynchburg, clashing with and pushing aside smaller Confederate forces. The Federals marched through the Blue Ridge Mountains at the Peaks of Otter. The rhododendrons were in full bloom, and the men plucked them and placed them in their hats and rifle barrels, creating the spectral appearance of a moving column of flowers. Hunter’s cavalry reached the outskirts of Lynchburg, which pushed the Confederates into their thinly manned defensive works. Yet the precious time Hunter had wasted in Staunton would catch up to him. Nearly one hundred miles away, Robert E. Lee determined to prevent Lynchburg from falling into enemy hands along with its military warehouses and vital rail junction.
For the previous forty days, Lee had been battling Grant in the tangled brambles of the Wilderness and later the bloodbath of Cold Harbor. Lee audaciously dispatched Lieutenant General Jubal A. Early, in command of the Army of Virginia’s II Corps. Early was one of Lee’s most talented and able battle commanders. Known for snarling at his subordinates, “Old Jube,” or “Lee’s bad old man,” had rheumatoid arthritis, which bowed his shoulders and, along with a hairy beard and shining eyes, gave him the appearance of a “malignant and very hairy spider.”25 Under his command, approximately 9,000 men marched and raced by rail to Lynchburg to halt Hunter’s army. Jessie Scouts warned Averell that the Confederates were railing reinforcements into Lynchburg. “Hunter would neither believe his own or the [Jessie Scouts],”26 recalled Rowand.
Hunter’s men assembled for battle against the undermanned defenders. The fighting commenced the morning of June 18, 1864. “The air was full of lead and shells flying, while Orderlies and Aids were loping in every direction, carrying orders. Every brave man was at his post, some dealing out death to the foe, while others were waiting with anxiety for orders. So desperate was the struggle that no man seemed to desire to speak,” Montgomery recalled. In the midst of the action, Early’s reinforcements arrived in the nick of time. “Constantly cheers were sent up from the Rebel lines, telling us that they were gaining in number.”27
The Confederates counterattacked. “So they formed in mass, thickly as stubble on a newly-cut harvest field—charged our little lines, and came driving our men back, with fiendish looks and savage screams—the air dark with lead, smoke, and dust—and the ground strewn with the slain and stained with blood. They forced our lines back by inches.”28 Hunter’s men in turn checked the Confederate attack and advanced. Some of Crook’s men penetrated Lynchburg’s outer defenses, but Hunter was convinced he was vastly outnumbered by Early’s II Corps and other Confederate reinforcements. Hunter was running low on ammunition and other supplies since Confederate guerrillas, including Mosby’s Rangers, had harried his supply lines.
The partisans had captured or disrupted numerous supply trains on the Valley Pike, the macadamized road that ran down the Shenandoah Valley from Winchester to Lexington and connected the Federal supply centers at Martinsburg and Harpers Ferry. It was vital to supplying any Federal army operating in the valley. Consequently, most of the major battles in the valley were fought alongside and near the Valley Pike. Convinced Early commanded a force much larger than his own and fearing Confederate guerrillas in his rear if he retreated to Washington, Hunter decided to fall back to West Virginia. It was one of the most difficult retreats of the war, as the men faced the blazing sun, severe weather, empty stomachs, and the Confederates. “I think it was the most disastrous retreat by the Union forces. It was simply demoralizing. I saw two men fall down and die of starvation and fatigue,”29 remembered Rowand.
Lee’s route of invasion to the north passed through the Shenandoah followed by the bloody battles of Antietam and Gettysburg. Hunter’s retreat to the west instead of the north left the Shenandoah Valley, the back door to the nation’s capital, open to Jubal Early’s army. While the path of invasion to the north lay open, another path to seizing control of the Federal government and ending the war germinated in the Confederate Secret Service headquarters in Canada.