Convinced Early had withdrawn the bulk of his troops back to Petersburg, Grant ordered the VI and XIX Corps back to the besieged city, leaving only Crook’s 8,000-strong Army of West Virginia in the valley. Sensing blood, Early pounced and routed the Federals in what would become known as the Second Battle of Kernstown on July 24, 1864. Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes helped stave off disaster: “It was now discovered that the enemy, with his greatly superior forces, enveloped the troops on our right, and that they had been driven back. The First Brigade moved back up the hill, when I was ordered by Major-General Crook in person to hold the enemy in check long enough to enable one of our batteries, which was very much exposed to withdraw, and then fall back slowly, bearing to the right of Winchester going north, and protect the line of retreat on the Martinsburg Road.”1 Former Blazer’s Scout Harrison Gray Otis also found himself in the heart of combat: “Men were falling by the scores on all sides. I saw [one of the men] go down within a few rods of where I stood, pierced by five balls. Lt. Col. Comly fell by my side, stunned by a shot in the head but giving him a helping hand he soon rose again.”2 Withering fire and overwhelming Confederate numbers forced Otis’ line to falter as he received a musket ball to the right leg. The Confederates forced Crook to retreat across the Potomac into Maryland, opening a path for the South’s last major raid into northern Union territory.
Days earlier, on July 17, Hunter was given orders by General Halleck to burn Confederate infrastructure in the Shenandoah Valley. “He was to devastate the valley south of the railroad as far as possible so that crows flying over would have to carry knapsacks. This need not involve the burning of houses, dwellings.”3 But Hunter went after dwellings, torching even the home of his cousin Andrew Hunter, a Confederate sympathizer.
Hunter’s pyromania—burning mills, farms, and other structures—moved the Union toward total war in the Shenandoah Valley, a war directed not only at the Confederacy’s armed forces but also at civilians. The burnings hit a nerve with the Confederates. Early dispatched Brigadier General John McCausland to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. McCausland recalled opening and reading the order: “I nearly fell out of the saddle. He ordered me in a very few words to make a retaliatory raid and give the Yankees a taste of their own medicine. The job wasn’t pleasant to contemplate.”4
McCausland and Bradley Johnson’s Virginia and Maryland cavalry brigades surrounded Chambersburg on July 30 and demanded $100,000 in gold or $500,000 in US dollars or they would torch the town, but the town leaders were unable to pay.
Archibald Rowand and another Scout had a bird’s-eye view of the raid. Hiding in a clump of bushes on a little knoll at the edge of town, the two men “stayed within half a mile of the town when it was burning, and then followed the enemy back till we found to a certainty which way he was going, then we got back to Gen. Averell.”5
Harry Gilmor recalled in his autobiography sparing the home of one Union woman: “I went in and told the lady who came to the door that I was there to perform the extremely unpleasant duty of burning her house.” According to the major, she did not beg for her home but only requested time to remove some belongings. “Breakfast was on the table, and she asked me to eat something while she was getting her things together.” When he realized he had fought against her husband and knew of his kindness and honor, he decided, “Then, madam, your house shall not be destroyed.”6
After burning Chambersburg, McCausland then rode west to threaten more Northern towns and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. The Confederates planned to burn McConnellsburg, Pennsylvania, but its citizens ponied up enough rations to prevent their town from being torched. With Averell in pursuit, the Confederates rode to Hancock, Maryland, and demanded $30,000 and 5,000 rations for the hungry cavalry force. When the town’s residents had trouble furnishing the ransom, Marylanders Bradley Johnson and Harry Gilmor stepped in and tried to stop McCausland from incinerating the town. “I and my men objected, saying that too much Maryland blood had been shed in defense of the South for her towns to be laid under contribution or burned.” McCausland was not deterred and pressed on with plans to torch Hancock. Gilmor and Bradley effectively mutinied against their superior officer, as Gilmor revealed: “I perceived, too, that [McCausland’s] men were inclined to plunder. After a consultation with General Johnson, I brought in my whole command and stationed two men at each house and store for their protection.”7 Averell’s cavalry decided the issue by attacking McCausland, and rather than fight a pitched battle with the Yankee cavalry, he retreated to Cumberland, Maryland. There the Confederates encountered a makeshift force assembled by General Benjamin Kelley, which convinced McCausland to avoid the city and move to Moorefield, West Virginia. Having moved over eighty miles from Hancock, McCausland felt he could rest his exhausted force. Camping along the South Branch of the Potomac River, an area ideally suited for grazing and resting their horses but poor for security, the exhausted Confederates turned in for the night. According to one account, a citizen whose horse was stolen by the Confederates gave the precise location of the Southern cavalry on August 6 to the Jessie Scouts. Armed with this intelligence, Averell aimed to destroy McCausland’s unsuspecting cavalry, using the Jessie Scouts to lead the way as the rest of his force followed behind.