Sheridan Gen. Sheridan's Targeting of Civilians Question

Anna Elizabeth Henry

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While watching an episode of "Lonesome Dove - The Series" (Western TV show that aired in the late 90s) this weekend one of the main characters is a Southerner from Virginia who fought in the Civil War (14th Va. Regiment). The US Army comes to the small Montana frontier town and a captain stops to play poker in his saloon. The Southerner (ironically named Clay Mosby) spies the Captain's silver cigar case as one his father owned. Seems Sheridan's men not only burned his family plantation home, but also killed his father, mother and wife.

My question is while I do know Sheridan's Valley Campaign of burning every barn and field to cripple the Confederacy took place in the fall of 1864, I had to wonder the veracity of the army actually killing civilians so brutally (Mr. Mosby claims his father died at the end of a bayonet) and its implied his wife was raped and murdered. I did some digging this morning but all I could turn up was Sheridan left women and children homeless and stole their valuables and livestock. Was this scenario created as a plot device or is there any credence to this storyline?

A big thank you in advance to anyone who could shed some light on this question! :smile:
 
First, let me compliment you on your choice of viewing. "Lonesome Dove" with Robert Duvall, and Tommy Lee Jones (if that's what you were watching) was a GREAT miniseries! I visit it from time to time, and, as usual, know most of their lines...The scene where "Augustus" dies in Montana reminds me of what it would be like between my best friend and me...so sad (tears every time). I think that was Hollywood speaking, as far as that scene goes in the saloon-poetic license once more.:wink:
 
Thank you! Actually it's a TV show spin-off of the amazing miniseries (which I adore as well). It tracks the adventures of Newt Call, Woodrow's son. Fun show, shame it was only on for two seasons.

But back to my question, I figured someone took a literary license with those details. Made for a great plot during the episode, but it just seemed so over the top that the Army would've gone that far with civilians. I'm sure people may have been man-handled/roughed up if they put up a fight in effort to save their homes, but killing them seemed extreme.

Thanks! :smile:
 
John Heatwole, a Valley resident himself and descendant of residents going back to colonial days, wrote a classic account of Sheridan's activities in the Valley called The Burning. While there was indeed much burning and looting of private property - and well beyond what was militarily necessary - primary accounts of murder and rape of civilians are rare to non-existent. Certainly nothing like that happened with official sanction. In his epilogue he cites a New York history book in 1866 that includes wild accounts of Sheridan's "savagery", but Heatwole says of it:

With lurid descriptions like this, is it any wonder that the true story of the campaign to make the Valley untenable has been cloaked in myth for so many years? Obviously, for whatever purposes, there were those who would labor to fan the flames of resentment between the sections of the country indefinitely.

- John Heatwole, The Burning, p. 231​
 
The Southerner (ironically named Clay Mosby) spies the Captain's silver cigar case as one his father owned. Seems Sheridan's men not only burned his family plantation home, but also killed his father, mother and wife.
The teleplay is a work of fiction and the author is entitled to manipulate and compress history to create a certain sense of the time. In this case there is a connection between the card player and an act of theft (murder?) in a bitter, destructive civil war rather than the details of Sheridan's campaign in The Valley. You will dig a long time matching up every detail in historical fiction with historical fact.

Once a commander orders that everything be destroyed, e.g., My Lai, the subject of a PBS documentary this past week, anything can happen.

I think the novel Lonesome Dove is terrific. The series can stand on its own too.
 
I find the whole myth thing very interesting. Specifically that Heatwole would label as myth a book apparently published in the north one year after the war.
 
Heatwole collected accounts of people who lived through it. There were individuals who were children at the time who lived until the 1930s who told stories to their children and grandchildren. The author did his best to research the information against known facts (For example if say someone said Custer himself rode up into their property and set their barn on fire he would note that it could not have happened as Custer and his men were in another part of the Valley during that time). Its been some time since I read the book but I can't remember any accounts of out and out murder or rape...but that is not to say that it did not happen of course. It seems mostly limited to destruction of property and many of the soldiers disobeyed orders or simply carried out the letter of the law (setting small fires that the property owners could easily extinguish themselves). There were Confederate bushwhacker gangs that operated in the Valley and its possible the Federal troops might have encountered some of them in a firefight. I suppose if one of them were killed they might label its as 'murder'.


As far as I know the only time Sheridan targeted civilians specifically was when he was angry at the shooting death of one of his aids, John Rogers Meigs. He wanted to burn the town of Dayton because he apparently held them responsible That didn't happen but the surrounding area became the Valley's own 'Burnt District'.
 
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I find the whole myth thing very interesting. Specifically that Heatwole would label as myth a book apparently published in the north one year after the war.

Me too. Heatwole specifically mentioned that book (with a long quoted paragraph from it) to demonstrate that the myth-mongering was not limited to the South. He said, "The outcry about the decision to make war on civilians was not limited to the South, and like some correspondents in the South who had not actually borne witness to the destruction, many Northerners resorted to hyperbole to fan the fires of hatred with wild assertions." (ibid., p. 230)

We need to remember that the North was no more a monolith than the South was, and that there were a sizeable number of Northerners who disapproved of the war.
 
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