The Burning: Sheridan's Destruction of the Shenandoah Valley, 1864

"The 3rd Custer div. on the 7th of Octr. retiring and burning the forage Etc. Somewhere near Mt. Jackson." Sketch by Alfred R. Waud. Library of Congress.

"What is the worst in war, to burn a barn or kill a fellow man?" — a Confederate cavalry officer

In 1864, as the Civil War turned toward "hard war," the Shenandoah Valley became a prime target. "The Burning," as it came to be called, was part of a Union strategy to hasten the war's end.

"Leave nothing"

When Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant became general-in-chief in March 1864, he and President Lincoln allowed the army to seize or destroy civilian property useful to the Confederate war effort. The aim was to destroy supplies, livestock and food meant for Confederate armies, and to wear down Southern civilians' support for secession.

Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan, who carried out the strategy in the Valley, later explained the thinking. People at home in peace and plenty, he wrote, see little of war's horrors and grow indifferent to them; but when deprivation reaches their own doors, "reduction to poverty brings prayers for peace more surely and more quickly then does the destruction of human life."

After Lt. Gen. Jubal Early's raid on Washington in mid-July, Grant told his chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Henry Halleck, to have Early pursued and to "eat out Virginia clean and clear as far as they go, so that crows flying over it for the balance of the season will have to carry their own provender with them." When Sheridan took command of the Army of the Shenandoah on August 6, Grant ordered him to give the enemy no rest, do all the damage he could to railroads and crops, and carry off livestock, and enslaved people, to prevent further planting: "If the war is to last another year, we want the Shenandoah Valley to remain a barren waste."

Sheridan's orders had three aims:

1. stop the Valley being used as an invasion route;
2. destroy the Confederacy's breadbasket;
3. break the South's will to fight.

He began in the lower Valley, reporting on August 17, "I have burned all wheat and hay, and brought off all stock, sheep, cattle, horses, &c, south of Winchester." After winning at Third Winchester and Fisher's Hill he followed Early south of Harrisonburg, and his cavalry raided as far as Staunton and Waynesboro.

Grant wanted Sheridan to push east along the railroads and wreck Lee's supply lines. Sheridan thought crossing the Blue Ridge would be hard, would overstretch his supply lines, and would leave Early free to threaten the Valley; he proposed instead to end the campaign by destroying the Valley's crops and sending troops to the army before Richmond. Grant agreed, telling him to "leave nothing for the subsistence of an army on any ground you abandon to the enemy."

Thirteen days

On September 26, 1864, Sheridan began thirteen days of destruction, moving north down the Valley from Staunton to Strasburg across an area 70 miles long and 30 miles wide. His men were to move fast, destroy anything useful to the enemy and move on, but to spare houses, empty barns and the property of widows, single women and orphans, and not to loot.

Col. James H. Kidd of Custer's brigade watched a mill burn at Port Republic. The anguish on the faces of the civilians, he wrote, "would have melted any heart not seared by the horrors and 'necessities' of war," and he left the scene as soon as duty allowed.

There was also revenge in it. Brig. Gen. Wesley Merritt called the area a "paradise of bushwhackers and guerrillas," where officers and men had been "murdered in cold blood on the roads." When Confederate scouts killed Sheridan's engineer officer, Lt. John R. Meigs, near Dayton, Sheridan ordered "all houses within an area of five miles burned." Lt. Col. Thomas F. Wildes urged him to reconsider, and after some thought Sheridan withdrew the order to burn Dayton.

The fire consumed much of Valley families' hard work, and the fear of losing everything took a heavy psychological toll. Weakened Confederate forces could do little. One Southern soldier recalled watching from high ground as Union troops drove off horses, cattle and sheep, killed hogs, and burned "all the barns and shocks of corn and wheat in the fields."

On October 7 Sheridan reported to Grant:

"I have destroyed over 2,000 barns filled with wheat, hay and farming implements; over 70 mills, filled with flour and wheat; have driven in front of the army over 4,000 head of stock, and have killed and issued to the troops not less than 3,000 sheep."

A devastated valley

Beyond the damage to farms, Sheridan judged the effect on people: "The people here are getting sick of war." He had made the Valley "untenable for a Rebel Army." It was not the last campaign of its kind: that winter and the following spring, the U.S. Army burned its way through Georgia and South Carolina.

Sources

• National Park Service, Cedar Creek & Belle Grove National Historical Park, "The Burning," part of the series "Drive the Enemy South": https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/the-burning-shenandoah-valley-in-flames.htm