MR. LINCOLNS WAR AND THE EASTERN SHORE OF VIRGINIA, 1861-1865 Brooks Miles Barnes

The national crisis following the election of Abraham

Lincoln as president of the United States in November 1860

forced a hard decision upon the 14,000 white people of Accomack

and Northampton counties on Virginias Eastern Shore. On the

one hand, long-cherished patriotic sentiment urged them to

remain with the Union. Should secession bring on embargo or

war, they feared that their extensive trade with Northern

seaports in grain, lumber, and seafood would be prohibited.

Moreover, the experience of past wars had taught them that their

long seacoast would make their farms vulnerable to Northern

naval raiders. In the event of a dissolution and civil war,

warned an Accomack newspaper editor, no section would suffer so

severely as we, the inhabitants of this peninsula and slave

border. Our farms would be devastated, our families left

unprotected, and our negroes would necessarily have to be

shipped farther South, and sold at a great sacrifice or be

stolen.

On the other hand, many whites, slaveholders and non-

slaveholders alike, worried that the increasingly industrialized

North aimed to achieve political and economic domination over

the agricultural South. The whites feared an expansion of

federal power under Lincoln and the Republican Party. They

anticipated the loss of personal liberty and self-government as

well as slave property. They imagined Northern invaders intent

on wanton destruction. Their fears, as it turned out, were not

illusory.

When the crisis came to a head in May 1861, Northampton

County, where more than 40% of the white families owned slaves

and where blacks made up 60% of the population, voted

unanimously to secede from the Union. White-majority Accomack,

where less than 20% of white families held slaves, also voted

for secession, but, despite physical intimidation, a minority of

Unionists slaveless watermen from Chincoteague and Tangier

islands and communicants of the handful of anti-slavery Northern

Methodist churches remaining in the county registered their

dissent. Late in June, a local politician informed the

Confederate Secretary of War that Northampton is entirely

loyal, and three-fourths of Accomac are.

Virginia having seceded, military mobilization began. The

Eastern Shore militia regiments drilled frequently, and a

regular Virginia regiment, the 39th, organized at several

encampments on the peninsula. Shortly, the predicted Union

seaborne incursions commenced. Elements of the 39th and of the

militia skirmished with Union raiders at Pitts Landing on the

Pocomoke River and at the Big Pond near Cherrystone Inlet in

early August and at Wisharts Point on Chincoteague Bay in early

October.

Meanwhile, Union political and military leaders planned the

invasion and occupation of the Eastern Shore of Virginia. The

Union command wanted to suppress what they believed was the

Virginians pernicious influence on secession sentiment on the

Eastern Shore of Maryland. They wanted to tighten the blockade

on goods shipped from the Eastern Shore to Confederates on the

Western Shore of Virginia. They also wanted to re-open the

Eastern Shore oat trade in order to better meet the demands of

Union cavalry. Finally, the commanders wanted to run a

telegraph line down the peninsula to connect Washington with

Fort Monroe via underwater cable from Cherrystone.

To these ends, Major General John A. Dix, in charge of the

Baltimore military district, gathered at Newtown (now Pocomoke

City), Maryland, a force of 5,000 men composed of units from

Delaware, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York,

and Wisconsin under the immediate command of Brigadier General

Henry H. Lockwood. In response, Confederate Colonel Charles

Smith assembled near New Church a force of 1,800 men composed of

his own 39th Virginia and the Eastern Shore militia regiments.

On November 15, 1861, Major General Dix issued a

proclamation in which he pledged to the people of the Eastern

Shore a scrupulous respect for your laws, your institutions,

your usages [i.e. slavery]. Warning that the United States

sends among you a force too strong to be successfully opposed,

he promised to those who remain in the quiet pursuit of their

domestic occupations, . . . Peace, Freedom from annoyance,

Protection from Foreign and Internal Enemies, a guaranty of all

Constitutional and Legal Rights and the blessings of a just and

parental Government.

Two days later, Brigadier General Lockwood broke camp at

Newtown and headed south. Colonel Smith, heavily outnumbered

and not given to futile heroics, withdrew from his

entrenchments. As Smiths men retreated down the peninsula,

they gradually dispersed. Most returned to their homes, but

others, including Smith, took passage on small boats across the

Chesapeake Bay where they continued the fight in other units of

the Confederate Army. Lockwood, intent on pacification rather

than confrontation, was quite willing to allow his foes to

depart. He moved so deliberately that it took his force eleven

days to march from Newtown to Eastville.

Having forced the Confederate military from the Eastern

Shore, Major General Dix began to withdraw troops. By December

only 1,000 Union soldiers remained in Northampton and Accomack

counties. By March 1862, the number had fallen to 250. For the

rest of the war, from 200 to 600 Union soldiers were stationed

continuously on the peninsula. They guarded the telegraph wire,

supported the blockade (with little success), and carried out

the edicts of the army provost marshal. They experienced few

moments of excitement and danger. In August 1863, Confederate

naval raider John Yates Beall smashed the lens of the lighthouse

on Smiths Island at the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, and in March

1864, Confederate cavalryman Thaddeus Fitzhugh led a daring

attack on the federal telegraph station at Cherrystone.

Stealing in from the Western Shore in small boats, Fitzhughs

men destroyed the telegraph office, cut the wires, and hijacked

a steamer in which they returned triumphantly to their base.

For the remainder of the war and beyond, the Eastern Shore

of Virginia lay under the control of the United States military.

The Northern occupiers often revealed a reflexive prejudice

against white Southerners. The people [of the Eastern Shore]

are weak and cowardly; inferior to their own slaves, testified

a Michigan officer. Under the occupation, person and property

were rendered vulnerable by sectional animus as well as by

military necessity. Union soldiers assaulted some Eastern Shore

civilians and extorted and stole from others; the military

requisitioned livestock, produce, and conveyances from local

farmers for which they sometimes neglected to pay; and the Union

command seized churches at Oak Hall, Drummondtown (Accomac C.

H.), and Pungoteague for use as barracks and stables.

Major General Dixs guaranty of all Constitutional and

Legal Rights soon rang as hollow as his promise of Freedom

from annoyance. Understandably, Union authorities confiscated

the estates of leading civilians serving in the Confederate army

or government. Less understandably, they imprisoned in Fort

McHenry some outspoken private citizens indefinitely and without

the benefit of habeas corpus. They further suppressed free

speech by confiscating the property of people expressing

Confederate sympathies. The Union authorities also arbitrarily

levied taxes. They removed from office elected officials whom

they considered unreliable. They so restricted the franchise

that only approved candidates won election to local offices or

to the General Assembly of representatives from the occupied

counties of Virginia. They arbitrarily gave the United States

Army Provost Marshal for the Eastern Shore jurisdiction over

criminal cases and over contract disputes involving blacks as

well as over violations of military regulations. Indeed,

authority on the Eastern Shore rested less often with elected

officials than with the provost marshal. The government

delivered by the Union occupation might not have been just but

was certainly paternal.

Few white Eastern Shoremen were overt rebels. Those of

military age who were committed to the Southern cause had

crossed Chesapeake Bay when Lockwoods force moved in

overwhelming numbers down the peninsula. For whites left at

home, geographic isolation and federal power made Union

occupation of the Eastern Shore for the remainder of the war a

near certainty. Liberation would come only with Confederate

victory. A minority, through principal or opportunism,

collaborated with the invaders. Meanwhile, with varying degrees

of reluctance, the pro-Confederate majority accommodated

themselves to the fact of Union occupation. Most regained the

privilege of commerce with the North and the remnant of their

civil liberties by taking the oath of allegiance to the United

States. A steadfast few scorned the oath and retired to their

farms. Some of the pro-Confederates covertly resisted when

given the opportunity while all silently despised the invaders

and bided their time until the Yankees went home.

Slavery on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, like that of any

other region, had its own symmetry. In the years immediately

following the American Revolution, natural rights ideology and

Methodist evangelism combined with economic factors to encourage

Eastern Shore farmers to free their slaves. The rate of

manumission slowed somewhat in the early nineteenth century but

the free black population grew rapidly while that of the slave

grew hardly at all. On the eve of the Civil War, 34% of the

Eastern Shores 12,000 black people were free.

The rights of Virginias free blacks had been so restricted

by statute as to make their freedom more apparent than real.

They therefore joined with the enslaved to view the Union

occupiers not as oppressors but as liberators. Initially, the

blacks were disappointed. At the time of the invasion, the

Lincoln administration was waging war only to preserve the

Union, not to free the slaves. Although Eastern Shore blacks,

in the words of a Union officer, flocked to the [soldiers]

camps by hundreds, Brigadier General Lockwood, himself a

slaveholder, ordered them turned away. When President Lincoln

issued the Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862, he

exempted the Eastern Shore and the rest of the occupied South

from its provisions.

Nevertheless, the longer the Union army remained on the

peninsula, the weaker slavery became. In late 1863, the United

States War Department transferred Accomack and Northampton

counties to the military district of Major General Benjamin F.

Butler, an inveterate foe of the South from whom slaveholders

could expect little sympathy. Without the support of the

federal authorities, slaveholders found discipline more

difficult to maintain and runaways nearly impossible to recover.

Free blacks perhaps gained more leverage over their lives when

the army provost marshal assumed jurisdiction over contract

disputes involving blacks. By April 1864, when a new Virginia

constitution adopted by representatives from the occupied

counties abolished slavery, the institution on the Eastern Shore

was virtually moribund.

The avidity with which black Eastern Shoremen enlisted in

the Union army belies the idea that local blacks were content

under slavery. Army recruitment of black soldiers began in

Accomack and Northampton in the fall of 1863. The soldiers,

eventually numbering around 850, served principally in the 7th,

9th, and 10th United States Colored Troops. The 7th U.S.C.T. saw

duty in Florida, South Carolina, and at the siege of Petersburg,

and the 9th in South Carolina and at Petersburg. The 10th

U.S.C.T. began active duty on the Eastern Shore where the

presence of local blacks uniformed and armed so irritated whites

that the regiment was soon withdrawn to the Western Shore where

it took part in the Petersburg campaign. After the close of

hostilities, all three regiments served as occupation troops in

Texas. Also beginning in the fall of 1863, 123 white Union

sympathizers, mostly from the seaside barrier islands, enlisted

in the 1st Regiment, Loyal Eastern Shore Volunteers. They passed

the war in garrison duty at various points on the peninsula.

The 650 or so Confederate soldiers who escaped to the

Western Shore enlisted principally in the 19th Battalion,

Virginia Heavy Artillery, and in the 46th Regiment, Virginia

Infantry. The 46th was part of the brigade commanded by

Brigadier General Henry A. Wise, an Eastern Shore native and

former governor of Virginia. The men from Accomack and

Northampton formed a company of the 46th known as the Eastern

Shore Refugees. The Refugees fought at Seven Pines, on Roanoke

Island, in the defense of Charleston, at Petersburg, and at

Saylers Creek.

The 19th Battalion was stationed in the Richmond defenses

along the James River and was captured en masse at Saylers

Creek during the Confederate collapse in the spring of 1865.

The 19th, like the 46th and other Confederate units, was by this

time decimated by casualties, disease, desertion, and near

starvation. When wounded and captured on the retreat from

Richmond, W. J. Doughty of the 19th carried in his haversack

only three ears of raw corn. Three days later, on April 9,

1865, only nine Eastern Shore Refugees remained on duty when

Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox C. H.

Although the Eastern Shore did not suffer the utter

devastation and heavy casualties experienced by other areas of

the South, the impact of the Civil War on the peninsula was

nevertheless profound. Black people rejoiced when slavery,

already in decline, received its death blow. Most whites

learned that under the Lincoln administration guaranteed

Constitutional and Legal Rights were not rights at all but

privileges granted by the army provost marshal. All understood

that, under the Union occupation, no ones person or property

was safe from outrage.

That the Eastern Shore was spared the more appalling

brutalities was a matter of timing. In the last year of the

war, Lincoln and his generals sought victory as much by breaking

the will of Southern civilians as by destroying Confederate

armies. Sherman, Sheridan, and other Union commanders marched,

torch in hand, through virtually undefended countryside. What

their troops did not burn, they stole. The cruelties practiced

on this campaign towards citizens have been enough to blast a

more sacred cause than ours, commented a veteran of Shermans

March to the Sea. The Eastern Shore was lucky to have been

invaded and occupied in the first year of the war rather than

the last. Before the Union generals began their campaigns of

systematic vandalism and theft. Before Father Abraham made

total war.