Penning heads on Civil War tales

 They don't make headlines like they used to.
 As dying newspapers lay off the ink-stained wretches on the copy desks, we may never see another headline quite like this verbless wonder written by Vincent Musetto for the New York Post in 1983—the most unforgettable head in the history of journalism.

 Headline writing is an art. It may be a dying art—a victim of malnewstrition—but the American Copy Editors Society (ACES) still has a #HeadlineoftheYear contest to recognize the finest examples. If you are curious about the state of the art, here are the winners for 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016 and 2015. 
 At The Stoneman Gazette, we take pride in our headlines and have never laid off a copy editor. If ACES ever adds a prize category for anachronistic online newspapers, here are a few of our favorites we'd like to nominate.
 If you feel enticed to click on any of these blue links, go hug a headline writer. 

Rebels and their bridge fall for Yankee-pranky

If you're ever caught in a headline fight, remember that the pun is mightier than the sword. This story describes a ruse involving a Union captain (a 27-year-old teacher with the eminently punable name of Erastus Cratty Moderwell) who impersonated 43-year-old Gen. George Stoneman to fool and intimidate Confederate forces who had him outnumbered. The rebels unwittingly surrendered the Nation Ford railroad trestle connecting the Carolinas, and the Yankees burned it down before Jefferson Davis could cross it.

Stoneman's headquarters on Caesars Head

Here's my double-headed homage to Vincent Musetto (who died four weeks after we ended the daily run of The Stoneman Gazette). When the Yankees headed south out of Asheville and crossed the Blue Ridge at Caesars Head, they looked down on rebellious South Carolina in more ways than one. While they were descending, they were also condescending. (And don't blame me for the genitive apostrophe missing from Caesars Head. That's the style established by the U.S. Bureau of Geographic Names, page 30.) 

Your taxes are still paying for Stoneman's Raid

If a headline can't be cute, it needs to be profound. It should make the reader feel personally invested in the story. In this case, we thought our fellow Americans would want to know that Uncle Sam is still paying for the Civil War—and the monthly checks are being cashed by the daughter of one of Stoneman's veterans. In a different era, this 1938 Gettysburg headline about her father also did a good job of enticing readers:

The longest raid begins with a single debt

Headline writers often start with a familiar phrase and then twist it like one of Sherman's neckties. You can understand why we wrote raid instead of journey, and here's why we changed step to debt: After rebels captured Gen. Stoneman in 1864, he became the highest-ranked prisoner in the South and a laughingstock in some parts of the North. So when he got a chance to vindicate himself with a thousand-mile raid in 1865, he declared, "I owe the Southern Confederacy a debt I am anxious to liquidate."

Myles to go: Stoneman's rock star

The story includes a quote about s-e-x from Myles Keogh, a debonair Yankee officer and international man of mystery. We resisted the temptation to use that cheap clickbait in our headline, because it would have been beneath our dignity. Instead, we'll tease you with it here—underskirting our headline.

Twin fiddling: Tom Dooley and Gilliam Grayson

The Kingston Trio and Doc Watson were also part of this story, but the title characters were both fiddlers, and young Tom fiddled around in more ways than one. In fact, he had a harem of cousins. For headline writers, a double entendre is the triple crown. 

Pyres in Salisbury, but a pyrrhic victory for rebs
It's a rare headline that can pair two pyr-words. It almost makes me want to go back and rewrite the story in inverted pyramid. Almost.

Four days in a den of Yankee lions

I like to include Bible allusions in my headlines. With Stoneman's cavalry fast approaching the Carson House, Miss Emma Rankin wrote that she still made it to church on Easter Sunday, "and our blessed old pastor gave us all the hope and strength he could gather from the Bible, reminding us that there were lions in the way, but God could shut the lions' mouths."

'Destroy Charlotte!' 'Will Asheville do?'

"If it's a good headline, we'll make it fit," Phil Batson used to say. But blogs, like newspapers, have fixed widths for columns and pages, and the challenge is to say a lot in a few words (in this case: 34 counts). This headline sums up a flurry of messages between Gen. Stoneman in Knoxville and two of his cavalry brigades in the North Carolina mountains.

How to stop the U.S. Cavalry? With a winefest
The purpose of a headline is to get you to stop and read the story. Clickbait, they call it nowadays. I think this one clicks. The bacchanalian story comes from my hometown of Anderson, S.C.

Scoop! Sly Stoneman chides rebel church
The little story behind this headline was lost to history until The Stoneman Gazette dredged it out of the The New York Times digital archives. "Chides" is such a fine word that it is usually reserved for headlines. Otherwise, our headline might have been Education of black children vs. edification of white Presbyterians. Sly readers of my generation may read something else into that headline.

Greenville mule gets Yankee's goat
The raiders quickly wore out their horses, and one Yankee regretted the day he swiped a mule from the plantation of a Revolutionary war hero.

Tell Mama! The war is finally over
A month after Lee's surrender, the war and the raid were still dragging on. So was the daily run of The Stoneman Gazette. We needed a way to finish strong, and I think we found it in our Mothers Day issue, which featured heartfelt quotes from the likes of Abe Lincoln, Stonewall Jackson's mother, and Mark Twain. Some newspapers don't like exclamations in headlines, but we're different, and moms are special.

Greenville mule got a Yankee's goat

The 200-year-old Rock House was built by Capt. Billy Young, a hero of the American Revolution

Some of the Union cavalry crossed the 1820 Poinsett Bridge in the mountains of Greenville County

GREENVILLE, S.C.

 The Union cavalry who invaded Greenville on May 2, 1865, came from Asheville, and their routes would have brought them past two rock-solid monuments of 19th-century craftsmanship: the Poinsett Bridge on the State Road and the Rock House on the Buncombe Road.

 The Rock House was built some 200 years ago by Capt. Billy Young, a hero of the American Revolution. It once was the largest house in Greenville, but it is so secluded that I never knew about it during the decades I lived there. I looked it up during the 150th anniversary of Stoneman's Raid, because the most prominent local victim of the raid was listed by historians as "Capt. Choice of the old Rock House."
 Josiah Choice was 62 years old when the raiders came down Buncombe Road. There are varying accounts of what happened to him. He may have been killed for shooting at a cavalryman who confiscated his horse. The Choice family had a home nearby, so it is possible that "of the old Rock House" described the locale where he was killed, rather than the actual house where he lived.
 About 150 Union cavalry from Stoneman's rear guard were dispatched from Asheville in late April to pursue Jefferson Davis, the fugitive president of the Confederacy.  They rode together through Saluda Gap to the foot of the Blue Ridge, where they fanned out. Some of them followed the State Road across Poinsett Bridge and entered Greenville on the Rutherford Road. Click here to read our 150th anniversary story about the havoc they caused in Greenville. 
 The rest of the Yankees came down Buncombe Road, took Josiah Choice's life, and left us with a great story. It's too good to be true, but The State newspaper in Columbia reported it Aug. 23, 1959, after reporter Virginia Oles visited her Aunt Em, Emily Rosamond Thackston, the great-granddaughter of Capt. Young. Aunt Em's father, William Thackston, had inherited the house from his wife Katherine, the captain's granddaughter. 
 Capt. Young (1759-1826) was known as That Terror To The Tories during the Revolution. Yankees were sometimes called Tories, too, and at least one of the Union soldiers at the Rock House probably was sorry he met Capt. Young's daughter Emily Young Rosamond (1812-1888). This Emily was the great aunt of the Aunt Em who told the story to the newspaper.

Here's Your Mule was a
 popular Civil War song

 As the story goes, by the end of the war, a mule named Susie was the last livestock on the Rock House plantation. All the men were working in the fields, so only Emily was home when a Yankee rode up on a worn-out horse.
 Without so much as a good morning, the soldier went into the barnyard, unsaddled his horse, saddled Susie, and rode off. Emily was especially fond of Susie, so she wept with grief.
 Early the next morning, there was a sudden commotion in the yard. The whole household rushed out to see what was going on. There stood old Susie at the barnyard gate, wearing the Yankee's saddle. However, there was no rider.
 Emily threw her arms around Susie's neck and kissed her. She whispered into the mule's ear, "Susie, you threw that Yankee and came back home!"
 Later that day, the Yankee returned with a noticeable limp. He went to the barnyard, saddled his own lame horse, and rode off without a word of explanation.
 Susie, of course, became a war hero whose story was repeated for generations.


 Old Buncombe Road is a landmark between downtown Greenville and Furman University.  The original wagon road was built in the years following the Revolution. The road reached the North Carolina line in 1797 and finally connected in 1827 with Buncombe County, N.C. That opened up a trade route into the western frontier of Tennessee and Kentucky. In Greenville County, the road followed the Reedy River and the North Fork of the Saluda River before intersecting the State Road from Columbia, which crossed the Blue Ridge at Saluda Gap. This is the old route of U.S. Highway 25, which now passes through the Greenville watershed.
 Capt. Young was born in Loudoun County, Va., grew up on a large farm on the Pacolet River in Spartanburg County, and enlisted in the 2nd Spartan Regiment at age 16. He fought in the "Snow Campaign" of 1775 (which included the Battle of the Great Cane Brake in lower Greenville County), Musgrove Mill and Kings Mountain in 1780, and Cowpens, Augusta, and Ninety Six in 1781. After the war, he was appointed in 1785 as the first sheriff of Spartanburg County.
 In 1789, at age 30, Capt. Young married 15-year-old Mary Salmon from Virginia. They settled on farmland about four miles northwest of the village of Greenville (which was originally called Pleasantburg) and had at least 14 children. (Emily was born in 1812 and married James Rosamond in 1833.) Capt. Young and his brother acquired large tracts of land northwest of Greenville along the Buncombe Road. Some of their acreage eventually became part of Furman University when the campus was relocated from downtown Greenville in the 1950s.
 It was about 1792 when Capt. Young began building the Rock House, using granite quarried from nearby Paris Mountain and brought down by slave-driven ox carts. The stone walls are 36 inches thick outside and 26 inside.  It's likely that he employed some of he same stonemasons who built the Poinsett Bridge in 1820. The house has eight rooms, a central hallway, and a secret compartment in the attic where the family hid heirlooms and food to protect them from the Union raiders.
 The Rock House may have still been under construction when the captain died in 1826. The house eventually served as a stagecoach stop and a post office on the Buncombe Road.
 After the Civil War, the Rock House was owned by Benjamin Franklin Perry Jr., whose father was the post-war governor of South Carolina. The younger Perry had married one of the captain's granddaughters. Thackston, a widowed Confederate veteran, inherited the house and lived there until his death in 1909. Then the house was passed down to his daughter Emily (1875-1958) and her brother Henry (1866-1943), who farmed the land until his death. In 1956, "Aunt Em" vacated the Rock House at age 81, and the place fell into disrepair. 
 In 1958, lawyer Harry J. Haynsworth III and his wife Jean bought the Rock House for $7,500 and renovated it into a formal home. Haynsworth (1923-1994) was the brother of Clement F. Haynsworth Jr. (1912-1989), a Supreme Court nominee in 1969. The taxable market value in 2020 is assessed at $326,420.

Robert Mills' 1820 Atlas shows Capt. Young's Rock House between Greenville and Paris Mountain. Buncombe Road is labeled as From Saluda Gap to Greenville 28.00 (miles).

RELATED GREENVILLE STORIES

➤ 'Raid is the worst form of war'
➤ Greenville dodges last bullet of Stoneman's Raid 
➤ 'Prepare to meet your God'

Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

Yankees published this 4-column extra May 6, 1865, while they occupied Athens.

 
 If you are reading The Stoneman Gazette on your phone or tablet (like many in our audience), we invite you to try us the way newspapers were meant to be read—with more than one column.
 Open our page on an old-fashioned computer screen (or switch your iPhone to "View web version") and you'll discover a right-side column that features a search engine, a timeline that guides you day-by-day and town-by town along the path of the raid, and birthdays and biographical links for hundreds of folks who have graced our pages. This is also where we give proper credit to all the fine historians whose work we've plundered.
 Our broadsheet edition also features section tabs where you can explore topics we've covered, such as Faith, Music, Sports, Tech, and Travel. Looking for a table of contents? Start here.
 In other words ... there's more to The Stoneman Gazette than meets the iPhone.  

 

(If you're not pun-shy, you're also invited to visit my other blog. —Tom Layton)

✭✭✭

THREEDOM OF THE PRESS: The Athens newspaper (above) was one of three issues published by Union troops during Stoneman's Raid. Others were in Salisbury, N.C., and Spartanburg, S.C.

Remember when N.C. voted to save the Union?

 Four days before the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln, North Carolina held a statewide referendum to decide whether to secede from the Union. 
 You might have thought that was a foregone conclusion. Seven southern states had already exited.
 Yet at the end of February 1861, voters across North Carolina rejected secession and chose to remain in the Union. The vote was close, and it wasn't binding for long, but it remains a refreshing history lesson for our generation as we deal with another polarizing presidency and an increasingly fractious society.

North Carolina Standard, March 20, 1861

 This referendum was news to me when I began researching Stoneman's Raid and learned about it from the books of North Carolina historian Michael C. Hardy. I looked it up in old newspapers and found this county-by-county table in the North Carolina Standard published March 20, 1861 in Raleigh. The referendum was held February 28 (156 years ago today), but back then it took a couple of weeks to compile all the votes.
 North Carolina voters faced two questions:

1. Should the state hold a constitutional convention to consider secession?
2. If the convention is approved, who would you vote for as your delegate?

 In effect, a vote against the convention was a vote for the Union.
 North Carolina rejected the convention by a margin of just 661 votes, 47,333 against and 46,672 for. That made the second question moot, but if the delegates had convened, they would have been 83-37 in favor of the Union.
 Many of the counties that would be raided by Stoneman in 1865 were overwhelmingly loyal to the Union: Watauga voted against a convention 536-72, Caldwell 651-186, Wilkes 1,890-51, Yadkin 1,490-34, Forsyth 1,409-286, and Guilford 2,771-113.
 Among counties ready to secede were Rowan 1,150-882, Catawba 918-158, Lincoln 708-86, Mecklenburg 1,448-252, McDowell 638-217, and Buncombe 1,219-389. Most of the support for secession was in eastern North Carolina, where slavery was more widespread.

 While North Carolina was still counting votes, Lincoln gave his inaugural address on March 4 and made one last eloquent plea to save the Union:

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

 So if North Carolinians were loyal to the Union, how did we wind up in the Confederacy?

Vet's dilemma: Which side would he fight for?

FLAG POND, Tenn.

 One cold winter night in 1947, Anderson Moore was on his way to bed when he stumbled and fell. For the next five weeks he tolerated a painful crick in his neck, until he finally sought care at the Oteen Veterans Hospital near Asheville, N.C.

Anderson Moore (1847-1949)

 Doctors diagnosed a fractured vertebra and admitted Moore into a ward with a dozen young veterans of World War II. That must have made for some interesting war stories—because Moore was 100 years old and fought for the Union in the Civil War.
 Hospital administrators tipped The Asheville Citizen, which published Moore's story and asked him the obvious question: Why would a Southerner enlist with the Yankees?
 "To keep out of the rebel army," he declared.
 By the middle of the 20th century, it was easy for the public to forget that not all southerners were rebels. In fact, back in 1861 following the election of Abraham Lincoln, the majority of North Carolinians voted against secession. Pro-Union sentiment was strongest in the mountains, where few families owned slaves and most saw no reason to fight against the country that their fathers and grandfathers had fought for.
 Yet as soon as they turned 17, young men like Moore were required to join the Confederate army. If they dodged the draft, the local Home Guard would hunt them down.
 "I didn't have any better sense than to fight," Moore said.
 Actually, he had no choice but to fight. His only choice was: Which side would he fight for?
 When Moore turned 17 in 1864, he walked 50 miles to Strawberry Plains, Tenn., to enlist with the Union Army in the 3rd North Carolina Mounted Infantry. Unfortunately, there were not enough horses for all the soldiers. "We weren't mounted," he joked. "We were webfeet."
 He said he fought in a number of skirmishes and minor battles, including Stoneman's Raid. The 3rd N.C. Mounted Infantry was part of Stoneman's rear guard and occupied Boone and Asheville in the closing weeks of the war.
 Moore was born Jan. 10, 1847, in Flag Pond, Tenn., a mountain community just across Sams Gap from North Carolina. His longevity was no surprise, since his father lived to be 108. After the war, Moore became a farmer, was married twice, and had five children, five step-children, and 35 grandchildren. Some of them shared his pro-Union sympathies, because one of his grandsons was named Meade, after the Union general who defeated Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg. 
 Moore lived two more years and was 102 when he died June 3, 1949, at home in Madison County, N.C. As far as I have found, he was the next-to-last surviving veteran from Stoneman's Raid.
 

The nurse quoted in this clipping, Mercina "Jimmie" Pananes McSwain (1922-2013), was the daughter of Greek immigrants and a graduate of Johns Hopkins who met her husband Ray McSwain during the year she worked at the Oteen Veterans Hospital. She became known as the godmother of tennis in the Swannanoa Valley, and the town courts in Black Mountain are named for her.

NEXT➤ 75 years later: Roadside fame, household name

The ghost of Della Barnes

Della Barnes' truncated statue

PADUCAH, Ky.

 Della Barnes was a heartbreaker. One man gave her an expensive engagement ring, but she chose to marry another. The jilted man was so enraged that he cut off Della's ring finger, and she bled to death. 
 Or so the legend goes.
 The true story of Della's demise, as reported in the Paducah Daily Sun, is just as haunting. One summer night in 1897, Della told a friend that she didn't feel well and was going to take a dose of calomel, a mercury compound that is now known to be toxic but back then was used to treat various ailments. By accident, she swallowed morphine instead. Della went to bed and never woke up.
 The heartbroken man in this real-life tragedy was her father, Major George Barnes. A Tennessee native who remained loyal to the Union throughout the Civil War, he rode with the 12th Kentucky Cavalry in Stoneman's Raid and was mentioned in the New York Times for his leadership in the invasion of Boone, N.C. He was also entrusted with the destruction of the Confederate armory at Salisbury.
 After the war, Maj. Barnes married 17-year-old Anna Robinson and became a successful coal merchant and city councilman in Paducah, a city on the lower Ohio River across from Illinois.

Della's original monument

 Della was born in 1874, when her father was 38. He had three other daughters (two grew up to marry and one died at age five), but Della was his darling, and after she died on June 27, 1897, he never got over it. To mark her grave, he commissioned an Italian sculptor to carve a life-sized statue of Della holding a rose over her heart.
 Over the next year, he was engulfed by grief, his business failed, and his debts mounted.
 On November 3, 1898, Barnes bought 30 grains of morphine—the same drug that had killed Della. That's enough to kill 10 men. To get so much, he had to go to two apothecaries, and he told one of them he needed it for a sick horse. Instead, he swallowed it all with a bottle of whiskey. Hours later when his family found him, they called the same doctor who had tried to revive Della, but it was too late.
 Barnes, 62, left a note written on paper that had wrapped the morphine, explaining that he had no domestic trouble, but that he took his life because of financial embarrassment and his grief over Della's death. He asked God to have mercy on his soul and take care of his little grandson.
 According to his obituary:

The deceased was a good, conscientious man, and highly esteemed by all who knew him. His friends were numbered by the hundred, and among them are not only his old comrades at arms in the Union army, but the men who fought on the other side as well, and for whom he always showed the highest regard and friendship.

 Major Barnes was buried in an unmarked grave next to Della in Paducah's Oak Grove cemetery.
 Today, Della's grave is barely recognizable. Her monument has disappeared, piece by piece. After vandals broke off her ring finger, people swore they saw the statue bleeding or crying. Then her head and torso disappeared. Now, all that remains is the marble foundation, decorated by flowers.
 But some people say ... if you dare to visit the cemetery at night on the anniversary of her death, you just might see Della's pale ghost walking the darkened paths through the old oak grove, clutching a blood-red rose over her heart.

NEXT➤ Vet's dilemma: Which side would he fight for?

Paducah Daily Sun, June 28, 1897

Paducah Daily Sun, Nov. 5, 1898

Greenville: 'Prepare to Meet Your God'

A noble Yankee from Tennessee:
Union Capt. Isaac Taylor

GREENVILLE, S.C.

 The Stoneman Gazette has unearthed more information about the skirmish in Greenville, S.C., in May, 1865, that I believe was the last Civil War clash east of the Mississippi.

National Tribune, Sept. 5, 1889

 This clipping was published July 18, 1889, in the National Tribune, a weekly newspaper catering to Union veterans. I found it reprinted Sept. 5, 1889, in the Anderson Intelligencer.

 It is a letter written by Isaac Taylor, a Union captain from Tennessee who was ordered to execute four Confederates accused of mistreating and robbing some of Stoneman's sick and wounded soldiers as they were being evacuated to Knoxville.
 Convinced that the rebels were innocent, Capt. Taylor defied his orders and made a noble last-minute decision to spare their lives.
 I believe that Taylor is describing the same incident that was documented in 2002 by Greenville historian John McLeod, though there are some discrepancies in their stories, and it is possible there were two similar incidents.
 Taylor gives the date as May 24 (rather than May 22 or 23) and the location as 25 miles from Greenville at the foot of the Blue Ridge (not Crescent Ridge near downtown Greenville). He says there were four Confederates (rather than three) facing the firing squad. The 1903 history of the 13th Tennessee Cavalry says it was Lt. T.C. White (rather than Capt. Taylor) who was ordered to carry out the executions.
 Capt. Taylor vividly described the scene as the rebels awaited their fate:

They were informed of the order and given 10 minutes in which to prepare to meet their God. I had passed through many battles and trials, but this was the most trying ordeal of my life. The utter despair depicted on their countenances, while great rivers of perspiration ran down their pallid faces, makes me shudder yet when I think of how near four innocent men were to being murdered by the command "fire" given from my lips.

 Then the surgeon (Dr. James Cameron) recognized a gesture from one of the rebels as the Masons' "Grand-Hailing Sign of Distress." Dr. Cameron was a Mason, and so was Col. Miller, the brigade commander who had ordered the executions.  This made Miller reconsider the charges, and he set the captives free.
 The Civil War is full of stories like this where lives were spared after enemies discovered they were brothers in the secret society of the Masons. In fact, there is a Masonic Memorial at Gettysburg called "Friend to Friend" (pictured below) that honors these traditions. Several similar accounts are found in the annals of Stoneman's Raid. No doubt some are apocryphal, but I think this one is credible, since it is reported by both sides. 

Emporia (Kan.) News, Jan. 24, 1884

 Capt. Taylor (1843-1892) grew up in eastern Tennessee, which was predominantly pro-Union and opposed to secession. When the war began, he enlisted with an Illinois regiment. In 1863 he joined the Union's 13th Tennessee Cavalry, commanding Company B and serving as Acting Assistant Adjutant General under Col. John Miller. The 13th Tennessee was one of eight Yankee regiments that marched with Stoneman's Raid in the spring of 1865. They fought at Wytheville and the Yadkin River bridge and were involved in the pursuit of Jefferson Davis.
 According to this 1884 newspaper tribute, he was the first man in Carter County, Tennessee, to make a stand for Negro suffrage, and he was among the first Republicans elected to the Tennessee legislature. 
 Republicans fell out of favor at the end of Reconstruction, so Capt. Taylor moved to Hartford, Kan., where he built a mill, became president of the local bank, and served as an Indian agent.
 He wrote to the National Tribune in 1889 hoping to make contact with his forgiven enemies:

I disobeyed orders, turned them over to the brigade commander at noon with a full statement of what had occurred, and he discharged them. They were happy, but I cannot believe that they were more so than I was. A Masonic sign saved their lives, and no doubt, saved me from great remorse. If those four ex-Confederates, or any of them, are living, I would be very happy indeed to hear from them.

 Earlier in 1889, Taylor had written to the National Tribune in another attempt to reconcile with the enemy. He said he was seeking to find the rightful owner of a Virginia regimental banner "he captured from the rebels in South Carolina in the spring of 1865." The 13th Tennessee passed through South Carolina twice during Stoneman's Raid, but I am not aware of any fights they had there with Virginians.
 Taylor died three years later at age 49, and I don't know if he ever heard from any of those rebels. Although he was not familiar with Masonic rites during the war, he evidently apprenticed later, because his obituary says his funeral was conducted by the Knights Templar with Masonic honors.
 According to a biographical sketch in the History of the 13th Regiment, Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry: 

Captain Taylor was an officer of the highest courage, never evading any duty or danger, but was always among the first to reach the danger line when there was fighting to be done. He possessed fine social qualities and a high sense of honor that endeared him to all who knew him.

The Masonic Memorial at Gettysburg portrays Union Capt. Henry Bingham
comforting Confederate Gen. Lewis Armistead, who was
 mortally wounded during Pickett's Charge.

NEXT➤ The ghost of Della Barnes

'Great heavens, the Yankees are upon us!'

Col. WIlliam Luffman and Maj. Richard Reeves were sleeping here the morning of April 2, 1865, when Yankees raided Siloam, N.C. The historical marker next to the chimney was installed in 2011.

SILOAM, N.C.

 The Civil War ended just in time to spare Milton Cundiff, who turned 16 in January 1865. The only battle he ever experienced was as a storyteller. We can thank Cundiff for a vivid and almost-too-good-to-be-true account of a gunfight between two gallant Confederates and hundreds of apparently aimless Yankees.
 It happened April 2, 1865. The same day that Gen. Robert E. Lee abandoned the Confederate capital in Richmond, Stoneman's Raid came through Surry County, N.C., northwest of Winston-Salem. Stoneman was headed into the Virginia mountains to wreck the railroads and cut off Lee's retreat. Just one week later, Lee would surrender at Appomattox. 

Col. William Luffman

 Confederate Col. William Luffman had spent the night in Siloam, N.C., at the home of Maj. Richard Reeves. Luffman was recovering from a hip wound and evidently was on his way home from Richmond to Spring Place, Ga.

 Col. Luffman was bathing at dawn April 2 when he heard rustling out at the stable and found a Union soldier trying to steal his horse. In the ensuing shootout, the horse thief was killed and two other Union soldiers were wounded. Luffman, 44 and lame, and Reeves, 39 and plump, somehow outran the cavalry, escaped through a hail of bullets, and hid in the Yadkin River. It was left to Reeves' elderly mother to keep the Yankees from burning down the house.

 Cundiff grew up in Siloam and may have witnessed the episode. He certainly knew the details first-hand from the Reeves and other neighbors. Thirty-two years later, when he was the school superintendent in Surry County, Cundiff published his account of the "most wonderful fight" in the Mount Airy News under the pen name Will Fidd.

 Here's the story as it ran 119 years ago, on Nov. 11, 1897:

THE BATTLE OF SILOAM

Graphic Account of One of the Most Thrilling Incidents of the Late War

EDITOR NEWS: Few of your readers, I presume, are aware that within the village of Siloam there was fought one of the fiercest battles of the late Civil War. Such, however, is a fact, though I am quite sure you will find no record thereof in any of the school editions of our United States histories. Hereafter, I trust, the diligent readers may be able to find upon the files of THE MOUNT AIRY NEWS a portraiture of that unexpected and, in many respects, most wonderful fight.

     It was in April, 1865, that Col. Luffman, of Georgia, who had been severely wounded in a battle in Virginia, was recuperating among his friends in Surry County, and at this particular time had spent the night at the home of Messrs. R.E. & M.C. Reeves, in Siloam. Very early in the morning, Col. Luffman was up bathing, when he heard the heavy tramp of horses. Looking out at the front door of the "office" in which he and Maj. R.E. Reeves had slept, he beheld, to his great amazement, quite a number of Blue Coats dashing toward the house. He called to Maj. Reeves, who was still in bed, saying:
     "Great heavens, Major, the Yankees are upon us!" Then seizing his carbine, he rushed out into the front yard.
     "Surrender that gun, sir," demanded a Yankee, who had already been to the stable and was astride Col. Luffman's fine horse.
     "This is my gun," curtly replied the Colonel, "and I have a perfect right to use it; besides, I see you are on my horse; get off at once, or I'll help you off!"
     "D__n you, surrender!" roared the Blue Coat.
     Bang! roared Luffman's gun, and off tumbled the haughty rider, shot through the breast.
     By this time, Maj. Reeves was up, and had seized a shot-gun and ran to the rear door just as a minnie ball crashed through a buck-horn and lodged in the door facing within a few inches of his head! He fired both barrels of the gun; then seizing another, he ran to the front, where Col. Luffman was rapidly discharging his carbine at the advance guard of the enemy, who were firing recklessly and excitedly, but were gradually giving back toward the main body, now in sight, moving down the hill northeast of the stables.
     Bang! bang! bang! and the shock of battle roars and rages terrifically! Five hundred Federals arrayed in deadly combat with only two Confederates! and yet this regiment is beaten back and forced to take shelter behind a long wood-shed and the old factory building.
     Col. Luffman and Maj. Reeves emptied a carbine, two double-barrel shotguns and four revolvers in this most unusual contest of all the war, while the Yankees poured a perfect fusillade of minnie balls through the air that hung clear and crisp above and about their heads. Just as the firing along the Confederate "line" ceased, Maj. Masten, who was in command of the Federals, ordered a charge. With a wonderful flourish of glistening steel and the assurance of a glorious victory, the enemy dashed boldly up to the very spot where their dead comrade lay at full length upon the greensward. No quarters were now asked or offered. But with empty guns, Col. Luffman and Maj. Reeves had to stand and be riddled with bullets or escape, if possible, by precipitate flight. Hence, turning their faces toward the friendly river, these night-robed Confederate officers—one carrying a severe wound in his hip and the other 250 pounds avoirdupois—made their way as rapidly as possible across the bottom. A pitiless storm of bullets whizzed by their ears, while many others were buried in the sands dangerously near their feet.
     John W. Hardy, then a boy of eighteen, living with Maj. Reeves, having seen the flight and not knowing what else to do, took to his heels, running in the same direction, but fifty or sixty yards behind the other two fugitives. After two balls had pierced Hardy's hat and two others had cut the dust from his coat, he stopped and turned his face toward the pursuing enemy. A soldier ran up within a few feet of him and was bringing his gun on a level with Hardy's head, when an officer cried out, "Stop, you blank fool, don't you see the man has surrendered?" Just at this juncture a colored man, George, who lived with Messrs. Reeves, ran up and assured the Yankees who were collecting around that Mr. Hardy had taken no part whatever in the fight. While the soldiers were parlaying over their capture for a few moments, our bold Confederates had passed over the sand ridge unscathed and jumped into the river, the bank of which was thickly overgrown with weeds and briars. Col. Luffman sank behind a rock that projected a few inches above the water, while Maj. Reeves concealed himself behind some driftwood. Forty or fifty men scoured the bank of the river thoroughly, swearing summary vengeance upon them if found. But they managed to keep their bodies and heads beneath the water, breathing only through their nostrils. Finally, the Blue Coats gave up the fruitless search and returned to the house.
     Several men entered the house and fired it by throwing burning brands from the fireplace into the middle of the room and piling bureau drawers, clothing, etc., thereon. Mrs. Reeves, the aged mother of the Messrs. Reeves, while the men were pillaging other rooms, threw the burning brands and clothing into the fireplace, and with the help of a colored servant extinguished the flames. Two ruffian-looking men deliberately informed her that she had gold and silver concealed about the premises, and that, unless she immediately informed them where it was, they would kill her. She calmly replied, "if you do, you will not deprive me of many days."
     In the fight one Yankee had been killed and two others badly wounded, while several horses and mules were shot more or less severely, but were not entirely disabled.
     When the Yankees were gone and some two hours had elapsed, Maj. Reeves was seen to emerge from his hiding place in the river, after which a search was made for his companion, who was found almost exhausted clinging to an overhanging limb several hundred yards below where he had entered the stream. After procuring some refreshments and a brief rest at Mr. Bowman's they crossed the Ararat River and stopped with Mr. Samuel Scott, who furnished them some clothing. They continued their journey, stopping at Mr. Ed Butner's and Mr. Mat Phillips', both of whom treated them very kindly. They reached Salem after several days tramping through the woods, where Mr. Henry Fries presented each of them with a new suit of clothes. Then they made their way to Mr. William Marsh's, in Davidson County. Soon after their arrival here, some of Col. Luffman's friends passed, and he went with them to his home in Spring Place, Georgia.
     Some two months later Maj. Reeves returned to his desolated home where the battle had been fought, but the war was ended and he found the best of all things—his mother and peace.

WILL FIDD

Siloam, N.C., Nov. 6, 1897

 The farm "office" where Maj. Reeves and Col. Luffman were sleeping has been preserved, along with family relics that include a partially burned picture frame. A Civil War Trails historical marker has been installed next to the building in Siloam.
 The marker includes some additional information that Cundiff did not mention. In 1861, Maj. Reeves organized the first Confederate volunteers from Surry County.

Mrs. Reeves' hearth

 Maj. Reeves' mother, Elizabeth Early Reeves, was the cousin of Confederate Gen. Jubal Early. She was nearly 71 at the time of the raid, and though she told the Yankees her days were numbered, she lived to see 80. The marker says that Yankees withdrew when she promised to give the dead soldier a proper Christian burial on a nearby hill. Unfortunately, his name has been lost to history. (In observance of Memorial Day, I've collected the names of 37 Union soldiers who died during Stoneman's Raid.)
 It's uncertain which of Stoneman's troops went through Siloam. By the process of elimination, the 12th Kentucky Cavalry seems most likely. Cundiff said the Federal troops were commanded by a Major Masten, but I have not been able to find that name among Stoneman's officers.
 It's quite possible that the wounded Yankees at Siloam were treated by Dr. Milton Folger from nearby Rockford. Yankees also seized Dr. Folger's horse, leaving him with one of their worn-out mounts.
 Col. Luffman had a distinguished military and legal career. He survived wounds at Manassas in 1862, Gettysburg in 1863, and the Battle of the Wilderness in 1864. In March 1865, a medical board considered whether to declare him an invalid. Presumably, he was given a medical leave, since he was already at Siloam while Robert E. Lee evacuated Richmond on April 2.

Milton Cundiff lived in this house, built by his father around 1865

NEXT➤ An animated glimpse of Gen. Stoneman