Originally aired on October 04, 1996 - In part 110 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson argues that civil wars can be especially vicious. He relates the events of October 3, 1864 in Dayton, Virginia to make his case.
#110 – Atrocities (Brutality of War)
Wars are so filled with drama and excitement that it is sometimes easy to overlook the fundamental cruelty and suffering so much a part of combat. Civil wars can be – and usually are – especially vicious. One incident will serve as an example.
The date was early October, 1864; the place was the village of Dayton, Virginia, a few miles south of Harrisonburg in the heart of the Shenandoah Valley. Enter John Meigs. He was the eldest son of Union Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs, who earlier in the Civil War had ordered Robert E. Lee’s beautiful estate on Arlington Heights converted into a soldier-cemetery to block the Lee family from ever again enjoying the property.
John Meigs had been the top graduate in the West Point Class of 1863. Intelligent and patriotic, he could also be impulsive. After staff service in the Valley under two different Union generals, Meigs acquired a good knowledge of that corridor. He also gained a champion in General Philip Sheridan. “Little Phil” Sheridan had a size and temper both noticeably short. By the autumn of 1864, Sheridan was in charge of seizing and securing the Valley of Virginia. John Meigs became his engineering officer.
What exactly happened on October 3 came forth unfortunately in different versions. That rainy day, Meigs and two orderlies were conducting a military survey near Dayton and more than a mile inside the Union lines. Three men suddenly appeared. Shots rang out. The lieutenant fell dead in the road from a bullet just below the eye. One of his assistants was captured.
The third Federal managed to escape. He galloped back to headquarters and gave a chilling story to Sheridan. The reconnaissance party had been ambushed by Southern bushwhackers disguised in Federal uniforms, he said. Meigs had been murdered in cold blood while trying to surrender.
The impulsive Sheridan listened with anger mounting. Loss of a beloved staff officer filled him with an instant urge for revenge. Sheridan ordered that all homes in Dayton and in a five-mile area surrounding the village be immediately burned. He would, Sheridan exclaimed, “teach a lesson to these abettors of the foul deed – a lesson they will never forget!”
The reprisals began at nightfall in the outlying areas. Through the following day, Union horsemen under General George Custer created a holocaust as they applied the torch in earnest. Some residents were given time to remove furnishings from their homes; others were not. Smoke slowly ascending into the air was visible for miles in the Shenandoah Valley.
Dayton itself was about to be incinerated when another version of the Meigs killing came forth. The Federal soldier who had given the original and hysterical account developed second thoughts. Disguised guerrillas had not assailed the Union party after all. It was actually three Confederate soldiers wearing waterproof ponchos against the rain, and they had killed Meigs in a fair fight after both sides exchanged gunfire.
This account, twenty-four hours after the fact, came as Sheridan’s anger was cooling. Moreover, he had learned that most of the residents of Dayton were pacifistic Mennonites and that the three Confederates involved in the death of Meigs did not live in the area. Sheridan ordered the burnings to cease. By then, however, seventeen homes, five barns, and a number of outbuildings, had been reduced to charred timbers and ashes.
A lie by a soldier and a hot temper by a general let to seventeen innocent families being left totally destitute. Such was only the beginning. By the end of the week, Sheridan had begun a forty-mile swath of destruction between Harrisonburg and Woodstock that is still known as “The Burning”.
