the eastern branch of the Shenandoah, which, at Front Royal, at the northern end of the mountain, is joined by its western affluent, whence the united waters flow north, near the base of Blue Ridge, to meet the Potomac at Harper's Ferry.
The inhabitants of this favored region were worthy of their inheritance. The North and South were peopled by scions of colonial families, and the proud names of the "Old Dominion" abounded. In the central counties of Rockingham and Shenandoah were many descendants of Hessians, captured at Trenton and Princeton during the Revolutionary era. These were thrifty, substantial farmers, and, like their kinsmen of Pennsylvania, expressed their opulence in huge barns and fat cattle. The devotion of all to the Southern cause was wonderful. Jackson, a Valley man by reason of his residence at Lexington (south of Staunton), was their hero and idol. The women sent husbands, sons, lovers to battle as cheerfully as to marriage feasts. No oppression, no destitution could abate their zeal. Upon a march I was accosted by two elderly ladies, sisters, who told me they had secreted a large quantity of bacon in a well on their estate, hard by. Federals had been in possession of the country, and, fearing the indiscretion of their slaves, they had done the work at night with their own hands, and now desired to give the meat to their own people. Wives and daughters of millers, whose husbands and brothers were in arms, worked the mills, night and day, to furnish flour to their soldiers. To the last, women would go distances to carry the modicum of food between themselves and starvation to a suffering Confederate. Should the sons of Virginia ever commit dishonorable acts, grim indeed will be their reception on the farther shores of Styx. They can expect no recognition from the mothers that bore them.
The year the war closed the Valley was ravaged with a cruelty surpassing that inflicted on the Palatinate two hundred years agone. That foul act smirched the fame of Dubois[1] and Turenne and public opinion, in what has been deemed a ruder age, forced an apology from the grand "monarque." Yet we have seen the report of a Federal General, wherein is recounted the many barns, mills, and other buildings destroyed, concluding with the assertion that "a crow flying over the Valley must take rations with him." In the opinion of the admirers of the officer making
- ↑ (Correction from Editorial Paragraphs, p. 207.}
