Sesquicentennial Succotash

There are a few things that have been cooking together in this, the summer of the 15oth anniversary of the beginning of the war.

Here in the Shenandoah Valley, many communities are planning events to commemorate the War of the Rebellion. The good people that hold the ground at the Newmarket Battlefield had a recent reenactment of that May 15, 1864 battle. Very young VMI men, known today as the Newmarket Cadets, fought Union troops under Franz Sigel in that contest. Yes, we forget how young soldiers are. The average age of the private in the CW was about 18 years. But at Newmarket many of the Virginia Military Institute cadets would be in middle school today. When General John C. Breckinridge, the Confederate commander at the battle (and the former vice-president of the United States) realized he needed more men in the fight, how his heart must have shuddered at the thought of putting those boys in harm's way.

The cadets had marched north from Lexington, that's down the valley as the Shenandoah flows by the way, to aid a failing Confederate cause that had seen wanton destruction by Sheridan's army here. VMI itself would later be burned out of spite by the villain David Hunter. That was on June 11, 1864. Does VMI remember that? Not as a matter of course, but each day the cadet corps still calls the names of the ten cadets killed at Newmarket. The battalion consisted of 247 cadets. Ten were killed, 47 were wounded and Sigel was defeated and relieved command.

A recent article in Harrisonburg's Daily-New Record chronicled the Union burning of the little Mennonite village of Dayton in the same reckless year. Speaking of newspapers, I was remiss in not mentioning a recent article in the Page News and Courier by Joe Farruggia on Soldiers Just Like You. Mr. Farruggia, a thorough journalist, left no stone unturned in his interview about me and my books, including not just "Soldiers," but Clear the Confederate Way: The Irish in the Army of Northern Virginia, which was published some years ago. Thanks, Joe, for the wonderful treatment.

Another recent story in the news related that sadly an ancient oak tree with links to Gen. Thomas J. Jackson had succumbed to age and harsh weather hereabouts. Jackson's Prayer Tree as it has been called, stood for over 300 years in northern Augusta county. Accounts, one attributed to no one less than Jackson's map maker Jedidiah Hotchkiss, relate that the tree sheltered Stonewall Jackson and I assume a coterie of devout Presbyterians during a prayer meeting in 1862. With trees as well as battle heroes, the mighty must eventually fall.

Speaking of religion, The Arlington Catholic Herald, the paper of the Arlington Diocese, which includes our Valley, last week ran a story about Catholics in the Civil War. It was a good read, but as these things go, it quickly sunk into a couple of anecdotes about the Union Irish Brigade. It did mention Pope Pius IX's sympathy for the Confederate cause and even tip-toed around the fact that the longest serving pope in history had a personal relationship with Jefferson Davis.

Davis of course attended Catholic school in Kentucky for a time. Bardstown, Kentucky is the home of the second oldest Catholic diocese in the country after Baltimore. It was formed in 1808, about the same time as the dioceses of Boston, Philadelphia and New York.

Happy sesquicentennial summer!