On Sunday, the Old Redneck and I took
our grandkids to the French and Indian battle reenactment at Fort
Number Four. We had a blast. Our grandson is 7, just the right age
to be thrilled with the soldiers, guns, and Indians. Fort Number
Four is the perfect place to take kids that age. There is just
enough new information to keep them interested and learning, and not
enough to be overwhelming. All of the interpreters inside the fort
do a great job. The whole experience was so enjoyable. There will be
a reenactment of a Revolutionary War battle at the end of August. My
grandson wants to go back to see it. It certainly is worth the trip
and the money to go at least once.
Last time I posted, I left the 16th
Vermont Regiment in Fairfax, Virginia, on George Mason's farm,
digging in for the winter and trying to make their camp as
comfortable as possible before the temperature turned cold. They
spent Thanksgiving and Christmas in Fairfax. Howard Coffin, in his
book "Nine Months to Gettysburg" does a fantastic job
describing how the 2nd Vermont Brigade celebrated the
holidays so far from home.
Between Thanksgiving and Christmas,
there was an unwelcome change in command for the 2nd
Vermont Brigade. Brigadier General Edwin Stoughton arrived to take
charge. Stoughton was not a popular commander. Coffin quotes a
member of the 16th Vermont regiment, Joseph Spafford, who
wrote, "Stoughton arrived here yesterday to take command of this
brigade. I don't think anybody would have felt bad if he'd gone
somewhere else." Coffin also quotes the Woodstock newspaper,
"The Vermont Standard", "We lear that General
stoughton has arrived to take command of the brigade. This news is
received with regret by all, not out of disrespect for General
Stoughton, for he is undoubtedly an able officer, but Colonel Blunt,
who has been acting brigadier, has won the respect and esteem of
every man in the brigade, and we had hoped he would remain in that
position.
Stoughton was not the type of leader
who commanded a lot of respect and admiration among his soldiers. He
was arrogant and mean. He tended to mete out severe punishments for
small infractions. He was a ladies' man.
Brigadier General Edwin Stoughton
Soon after Stoughton's arrival, many
of the regiments, including the 16th, left Camp Vermont
and moved from George Mason's farm further south, to Fairfax
Courthouse. Living conditions for the Confederate families still in
the area were even worse in Fairfax Courthouse than they were on
George Mason's former plantation. Charles Cummings says, in a letter
home, "No fire, even if it should burn every house in our
village of Brattleboro, could be half as desolating to the place as
war has been to this part of Virginia. Houses, cattle, fences and
inhabitants almost all gone – lands desolate and running to weeds
and briars." In another letter he says, "Fairfax Courthouse
is the dirtiest, nastiest, most destitute place I was ever in. It
has been tore to pieces and nearly destroyed. There is not a house
standing that is even half furnished, and I don't believe there are
chairs enough in turn to seat all the inhabitants at one time."
You always hear about Vermont soldiers who went away in the Civil War
and saw places that were so much nicer than Vermont that they never
came home. That doesn't seem to be the case for the soldiers of the
2nd Vermont who were staying at Fairfax Courthouse.
Charles Aiken was at Fairfax Courthouse , too, and chose to come back
to Barnard after the war, and stayed there for the rest of his life.
Soon the troops were again working
hard to make this new camp warm and dry for all. At Fairfax
Courthouse, they built dwellings that had log foundations about
halfway up, and then placed their tents on top of the logs. The men
found these much more comfortable than the plain tents. While the men
worked doggedly at making camp habitable, for the third time since
they left Vermont, Colonel Stoughton lived in comfort in one of the
few unscathed homes in the village. He had his mother and sister
brought south from Vermont, and even bought a piano for the house.
Worse yet, he was "keeping company" with a young
confederate woman, Antonia Ford. Coffin tells us in "Nine
Months to Gettysburg" that Antonia was the daughter of a local
merchant, and a good friend of both John Mosby and J.E.B. Stuart,
well-known Confederate officers. There has been a great deal of
speculation about Antonia Ford. Was Colonel Stoughton collaborating
with the enemy? Of course, that's where your mind goes when you read
about a Vermont Colonel dating a Confederate woman. Also, Stoughton
was not well-liked, and his sketchy behavior would have given his
enemies plenty of opportunity to bad-mouth him. In any case,
Stoughton's comfortable quarters were a good three miles from where
the troops were camped, and the whole situation did not do a lot to
make his troops like him any better.
As 1862 turned to 1863, it seemed
that the Vermont soldiers had brought snow and cold to Virginia.
Significant snow storms, one bringing 18 inches of snow, and bitterly
cold weather brought sickness into the camp. More men began dying of
both pneumonia and typhus. Since leaving Brattleboro, the brigade
had lost about 1,000 men, mostly from sickness.
It was a difficult winter for our
Vermont boys. Although the weather in Virginia was unusually like
Vermont's, one blessing was that the winter didn't last as long. By
March, the snow had melted and the weather was turning warmer.
Things began warming up in other ways, as well. John Singleton
Mosby, also known as the "Gray Ghost" was a 29 year old
Confederate hero who had become infamous for his guerilla tactics in
Northern Virginia, executing quick strikes on unsuspecting Union
targets, then disappearing into the surrounding landscape.
John Singleton Mosby
Mosby became an elusive foe, the "one
to get". Colonel Percy Wyndham, and English adventurer who had
enlisted with the Union, embarked on a mission to capture Mosby and
failed. Mosby held a grudge and was determined to make Wyndham pay
the price for antagonizing the "Gray Ghost".Wydham also had
his headquarters at Fairfax Courthouse, which became the focus of
Mosby's attention as he planned a revenge mission against the English
colonel.
March 8, 1863 was a rainy night, and
General Stoughton had gone to bed early. He was sound asleep when
Mosby rode into town. As luck would have it, Colonel Wyndham wasn't
there, so Mosby decided General Stoughton would have to do, as a
replacement. Mosby overpowered the guard at Stoughton's house (but
neither killed him nor took him prisoner), went right into
Stoughton's bedroom, woke him up, and told him to get dressed, he was
a prisoner. General Stoughton got dressed, and Mosby took him out
into the night. Brigadier General Edwin Stoughton, commander of the
2nd Vermont Brigade, ended up in the infamous Libby Prison
in Richmond, although he was soon released in a prisoner exchange.
As Mosby rode away from Fairfax
Courthouse that night, with a high ranking Union officer as his
prisoner, he thought he had accomplished a great feat for the
Confederacy. Indeed, his exploits that night would have huge
ramifications later on in 1863, but not in the way he had in mind on
the night of March 8.
And the rest of the story....
Edwin Stoughton didn't go back to war,
and he didn't go back to Vermont either. He joined his uncle's law
practice in New York City, and died three years after the war ended,
at age 30. He was quoted as saying he wished he had died in Libby
Prison, rather than having to live with the disgrace of being
captured by Mosby.
John Singleton Mosby survived the
Civil War. At the end of the war, he went into hiding because of the
huge price on his head. General Grant personally took steps to have
him paroled. Mosby and Grant became friends, with Mosby even
becoming a Republican and Grant's campaign manager. President
Rutherford B. Hayes made Mosby Ambassador to Hong Kong. Later, he
worked for the Department of the Interior and was an Assistant
Attorney General. Mosby's wife, Pauline, died in 1876. They had 8
children, 4 boys and 4 girls, and most lived to adulthood. Mosby was
very proud of the fact that he helped two of his grandsons go to
college.
Most internet sources agree that Antonia Ford was a spy. Maggie
Maclean's Civil War Women Blog -
http://www.civilwarwomenblog.com/search/label/Civil%20War%20Spies
explains that Ford's family ran a boarding
house, and many Union commanders stayed there. She was personal
friends with both J.E.B. Stuart and John Mosby. Antonia would
eavesdrop on the
converstations among the Union commanders, and then
relay whatever information she learned to Stuart and Mosby. She was
arrested for spying and sent to Old Capital Prison, near Washington
DC, just 8 days after Stoughton's capture. Major Joseph Willard, of
Westminster, Vermont, was in charge of arresting Antonia and bringing
her to prison. In the process, he, too, fell in love with her.
Eventually, he successfully advocated for her release, and then
married her. Her health was ruined during the 7 months she spent in
prison. She died in 1871 after having had three children.
Antonia Ford
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