SW Pennsylvania Invasion Threats Part 4 Greene County

Greene County PA with the city of Waynesburg
Mongolia County, WV with city of Morgantown
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During the Jones-Imboden Raid by Confederates into western Virginia in the spring of 1863, southwestern Pennsylvania began preparing for the possibility of invasion. Greene County residents were extremely concerned that their horses and cattle would  be confiscated by the raiders, and that the Confederates might move on to Waynesburg to steal bank funds. The Waynesburg

Waitman T. Willey
Photo by Matthew Brady   LOC

Messenger reported that a courier sent from Morgantown by Waitman T. Willey, newly elected senator-elect from West Virginia, warned Greene Countians of events in Morgantown. Willey, the newspaper said, had escaped capture by fleeing to the Greene County community of Carmichaels. A Committee of Safety of seven prominent Waynesburg citizens was quickly organized with the goal of raising a local militia. After Confederate General Jones occupied Morgantown, the Waynesburg Messenger reported, “In view of this raid and of the fact that we are exposed here on the border to similar rebel incursions, we suggest that measures be immediately set on foot to organize the militia in the several townships.” [Waynesburg Messenger, April 29, 1863, p.3]

Among the community leaders of Waynesburg who were selected to form the Committee of Safety  was James B. Lindsay. Lindsay had been the sergeant major of the 85^th Pennsylvania before returning home in early 1862 on permanent medical leave.

Lindsay in fact went on a scouting mission to Morgantown while that community was being occupied. With him was Rufus K. Campbell and Samuel A. Porter, both Union veterans.  Upon returning to Waynesburg, Lindsay reported that his small party had been chased home by Confederate raiders. Lindsay also reported that the Confederates numbers around 1,500 and were presently camped two miles from Morgantown.

Pittsburgh Gazette    April 29, 1863

         It will remembered that after confronting and defeating Jones’ force at Rowlesburg, (West) Virginia, Union Colonel John Showalter decided to withdraw his force to Uniontown and then to Wheeling. Both Waynesburg and Washington (PA) had organized local militias to support Showalter but called off the march to Morgantown when word was received that Showalter had left.

Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin notified Washington, DC in late April of the potential

PA Governor Andrew Gregg Curtin

for raids progressing into Pennsylvania. However, President Lincoln astutely surmised that southwestern Pennsylvania was in no real danger. Lincoln wrote, “I do not think the people of Pennsylvania should be uneasy about an invasion. Doubtless a small force of the enemy is flourishing about in the northern part of Virginia on the ‘screwhorn principle’ on purpose to divert us in another quarter. I believe it is nothing more.” [Baylor, 142]

Word had reached the men in the regiment that some farmers back home tried to use the hilly topography to their advantage by hiding their livestock in deep ravines, while some businessmen hid their merchandise in barns and coal mines. [Robert Van Atta, Pittsburgh Tribune Review, April 9, 2000]

This part of the panic was mocked by some in the regiment, which was stationed on Folly Island near Charleston (SC) Harbor. One soldier who did not take the threat very seriously was Company G’s Mark Gordon of Greene County. In his letters

Marquis Lafayette Gordon
Experiences in the Civil War

home, Gordon had sometimes complained that his and other Union regiments were doing the dirty work for the government while many able-bodied men back home chose to sit out the war for as long as possible, if not permanently. In Gordon’s view, it was fitting that citizens back home were getting a taste of the war that he and his regiment had been attending to for the last 17 months. Gordon wrote, “Our boys had a great time after the arrival of the last mail, laughing over the scare of the people in Greene Co. had at the time of the threatened invasion by the Rebels…Some men…should have shown more pluck than to run off with their horses and cattle and leave their wives and children in the hands of a merciless vagabond band of guerillas.” [M.L. Gordon’s Experiences in the Civil War, p. 34]

Gordon was referring to the panicky atmosphere in Morgantown, just 26 miles from his hometown of Waynesburg. In a letter written by Anne Mathiot Dorsey from her farm a few miles south of Morgantown to her brother several days after the occupation, she wrote that while the raiders helped themselves to all the horses they could find in the town, most of the men had fled, leaving their wives and children to fend for themselves. [Source: Anne Mathiot Dorsey, letter to Jacob D. Mathiot, May 8, 1863, Myron B. Sharp, ed.  “The Confederate Raid at Morgantown,” Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania]

       A correspondent for a Philadelphia newspaper in Uniontown wrote, "Another person came in [from Morgantown] named FIELD and told a thrilling story, but on cross questioning, it appears he had deserted his wife and children to save one horse." (Philadelphia Inquirer, May 1, 1863)

Confederates with Confiscated Livestock

       In any event, by May 6, the Waynesburg Messenger reported that, “all imminent danger of a Rebel incursion having passed away, the Washington [PA] lads returned to their homes and our own people resumed their usual business occupations. At present, all is quiet, and all alarm allayed.”

                                                NEXT: Washington County

SW Pennsylvania Invasion Threats Part 1 Overview

SW Pennsylvania showing cities of Washington, Waynesburg, Uniontown and Somerset
West Virginia cities of Morgantown, Fairmont, Grafton and Philippi
Maryland-Pennsylvania border
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      The next few posts are going to examine the homefront of the 85^th Pennsylvania and potential Confederate invasion threats in the spring of 1863. The men of the 85^th Pennsylvania all hailed from counties (Washington, Greene, Fayette and Somerset) that shared a border with Virginia and Maryland, both slaves states. Virginia joined the southern secession after Fort Sumter was fired upon two years earlier, while Maryland did not secede and remained within the Union for the duration of the war.
        Washington County and Greene County both shared a border with Virginia (note:the northwestern counties of that state were in transition at time of the invasion threats. Western Virginia had voted to separate from Virginia and join the Union). Fayette County bordered both Virginia and Maryland, while Somerset County shared a border with Maryland.   

           During the spring of 1863, while the 85^th Pennsylvania was just starting their one-year assignment around Charleston, South Carolina, news was percolating back home in about the potential for invasion by Confederate raiders. A Confederate incursion of that part of the Pennsylvania was thought to be realistic as a pathway  to the northern industrial city of Pittsburgh.

    Several members of the 85^th Pennsylvania expressed concern about the potential of a southern invasion. Others, like Mark Gordon of Company G, laughed it off. I will have more on these accounts in upcoming posts.

     It was not the first Confederate invasion scare in Pennsylvania. The south-central part of

Burning buildings in Chambersburg, PA   1862      LOC

the state had already been subjected to alarm in the late summer and fall of 1862. At that time, the Army of Northern Virginia under Robert E. Lee had crossed the Potomac River into Maryland following a resounding Confederate victory at Second Bull Run in Virginia.  Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Gregg Curtin responded by issuing a proclamation on September 4, 1862 calling on the citizens of his state to militarize.  The emergency seemed to subside later that month after the battle of Antietam, Maryland when Lee retreated back into Virginia. However, a month later, Confederate J.E.B. Stuart led a three-day cavalry raid into south central Pennsylvania during which he confiscated 1,200 horses.

During the Jones-Imboden Raid a few months later in 1863, the people of northwestern Virginia (present-day West Virginia) experienced battles and confiscation of property. Just across the (West) Virginia state border, the people of southwestern Pennsylvania did not suffer from physical oe financial loss but from the terror of what could  occur in their towns and counties if the raiders continued on their northerly course.

When this threat died down and the rebel troops of William "Grumble" Jones and John Imboden withdrew back into Virginia, the area was again made anxious in June by the path of prominent Confederate raider John Hunt Morgan. His marauding did not end until his band was stopped in Ohio near the Pennsylvania border in the summer of 1863.

On April 20, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation to accept West Virginia as the 35^th state. This event was to officially take effect two months later on June 20.  A convention in the city of Wheeling in the (West) Virginia panhandle between Pennsylvania and Ohio had voted for statehood a year earlier. On the last day of 1862, President Lincoln signed a bill accepting statehood on the provision of gradual elimination of slavery. West Virginia accepted this stipulation in an amended state constitution on March 26, 1863.

JONES-IMBODEN RAID OVERVIEW

The Jones-Imboden Raid in 1863 lasted for one month. One of its goals was to deny statehood to the region and to restore western Virginia into the Confederacy. Soon after the raid began, a newspaper in Imboden’s home town of Staunton, Virginia gloated that, “Lincoln issued his proclamation admitting Western Virginia as a State into the United States. Gen’s Jones and Imboden are now issuing a counter proclamation. It will be seen whether, in this case, the ‘pen is mightier than the sword.’”

 Another goal of the Jones-Imboden Raid was to disrupt and destroy key parts of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad that ran from Baltimore to Wheeling. This route was a vital link that provided the Union with men and supplies from the West. Jones and Imboden also planned to cut telegraph lines at Grafton, (West) Virginia and generally diminish Union authority in the area.

A third goal was to capture horses and cattle for Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Lee had sanctioned the raid during the late winter of 1862-63 to replenish the needs of his troops. With his impending summer invasion of Pennsylvania (that would include the battle of Gettysburg), Lee hoped that raids would re-stock food supplies and horses for his army and also do harm to morale above the Mason-Dixon Line.

                 Part Two of this series will explore the beginning of the raid and the occupation of Morgantown, (West) Virginia near the Pennsylvania border.

Philadelphia Inquirer
        April 29, 1863