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CHAPTER IX.

For some time prior to General Early's return from his invasion of Maryland
the wanton destruction of private residences by General David Hunter in Virginia
had aroused the indignation of the people of the South and the Confederate
Government had been appealed to to resort to retaliatory measures to put a stop
to it, but as yet no steps had been taken in that direction, and General Early
determined to take the matter into his own hands, and have the responsibility rest
upon his shoulders.

Accordingly, General Early, on the twenty-ninth day of July, started the
cavalry brigades of Generals McCausland and Bradley T. Johnson across the
Potomac above Williamsport with directions to proceed to Chambersburg, in
Pennsylvania, and demand an indemnity of $100,000 in gold from its citizens,
otherwise the town would be burned. The people of Chambersburg, as were the
people of the towns passed through by General Lee's army of invasion the year
before, had been treated with so much consideration that they not only refused to
raise the money, but laughed at the threat to burn their town, whereupon General
McCausland proceeded to execute General Early's orders, and the greater part
of Chambersburg was laid in ashes.

But of this expedition let General Early speak for himself, as he does in his
" Memoirs of the Last Year of the War for Independence":

On the 26th of July, we moved to Martinsburg, the cavalry going to the Potomac. The
2/th and 28th were employed in destroying the railroad, it having been repaired since we
passed over it at the beginning of the month. While at Martinsburg it was ascertained,
beyond all doubt, that Hunter had been again indulging in his favorite mode of warfare,
and that, after his return to the Valley, while we were near Washington, among other
outrages, the private residences of Mr. Andrew Hunter, a member of the Virginia Senate,
Mr. Alexander R. Boteler, an ex-member of the Confederate Congress, as well as of the
United States Congress, and Edmund J. Lee, a distant relative of General Lee, all in
Jefferson County, with their contents, had been burned by his orders, only time enough being
given for the ladies to get out of the houses. A number of towns in the South, as well as
private country houses, had been burned by the Federal troops, and the accounts had been
heralded forth in some of the Northern papers in terms of exultation, and gloated over by
their readers, while they were received with apathy by others.

I now came to the conclusion that we had stood this mode of warfare long enough, and
that it was time to open the eyes of the people of the North to its enormity by an example in
the way of retaliation. I did not select the cases mentioned as having more merit or greater