Defend the Valley: A Shenandoah Family in the Civil War

by Margaretta Barton Colt

Located in a strategic position in the Shenandoah Valley, Winchester, Virginia, witnessed the Civil War in a way unlike any other town in America. In Defend the Valley , the story of the war is told through the letters and private papers of the Barton and Jones clans--two great limbs of one family tree with roots in Winchester. By collecting her ancestors' papers, Margaretta Barton Colt has done far more than provide a record of the Civil War. She has brought it to life with astounding clarity through the voices of those who experienced it. The Bartons and Joneses collectively sent eleven men into battle, most in the brigade led by Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. Culled from the private papers of twenty family members, the material presented here includes many vivid recollections found in the soldiers' first-hand descriptions of the battles, as well as responses from the home front. The result is a fully rounded picture of the daily struggles of the Civil War, and a documentation of
the passing of a way of life.

Genres: History, Civil War, American History, Nonfiction

464 pages, Paperback

First published October 14, 1999

Reviews

[Sharon · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Bartons were a well to do Virginia family who liked to write. They wrote a copious amount of letters, kept diaries and wrote memoirs. What is extraordinary about this is that almost all of this was carefully preserved by their descendants. Margaretta Barton Colt went through everything they left behind carefully editing everything and in doing so presents us with a window into their lives during the American Civil War.

The Bartons owned several large farms, a mill and several homes in Winchester VA. A small hamlet outside of town, Bartonsville was named for them. Life was good and then came the war. We see all of it from the hard life of a soldier living life close to the ground to a letter from Mrs. Robert E. Lee sending a note regretting that she could not attend a wedding. We find out what the young men who attended VMI thought of Professor Jackson before he became Stonewall. There was euphoria when the war started and the Stonewall Brigade first formed at Harper's Ferry and then the mood quickly turned sober when the causalities from the First Battle of Bull Run began to arrive.

Because this took place in and around Winchester there are reports of troop movements, armies camping on their farms, 'requisitioning' of farm animals and the departure of slaves. Rumors abounded. There was a constant parade of wounded. One man worried about his farm because his wife was ignorant of such matters but it reached a point where she became so good at her new job that a friend joked that he should 'abdicate' in favor of his wife. We see family members wounded, suffering hardship and sickness. We read the diary of one man, get to know him and then discover that he was killed in action. There were times when the family living in a Union controlled town could not journey to visit relatives on the farms because they were 'outside' of the lines. One positive to the Federals being in town was that they could more easily send letters to relatives in Baltimore who sent them aid. There were battles, shells flying, sometimes skirmishes in the streets and at one point a munitions depot blew up. Gradually the war took its toll on the family and the town.

After the war the family tried to pick up where it left up but unfortunately could not do so. One by one they left the Valley so that today no one from that family is still living in the area. Their farms are still here however. Spring Dale is on Route 11 south of Winchester right by the side of the road. I drive by it all the time but did not know of the trials and tribulations that took place there. I did not know that armies camped out all around it. Their mill is still standing but abandoned. Another farm, Vancluse is further south close to the Cedar Creek Battlefield. It is now a Bed and Breakfast. Unfortunately the town houses in Winchester have been demolished.

I learned a few things. I found out that when people of that time traveled to the 'city' they were not going to Washington D.C. as we do now. They meant Baltimore. There was much going back and forth between the two places and after the war a large part of the populace simply picked up and moved there. An argument could be made that after the war Winchester started over not only with aid (mostly from Baltimore) of the rebuilding of their devastated infrastructure but that the population itself was 'new'.

The Bartons included every detail of their lives. Maragretta Barton Colt does not interfere except with occasional historical notes expanding upon events mentioned in the writings. Its a good read if you want an on the spot account of the tumultuous years in Winchester Virginia during the American Civil War.

[Michel De · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having just spent a week in the neighborhood of Winchester, a town I came to know well through my interest in Defend the Valley and by proximity, I can see clearly how wrong the concept of secession was. A part of Virginia that has been given over to suburban sprawl where the land use is not horse farming, the classism of this book has carried down over a century and a half intact. To read over and over about the Barton family's innumerable cousins, cousins-german, kin and namesakes, their interventions on the Barton boys' behalf, and how noble the narrators were by association is to realize how painful losing that war must have been for them. Nowhere does anything like doubt in the sacred Cause or in the preachments of conventional religion appear. Instead innumerable exhortations expressed by the women deprived of their loved ones to consider the victims of that brutal conflict as merely having been translated to Heaven where they exchanged military garb for raiment are strewn like raisins throughout the dough of the story. When the youngest Barton boy hesitates to express his enthusiasm to testify for religion, the exhortations are unremitting from all correspondents. One wonders if they had sufficient honesty and candor to see that the Confederates' ultimate defeat was a judgment on themselves and their way of life. But to see people who were then as they are now divided by social class as well as by race, including those who consider the horseflesh they own and breed on large acreage to be far more important and to elevate them to greatness beyond other humans of the "lesser orders," is to be reminded of how very little has changed in society since the 1860s.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an amazing editing job, putting together memoirs and letters from an extended family during the Civil War into one narrative. It really gave a sense of the entire war experience for this family and was quite emotional for me.