Volume 37, No. 8 – August 2024
Website: www.CivilWarRoundTablePalmBeach.org

The President’s Message:

There will be no meeting in August or September.  We will meet in October and you will receive notification of the meeting.  Rest and relax so you can be ready for some great programs in the coming year.

Happy Birthday Greetings to Round Table member Dr. Theodore Gerson who will be 104 years old!

Gerridine La Rovere

Program July 10, 2024

Loudoun Rangers and White’s Comanches

Of all the special units that were formed to combat Confederate partisan raiders in Virginia, the Loudoun Rangers were probably the most promising unit.  They were an independent cavalry unit drawn from the largely Quaker and German farming communities of Loudoun County in Virginia.

Despite the pacifist beliefs of their church, many Quakers in the county took up arms on each side.  The Loudoun Rangers founder was Captain Samuel C. Means who was a Quaker and owned a large grist mill in Waterford.  He also owned a large mercantile business in Point of Rocks, Maryland.  Forced by vigorous Confederate persecution, he took refuge in Maryland.

Means was summoned to Washington, D.C. and offered a commission to raise a cavalry company of refugee Virginians.  Two companies were raised and were mustered into Federal service on June 20, 1862.

Loudoun County was swarming with Confederates.  The Loudoun Rangers were to make periodic raids and capture them.  The Rangers established camps on the Maryland side of the Potomac River.  From there they made constant forays into Loudoun, Clarke, and Jefferson counties.  They were also sent to accompany the main army and fought in major battles - Fisher’s Hill, Cedar Creek, and Monocacy.  However, the unit’s goal was to maintain their independence and did not want to participate in the regular army.

There were parallels between the Northern Loudon Rangers and Southern White’s Comanches headed by LT. Col. Elijah V. “Lige” White CSA, 35^th Battalion, Virginia Cavalry.  The two companies were raised in the same area of Loudoun County, and the same surnames appear in the blue and grey rosters.  As the two groups clashed over and over again, their special brand of warfare resembled local family feuds.

The relationship between the two bands was antagonistic.  The soldiers knew the individual members of the opposing unit and knew where they lived, who their sweethearts were, and what kind of pies their mother’s baked.  The Loudoun Rangers and White’s Comanches were raised for the specific purpose of patrolling on the border counties.  The men never resigned themselves to being forced to follow the regular army into battle.  They thought it was in violation of their special enlistment contract.

White’s Comanches periodically returned to Loudoun County as an entire unit during the War as did the Ranger’s.  Officers and men frequently went back home to recruit, forage, or procure new mounts.  Convalescent men were all too eager to come back and escape the War.  Union and Confederate soldiers would often sneak back to visit their homes.

When Robert E. Lee’s army moved north during the Antietam Campaign, White’s Comanches were suddenly back in force in Loudoun County.  The Rangers were sleeping in the Waterford Baptist Church when they were attacked by White’s men after midnight on August 27, 1862.  Surrounded, the Rangers defended their position in the brick house of warship until most every man was wounded and ammunition was running low.  When they surrendered, it was to relatives and friends with whom they had gone to school.  One of White’s men, William Snoots, insisted on the right to kill his prisoner.  It took several of his fellow soldiers to convince him otherwise.  The prisoner was Loudoun Ranger Charles Snoots, his own brother.

On September 1, 1862 the Rangers raided the nearby town of Hillsboro teeming with Confederates.  All but two of White’s cavalrymen escaped.  The next day another clash took place near Leesburg, a hotbed of Southern sympathizers.  The hardened Confederate veterans bested them in a pitched battle.  Coupled with the Hillsboro debacle the costly defeat at Leesburg was very discouraging to recruiting efforts and kept the Rangers from raising enough men for a battalion.

Before Colonel Dixon Miles surrendered his 12,009-man force at Harpers Ferry to CSA Major General “Stonewall” Jackson in September, approximately 2,000 Union horsemen fought their way to safety.  The Loudoun Rangers were included in this group.  Means was outraged at the plan to surrender.  The Rangers had a special reason to avoid capture.  Since they were Virginians, they could be hanged as traitors, Means already had a price on his head that was placed there by the Confederate Virginia authorities.

On September 13, 1863, the Rangers stumbled across and routed an unsuspecting company of White’s cavalry at Catoctin Mountain near Morven Park.  They were ambushed in turn by a detachment of Mosby’s men under Captain Adolphus “Dolly” Richards on May 17, 1864.  The rivalry continued for a long time.

The young men of Loudoun Rangers, like their Confederate counterparts, were able to sustain close relationships with the local women that they knew.  They often attended parties, dances, weddings, and other social gatherings.  However, the nicest parties were often ruined by unexpected gunfire.  These two special units certainly held vendettas.

On February 20, 1863, Sergeant Flemon B. Anderson’s sister, Molly, gave a ball at the James Filler house that was interrupted by some of White’s cavalrymen led by a Lieutenant Marlow.  When Molly pleaded for the Confederates to spare her brother a trip to Libby Prison, Marlow agreed that Flemon would be paroled if she would dance the next set with him.  Relieved Flemon took up the fiddle and played happily for the rest of the evening.

Sergeant Flemon B. Anderson was known to party hardy.  On Christmas Eve 1864, a Ranger detachment left Maryland for their home grounds near Waterford, Virginia.  They knew that the Confederates were camped there.  Anderson’s mother arranged a dance near her home in Taylorstown and the sergeant paid a visit to his mother.  He was sitting next to his intended bride when White’s and Mosby’s men surrounded the house about 9:00PM.  Anderson tried to escape out the back door as the men came in the front entrance.  He was immediately shot through the head and died in his mother’s arms.  The Confederates also wanted to shoot Sergeant John Hickman for an alleged crime.  Because one of Mosby’s men was related to the Andersons, his life was spared.

In January 1863, John Singleton Mosby was given permission to organize his own Partisan Rangers and engage in guerilla warfare around Loudoun County.  He was brazen and extremely aggressive.  In March 1863, he captured Brigadier General Edwin H. Stoughton from his bed.  He uncovered the sleeping General and slapped him on his behind.  During the winter of 1864 Mosby’s Rangers were supreme in Loudoun County and Eastern Virginia.  The area was often called “Mosby’s Confederacy.”

The Loudon Rangers should have been a well-disciplined unit and a force to be reckoned with.  However, they were not.  The Rangers received no military training from the Union Army.  Charles A, Webster, a member of the Rangers, had prior military training and became the drillmaster for the unit.  He turned the men into an efficient military group with working knowledge of cavalry drill, discipline, and fighting techniques.  It turned out that Webster was not really his name.  He was actually Charles Brown from New Hampshire and was recognized by some Maine troops camping nearby after the Battle of Antietam.  The name Webster was in honor of his mother who was a distant relative of Daniel Webster.  His father, who was in California during the 1849 Gold Rush and during the War supported the Copperheads.

The Confederates captured Sergeant Webster in December of 1862, and he showed incredible toughness and had an incorrigible fighting spirit in prison.  He suffered numerous deprivations at Castle Thunder in Richmond and made three valiant efforts to escape.  Finally, he was hanged on April 10, 1863 for the alleged murder of CSA Captain Richard Simpson that took place in his Loudoun County home in August, 1862.  They had to put Webster in a chair for the hanging because he had two broken legs from his last escape try.  Actually, Simpson’s death was typical of the Rangers brand of border warfare.  A member of the 8^th Virginia Infantry, Simpson had been on a recruiting mission when he tried to visit his home in Mount Gilead.  He was surrounded by the Rangers and shot down as he ran for the woods, ignoring demands to surrender.

The Rangers leadership left a lot to be desired.  Samuel Means had no military experience.  In fact, he avoided joining the Union forces at the beginning of the War.  He wanted to avoid any family problems because his brother was serving in the Confederate Army.

Means always had problems with his Union superiors.  Much of the friction arose from the Rangers attempts to preserve their status as an independent unit and serve in their home territory.  The fight was ultimately lost on March 31, 1864.  Means was ordered to take his command to Parkersburg, West Virginia and consolidate with the 3^rd West Virginia Cavalry.  Means refused and said that the order violated Secretary of War Edwin Stanton’s directive that Mean’s company was for special service and directly under Stanton’s orders.  Stanton backed Means in the flurry of angry correspondence between officers that ensued.  The Rangers stayed in the East.

Means was victorious in the fight but it cost him his command.  He resigned his commission and left the service on April 13, 1864.  While there were still Confederates about, he would not go home to Waterford.  The best option was to move in with his daughter in Washington, D.C.

The following account was never verified and probably has more rumor than truth.  One soldier from another unit described Means as a notorious drunk and liked to tell the story of the most hilarious moment of the entire War.  A drunken Captain Means tried to impress visiting government officials and their ladies on the riverbank at Lovettsville.  Welcoming them to Virginia in a cavalier fashion, he removed his hat in a sweeping movement, bowed low, lost his footing as he tumbled backward into the Potomac River.  Gales of laughter ensued.

By and large, the Loudoun Rangers were mostly Quakers.  It is interesting that a lot of them had a pronounced drinking problem.  Operating on their own home ground, they tended to know where alcohol could be found.  Visits were paid to various local distilleries and cider mills in Loudoun County.  If it was a Union sympathizer’s distillery, it was drunk in friendship.  If it was on the Confederate side, it was considered as the spoils of war.  Imbibing compromised the Ranger’s fighting abilities and often got them in trouble.

Union Army commanders never really trusted the loyalty of Virginians and tended to regard a turncoat as beneath contemp.  A man once turned could easily be turned again.  The fact that the Rangers were recruited under the direct orders of the Secretary of War rankled many of the top command.

The Rangers were surprised many times in their camp by White’s Comanches or Mosby’s Raiders.  The Rangers were camped at Keyes Switch on the B&O Railroad west of Harpers Ferry on April 6,1865.  No one expected any threatening activity by the Confederate Army.  The Rangers were relaxing in camp and a force of 250 horsemen approached from the Charlestown Pike.  The attackers wore blue uniforms and went unnoticed.  Mosby’s troops were able to capture every horse and man in camp - 81 horses and 65 men.

Chief of Staff Winfield Scott Hancock delivered the final blow to the Rangers.  When he was informed of the raid, he threw away the telegram and with a hearty laugh said, “Well, that’s the last of the Loudoun Rangers.”

The following is an account of Samuel C. Means life posted by the Lovettsville Historical Society and Museum.  Samuel Means, a prominent businessman in Waterford who owned and operated the large merchant mill on the west side of the village, was the founder and Commander of the Loudoun Rangers.  Although there had been other attempts to form a partisan unit from Loudoun County, the War Department had declined those offers – including some from Means – until Secretary of War Edwin Stanton summoned Means to Washington in the Spring of 1862.  In June, 1862 he was authorized to raise his own cavalry unit, which was to be independent of the normal chain of command.  Means was mustered in at Harper’s Ferry later that month, and he immediately began recruiting volunteers from the Lovettsville and Waterford areas.

Within weeks of receiving their uniforms, the Rangers, most of whom had little or no military experience, suffered heavy losses at the August 27^th ambush at the Baptist Church in Waterford, and then again, a week later in a skirmish north of Leesburg.  A few days after that, they were ordered to Harper’s Ferry, where Means – who had a price on his head — was instrumental in organizing the cavalry breakout before the Union Commander surrendered his remaining forces to the Confederates.

For the duration of the war, the Loudoun Rangers served mainly along the Potomac border, often deployed on foraging or scouting raids, and guiding Union troops into Loudoun.  Their orders took them to Ellicott City and the District of Columbia to the east, and occasionally into Berryville and the Shenandoah Valley to the west.  They served until the end of the war, and were mustered out at Bolivar, near Harper’s Ferry, on May 31, 1865.

The turning point for Means came earlier, in March 1864, when the Rangers were ordered to report to Parkersville, WV on the Ohio River, and to be formally consolidated into the 3^rd West Virginia Cavalry.  The order came from the new Commander of the Department of West Virginia, General Franz Sigel.  As Chamberlin and Souders put it, in their book Between Reb and Yank, “the former Prussian Minister of War [Sigel] had little inclination to permit an independent military unit to exist within his command.”

Seeing this order as a violation of the Secretary of War’s directive creating the Loudoun Rangers for special service along Loudoun’s northern border, Means and others refused, and Means was cashiered.  Ultimately, Means was sustained by Secretary of War Stanton, who revoked Sigel’s order and confirmed that the Loudoun Rangers had “been recruited for conditional service.”

Despite having been discharged, Means stayed in contact with the military command and engaged in various scouts and forays into Loudoun, which has given rise to some speculation that Stanton’s failure to restore Means’ commission was so that he could be employed as a Union spy – although no evidence of this has been found.  Indeed, he was still referred to as Captain in a March, 1865, request from Gen. Stevenson to the Provost Marshall at Point of Rocks for a scouting party of Loudoun Rangers to go into Loudoun, and that “Capt. Means is to go with the party.”

Post-war life

Cautiously, Means returned to Waterford at war’s end in April 1865.  Saddled by pre-war debts, he was forced to give up the Waterford Mill, his home on Bond Street, and other properties.  He and his wife Rachel settled in at Bush Creek Mill north of Waterford; they lived there for ten years, but were unable to turn the mill into a successful business.

Means continued to be hounded by creditors, and he faced a hostile environment in the Loudoun court.  As Chamberlin puts it, “there appears to have been a deliberate attempt to get back at the Loudoun Rangers’ captain and his brother.”  This hostility was even clearer in lawsuits that Means and his brother Noble Means brought against those owing them money.  “In almost all cases,” says Chamberlin, “the suits were continued indefinitely, or dismissed on technicalities, until the Means brothers finally abandoned their claims.”

One small political success was that Sam Means was appointed as superintendent of roads for his district in Lovettsville’s strongly - Republican township.  The Lovettsville area was the most-heavily Republican jurisdiction in a county that was dominated by former secessionists in the post-war period.

Having been declared bankrupt and destitute, Sam Means and his family left Loudoun and moved to the northern section of Washington, D.C. in 1883, where Rachel operated a rooming house.  Sam died a year later, in 1884, at age 57, with the official death certificate listing cancer of the stomach and liver as the primary cause of death.  He was buried in Rock Creek Cemetery, as were his wife Rachel and daughter Mary Alice in later years.  For many years it was believed that his grave was unmarked, but about ten years ago a crude stone marker was found at the gravesite by Ann Belland, owner of the Samuel Means House in Waterford.

In 1892, Rachel Means was a special guest at a reunion of the Loudoun Rangers held at the Washington, D.C. home of Lt. Luther Slater.  As the GAR newspaper, the National Tribune, described it: “There they met their old Captain’s widow.  Her kindness and sympathy manifested were very dear to the boys; all of them in the hour of trial, danger, and sickness, found through her sympathy, encouragement, and comfort.  May her life be one of peace and happiness.”

Rachel continued to run a boarding house in D.C. for many years, and she attempted on a number of occasions to obtain a widow’s pension, which was denied on various grounds including that of Sam’s discharge for disobedience.  In 1897, she succeeded in getting a bill introduced in Congress by Rep. James A. Walker (R-VA), a former Confederate General who by this time was a Republican.  Attached to the bill were several orders issued after Means’ dismissal, which upheld his position that the Rangers should not have been ordered to leave the Loudoun border area.  Nonetheless, the bill was never passed by Congress.

It is thus proper and fitting, that Samuel Means, who sacrificed so much for his country, should at long last be recognized with a United States government grave marker at his final resting place.