THE SHENANDOAH VALLEY.
FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.] New York, October 22, 1864. AGAIN Sheridan has won victory in the Shenandoah Valley. It seems that General Early had been reinforced by the few thousands whom Lee could spare, and had followed Sheridan at a respectful distance as be went down the valle7 again, watching a favourable
opportunity of fulfilling his threat to " smash him up." It was confidently asserted that General Longstreet went into the valley to superintend this operation, but the report is not confirmed.
The favourable opportunity came last Wednesday, and General Early certainly used it with great cleverness and dash. General Sheridan, as he well knew, had gone to Washington for one of those consultations which you may have noticed he keeps up with General Grant. The army lay between Winchester and Strasburg, upon the north side of Cedar Run, which is only a large brook. An attack had been apprehended for some days, but it had not come, and it was supposed that Early had given it up. Never was there a greater mistake. On Wednesday, at three in the morning, favoured by a dense and wide-spreading fog, he attacked Sheridan's army while all but the pickets and sentries were asleep. He.
massed three divisions of infantry upon our left, the men carry-.
ing only their arms and ammunition, and leaving behind their very canteens, lest their clinking should awake our troops, and moving swiftly and silently through the fog fell upon the left with furious musketry and fiendish yelling. The surprise was complete, and proved nearly disastrous. The left wing was driven pell-mell out
of its camp in amazed confusion, some of the men being taken or killed in their tents and in their very blankets. Guns were aban- doned because there was no time to put to the horses, much leas to open fire upon the enemy. A feint upon our right did not much damage, but it added to the confusion which spread all along the line, and the fog helped to bewilder officers as well as men. Some semblance of organization, however, was accomplished after a while, and a retreating fight began. But the enemy's advantage was so great that he could not be stayed by the troops in line, and even the Nineteenth Corps began to waver. More unused guns had been abandoned, three general officers and many field officers had been killed or wounded, and the prospects of the day were very gloomy. At this juncture General Wright, who was in command, ordered the Sixth Corps to advance against the enemy's centre. It had been encamped at right angles to the enemy's line, and proved to be in fact, though not in design, a. reserve. Wheeling steadily round and opening its ranks to let the shaken Nineteenth pass through, it opened fire, showed steady front, , and at once checked the insurgent onset. (A wounded rebel in one, of the hospitals while I was at Waphington said, in reference to the unexpected appearance of this corps there, " I believe if we was to go to hell we would meet that d—d Sixth Corps.") But the backward movement of the whole line had to be kept up until a crest was reached about four miles from the point of first attack. Here the enemy was effectually repulsed and both armies stopped to breathe. If the battle had ended there we should have been badly defeated with the loss of 20 guns. But while the enemy is entrenching himself upon the ground which he has won and the. Union army is considering its situation, a faint cheer comes up from the extremity of the line. What is it ? Reinforcements? Yes, a. reinforcement of one man. The news travels faster from mouth to mouth than a horse can gallop. It is Sheridan, who slept last night et Winchester, twelve miles off, and who has ridden post- haste to the field. Down he comes, with bat in hand, and rides all along the line, hope and determination lighting up almost to beauty his homely face, and followed by a great wave of acclama- tion. In his own words he " takes the matter in hand " at once. The news of his arrival and his purpose spreads backward among. the stragglers, and many of them take heart and return. Others are brought back. The line of battle is reformed, and with the Sixth Corps in the centre, the re-animated Nineteenth on the right, Crook's division on the left, and Custer's and M erritt's cavalry on the extreme wings, at three o'clock in the afternoon Sheridan charges straight upon the hitherto victorious enemy. Protected by breast- works and flushed with success they fight splendidly, but in vain. A f ter a stubborn resistance they are swept, right, left, and centre, from the field, leaving behind them the guns which they had taken, and thirty beside, more than fifty in all, and are driven reeling through Strasburg, and pursued by cavalry until darkness, their constant and fitting ally, affords them concealment and protection.
On the same day on which Sheridan won this signal victory. a Confederate attack, at first equally successful, but in the end equally disastrous with that in the Shenandoah, was made in. Vermont by some Southern gentlemen who made Canada their base of operations. St. Alban's, the scene of this exploit, lies among the green hills about fifteen miles south of the Canada line, near the shore of Lake Champlain. The county town of Franklin county, it is, however, only a place of about 4,000 inhabitants. It is one of those pretty, tidy, thriving villages of which New England is so full, built like many of them around a pleasant square or common, and containing the county buildings, four orb. five
churches, two banks, some small mills, and the inevitable academy. At this quiet little place some strangers arrived during the week before Wednesday, coming in parties of twos and threes, and stopping at the two inns ambitiously called hotels since the village has been inflated by a railway. There were between twenty and thirty of them, but they appear to have no parti- cular acquaintance with each other, and attracted no attention except by the travelling satchels which they carried slung under the left arm. Some of them wore United States uniforms. They lounged around, and appeared to have no particular occupation, but on Wednesday, about three o'clock in the afternoon, having laid their plans and disposed themselves in the proper places, they suddenly took armed possession of the business part of the village, robbed the banks revolver in hand, stuffing their bags with " greenbacks," and then made similar attempts in the principal stores. For a few minutes of course nothing was known of their proceedings except just where they were at work, but even there the people showed fight instantly. One man knocked two of the fellows down, but was checked by the revolver of the third. Being well armed, of course they had matters their own way foi a while, and after shooting four or five persons, mor- tally wounding two, and shooting at all those whom they thought it worth while to intimidate, and threatening to burn the town if serious resistance were offered, they seized horses upon which they had their eyes, and "made tracks" for Canada. But they did not succeed quite so easily as Early did among the Hessians of Pennsylvania, chiefly of course because Early had an army within reach, and they were but twenty-five, but partly also because they had to deal not with Hessians, but with Yankees. They got a start of an hour and a half, but at the end of that time there were fifty armed and mounted men after them, who stayed not upon the order of their going, but got off in parties of eight or ten as fast as they could mount and arm. Of course the State authorities and General Dix at New York were informed by telegraph of what had happened. General Dix sent troops after the caterans of course, with the order to his subordinate, "Put a discreet officer in com- mand, and in case they are not found on our side of the line pursue them into Canada, if necessary, and destroy them." If the soldiers had overtaken them this order would most certainly have been carried out, and General Dix would have been sustained by the country. But although there would have been a certain satisfaction and sense of future security in knowing that the fellows were put to death on the spot where they were taken red-handed, perhaps it is better that those of them who have been captured were taken by, or atleast with, the co-operationof the Canadian authorities themselves and are now locked up to await the requisition of our Govern- ment. Fourteen of them have been already secured, and about 150,000 dols. of the money recovered. One Canadian constable
was in making the arrests. And here let me say that the Canadian authorities, and Lord Monck in particular, have com- manded our respect, and more, by the promptness and perfect good faith which they have shown in thiscase and in the two cases of piracy which preceded it. I will add too (though not very pertinently), that the British Consul in New York, Mr. Archibald, although as strongly Britiah in feeling as he ought to be, and having views of British policy. the wisdom of which we may not unreasonably doubt, has preserved the regard and consideration in which he was held before the war by the unimpeachable manner in which he has since discharged his often delicate and not always agreeable duties. To return to the St. Alban's raid. Is it strange, is it an evidence of an utter sacrifice of Anglo-Saxon liberty, and of the inestimable writ of habeas corpus, is it so unac- countable that when our villages are subject to such cateraus' pillage and murder, and when our steamers are seized by men who come on board of them as passengers, as the Chesa- peake was and as the Roanoke has just been, that we should keep a good strong water-bound fort or two in which to put without much ceremony fellows whom we have good reason to believe would cut these little capers if we would only let them alone until they did it ? Or is it a proof of Anglo-Saxon sense always to wait, in time of civil war, before shutting the stable door until the horse is stolen ? A harrying like this at St. Alban's would have been almost impossible in a town in one of the Slave States even in time of peace, owing to the armigerent habits of the people there ; and it reminds me, by the contrast in manners which it indicates, of a characteristic incident of which a friend of mine was witness in Memphis, Tennessee, before the rebellion. He was upon the verandah of an hotel, the most respectable in the place. Upon this verandah the barber's shop opened by a French window, or glazed,door, near which-sat a respectable-seeming man, half dozing in an arm-chair. Suddenly a puff of wind slammed oua of tha doors sharply to, when as suddenly this dozing gentleman sprang to his feet, and drawing a revolver fired six shots in quick succes- sion right into the barber's shop. My friend was horror-struck, for he was without the advantage of a slaveholder's education. But it proved that no one was hurt, the barber's shop having no- body in it except a mulatto boy, who flung himself flat upon the floor. The Tennessean had mistaken the noise of the window for a pistol shot, and had fired in supposed self-defence. But it is exquisitely " SoRthern " that he should have taken the sound as a matter of course for that of a pistol ; that he should have assumed, equally as a matter of course, that it was fired at him ; that of course he had a loaded revolver in his pocket ; and that of course he fired its whole contents slap into a room in which there might. have been half -a-dozen people. Little notice was taken of the occurrence, which was merely regarded as a slight and amusing. mistake. Perhaps the gentleman has lately visited St. Alban's.
A YANKEE.
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