4th Virginia

Spirits Before Us

by Michael Reid

Tendrils of smoke spiral above the campfire, swirling with melodies the fiddler and the baritone voice next to him are weaving.  Flames splash orange onto steel barrels and daggertops of muskets slanting stacked in their teepee skeletons nearby.  I smell those barrels’ burnings, my ears ring from the day’s cannon.  There lingers the taste of stale twists of paper, the tang of the black powder grains crushed between my teeth as I tore into dozens of cartridges a few hours ago.

Two Bluecoats whom I had beaded in the sights of my Enfield fell today, they were my first.  Most all of my friends were sent to the ground not long afterwards. When the enemy rose up like dark ghouls from within a swale not forty yards away, I was crouching, retrieving my dropped canteen.  The Yankees’ ragged volley erupted like the ripping of a great sheet of burlap.  I am shamed to say that I skedaddled with the few still standing before the next volley was sent like a scythe swinging at us.

The blare of a trumpet calling retreat through in the smoke-stained light of dusk found me leaning against a stout oak tree, alone and breathless.  My cartridge box hung empty from my shoulder.  I confess to some happiness in leaving that field behind.  Now, after supping with some comrades who did fine work with a Dutch oven, I rest next to this fire.  I am bone-weary.  I allow music from a couple of Texans to soothe my abraded nerves.

“Wherefrom?”  A shadow next to me asks, his words lapping against each other.  He is chewing noisily.

I pause before answering.  This is not my camp.  “Fourth Virginia,” I finally say, quietly.

“I asked wherefrom.”  The words run even closer, and he spits something hard at the fire.  I hope it’s tobacco but am glad for the night between us because it might not be.

I pause again, sifting through several correct answers.  I select one: “Grayson County.”

The fire cracks like a rifle shot; the fiddler releases a wild ascent of notes that race the campfire’s sparks to the diamond-speck canopy above.

“Dare Devils,” my companion grunts, impressed.  “Hellacious fighters.”

I cannot accept this compliment, though it is rock-ribbed truth.  The Grayson County Dare Devils, Company F of the Fourth Virginia Infantry Regiment, part of the Stonewall Brigade, among the toughest fighters in Lee’s army.  But other answers I could have offered to
this man’s inquiry are Portland, Oregon, and Upstate New York.

I live in Portland; I grew up amidst New York’s Finger Lakes.  I am one of the hundreds of men, women and children in Oregon who participate in living history re-enactments, portraying what life might have been like 140 years ago on the fields and plains of southeastern America.

Any reenactor knows the looks of mild disbelief that often arise when an unwitting acquaintance first learns of this endeavor.  Some friends are best left in that place, bemused, puzzled.  Others might pause to listen to our descriptions of a child who glimpses the sweeping thrill of history because of our portrayals, or the surge of respect for our nation’s forebearers that can well up in a snap of a flag on the field.

Oregon’s version of the Dare Devils was mustered several years ago under the leadership of the great-great-grandson of Lieutenant Barney Cannoy, a veteran of Company F.  Lieutenant Cannoy fought in most of the Dare Devils’ campaigns, and was one of the “Immortal 600.”  Captured during the battle of Spotsylvania, the Lieutenant was imprisoned and later selected as one of 600 Rebel officers sent to a federal artillery emplacement near Charleston, South Carolina.  There these prisoners were forced to stand in front of cannons shelling Charleston, prisoners serving as a human shield to deter Confederate counter-fire.  The surviving officers were so emaciated that federal officials were too embarrassed to exchange the prisoners when the war ended.   These officers were not released until July 1865, when their appearance had improved somewhat.

Lieutenant Cannoy returned to Grayson County, married, raised two sons who eventually headed West.  One grandson made a home in Portland, Oregon.  That fellow’s grandson founded our unit in 1994.

Current members of our company also possess a deep appreciation for the Dare Devils’ history.  Several have traveled across the country to visit Grayson County.  A few have joined the Grayson County Historical Society.  We seek to learn about our historical counterparts’ lives, families, and beliefs, so that our portrayals to the public are enriched with accuracy and realism.  We study the military history of the Fourth Virginia and the Dare Devils, aspiring to better understand, and convey, the courage demonstrated by these soldiers and their loved ones waiting for them at home.

During the Civil War the hills and mountainsides of Grayson County formed a
crucible  –  a crucible revealing a keen insight into our country’s terrible and heroic rebirth.  Within the County lived generations of families who were fiercely Union, living by neighbors who were passionate about States’ Rights.  Still others in Grayson County wanted neither Washington nor Richmond telling them how to live.

The story of how Company F was formed speaks to the character of Grayson.  So many volunteers overwhelmed the mustering table that the Company’s Captain conducted a marksmanship competition.  Those most accurately firing a musket at a target while sprinting across a field were enlisted.  The Company’s soldiers called themselves the Dare Devils.

These Dare Devils led the decisive charge to rout invading Federals on a summer afternoon near Bull Run in 1861.  In early ‘62 they answered roll call while freezing in a bitter winter campaign with Stonewall Jackson up the Valley to Romney.  They shed their blood later that year in the swamps near Gaines’s Mill and upon the meadows of Brawner’s Farm and Sharpsburg.  In ‘63 they fell at Chancellorsville and on the slopes of Culp’s Hill above Gettysburg.  The following year they died amidst the tangled underbrush of the Wilderness and at Spotsylvania.

And on Palm Sunday in 1865, when the commanding general of the Army of Northern Virginia bowed his head and snowy beard to trudge the dusty pathway to a parlor in Appomattox, there was not a single soldier remaining in Company F to be surrendered.  They were gone: imprisoned, convalescing, dying or dead.

Comprehending such sacrifice is daunting.  But such a task begins as many worthwhile quests do – with a crisp crack of opening a book, the heat of a handshake, a volatile combustion of a curious mind and a compassionate heart.  When this small band of Oregonians stands at attention under flags of Virginia and the United States, when we march along the riverbanks of the Willamette and the shores of the Pacific sweating in wool jackets and gripping smoldering muskets, we salute the daughters and sons of Grayson and the spirits of all those before us, north and south, who bled and suffered in the fiery forging of our great nation.

Copyright, 2007.