December 2022
St. Albans Bank, pulled pistols, and stuffed money into satchels. One resident asked a raider if private property in town would be spared. The Rebel answered that because Grant, Sherman and Sheridan did not respect private property, neither would they.
Another group entered the Franklin County Bank. One of them, Bill Huntley, announced, “We are Confederate soldiers. There are hundreds of us. We have come to rob your banks and burn your town.” The message was the same at the First National Bank, where Caleb Wallace warned, “We represent the Confederate States of America. We have come to retaliate for acts committed upon our people by General Sherman. You have a very nice village here and if there is any resistance we’ll burn it to the ground.” An onlooker remarked, “What gentlemen are these? Seems to me they are rather rude in their manners.”4
After banks they began rounding up horses. Others set fires with glass jars filled with Greek fire; the Southerners had come prepared for their mission of arson. The flames, however, flickered out after the Southerners rode off.
Some fire Confederates After about an hour Young and his band mounted up and rode off with ninety thousand Yankee dollars. The few Federal soldiers in town gave chase with some enraged citizens. Eight miles off, the Confederates burned a bridge to halt the pursuers.5
The Canada about nine that night, changed clothing and dispersed. Eventually Young and five of his men were caught and arrested in Quebec. U.S. authorities requested their extradition, but the Canadian government refused. They were ultimately released.6
What had Lieutenant Young and Probably nothing of consequence as related to the course of the war, which by October 1864 had pretty much been decided. As a feat of daring, though, it merits the kind of accolade one Southerner gave it years after the war.
“If the reader will consider that St. Albans had, at that time, a population of about three thousand five hundred, that it had an able-bodied male population, fit for military service, of about seven hundred and fifty, that it was located in the heart of the most populous section of the country, honey combed with railroad and telegraph lines, and that this “Rebel horde” (of twenty-six men) were many hundred miles from their base of supplies, he will agree that, for daring, it stands without a parallel among daring deeds.”7 Endnotes
residents opened from windows; three were wounded.
we have been provided with a list of the dozen-and-a-half men who raided St. Albans. They are:
Stephen Davis of Cumming, Georgia, has been a Civil War buff since the 4th grade. He grew up in Atlanta, attending Margaret Mitchell Elementary and Northside High. At Emory University he studied under the
Oscar A, Kinchen, General Bennett H. Young: Confederate Raider and a Man of Many Adventures (West Hanover MA: Christopher Publishing House, 1981), 15, 19, 20, 33-35; Oscar A. Kinchen, Confederate Operations in Canada and the North (North 2.
Editor’s Note Thanks to one of our readers,
Alamanda Pope Bruce James A. Doty Thomas B. Collins Samuel S. Gregg Charles H. Higby William H. Huntley Samuel E. Lackey John D. McGinnis Joseph P. McGrorty William D. Moore Louis D. Price George C. Scott Marcus A. Spurr Charles M. Swagar Squire T. Tevis William T. Tevis Caleb M. Wallace Bennett H. Young
renowned Civil War historian Quincy MA: Christopher Bell Wiley. After a Master’s Publishing House, 1970), degree in American history from 127-28; “Gen. Bennett H. the University of North Carolina Young,” Confederate Veteran, at Chapel Hill, he taught high vol. 20, no.7 (July 1912), 313. school for a few years, then William C. Davis, “The earned his Ph.D. at Emory, where Conduct of ‘Mr. Thompson,’” he concentrated on the theme Civil War Times Illustrated, of the Civil War in Southern vol. 9, no. 2 (May 1970), 6. literature. He’s also taught at OR, ser. 4, vol. 3, 322; Oglethorpe University. Kinchen, Confederate Now retired, Steve resides in Operations, 35-8, 128-29. Cumming, Georgia, with his Kinchen, Bennett Young, 42, sweet wife Billie and two cats. 47-48. Steve is the author of seven Ibid., 49-51, 53-54. books on the Atlanta Campaign: Ibid., 54, 57, 67, 75. J. L. Driscol, “Capture of St.
• Albans, Vt.,” Confederate Veteran, vol. 5, no. 2 (February 1897), 75.
Atlanta Will Fall: Sherman, Joe Johnston and the Yankee Heavy Battalions(Scholarly Resources, 2001); What the Yankees Did to Us: Sherman’s Bombardment and Wrecking of Atlanta (Mercer University Press, 2012); A Long and Bloody Task: The Atlanta Campaign from Dalton through Kennesaw to the Chattahoochee, May 5-July 18, 1864 (Savas Beatie, 2016); All the Fighting They Want: The Atlanta Campaign from Peachtree Creek to the City’s Surrender, July 18-September 2, 1864(Savas Beatie, 2017); 100 Significant Photographs: The Atlanta Campaign (Historical Publications, 2019); From Texas Brigadier to the Fall of Atlanta: John Bell Hood (Mercer University Press, 2019); and Into Tennessee and Failure: John Bell Hood (Mercer University Press, 2020).
