America’s Civil War: Loudoun Rangers

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Webster was captured in December 1862 and showed incredible toughness and an incorrigible fighting spirit in prison. He suffered numerous privations at Castle Thunder in Richmond and made three valiant efforts to escape. Finally, the Confederates hanged Webster on April 10, 1863, for the alleged murder of Confederate Captain Richard Simpson at the latter’s Loudoun County home in August 1862. (They had to put Webster in a chair for the hanging because he had broken both legs during his last escape attempt.) Apparently, there was nothing murderous about Simpson’s death, which was rather typical of the Rangers’ brand of border warfare. Simpson, of the 8th Virginia Infantry, had been on a recruiting mission when he tried to visit his home at Mount Gilead. He was surrounded by the Rangers and shot down as he ran for the woods, ignoring demands to surrender.

The second factor working against the Rangers’ success was their original captain. Despite being a brave leader and a staunch loyalist, Means was always a bit suspect. He had no military background and had originally not wanted to take a stand. Means avoided joining the Union forces at first, he explained, because he had a brother serving in the Confederate Army and did not want to make trouble.

More important, Means was always in trouble with his Union superiors. Much of this friction arose from the Rangers’ attempts to preserve their status as an independent unit and serve in their home territory. This was a fight the Rangers ultimately lost. On March 31, 1864, Means was ordered to take his command to Parkersburg, W. Va., to be consolidated with the 3rd West Virginia Cavalry. Means refused to comply because this order violated Secretary of War Edwin Stanton’s specific directive that Means recruit the company for special service and that the unit be directly under Stanton’s orders. Stanton backed Means in the flurry of angry correspondence between officers that ensued, and the Rangers stayed in the East.

Means was victorious in the fight, but it cost him his command. The orders of consolidation were countermanded by Stanton on April 25, but Means had already resigned his commission and left the service as of April 13. Means, who could not go home to Waterford while there were still Confederates about, moved in with his daughter in Washington, D.C., apparently took to drink and died a broken man.

Whether Means’ drinking had affected his leadership during the war is an intriguing question. The reminiscences of at least one soldier from another unit described the commander of the Loudoun Rangers as a notorious drunk. To him the most hilarious moment of the whole war was when a very drunken captain tried to impress visiting government officials and their ladies on the riverbank at Lovettsville. Welcoming them to Virginia in cavalier fashion, he swept off his hat, bowed low, lost his footing and tumbled backward into the Potomac. Out of discretion, however, the soldier did not give the captain’s name, and without a precise date it is unclear whether it was Means or another officer who put on the embarrassing show.

The Loudoun Rangers generally seemed to have had, for a bunch of Quaker lads at least, a rather pronounced drinking problem, and that was the unit’s third hindrance. A great many soldiers, both Northern and Southern, liked to get into people’s liquor when they could, but the Rangers had special opportunities. Operating on their own home ground, they tended to know exactly where alcohol could be found. They would pay visits to various local distilleries and cider mills in Loudoun County. If it was a Union sympathizer’s distillery and the liquor belonged to friends, it was drunk in friendship; if it was Confederate booze, it was treated as spoils of war. More than once this inebriation compromised the Rangers’ fighting ability and got them into trouble.

Finally, Federal Army commanders never really trusted the loyal Virginians. They were not true to their own state, and many Union military men tended to regard a turncoat as beneath contempt. A man once turned might easily turn again. The fact that the Rangers were specially recruited under the direct command of the secretary of war also rankled many Federal commanders.

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Tags: 19th Century, America's Civil War, American Civil War, Historical Conflicts, Historical Figures

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