Overview

"The story of Captain John Valley Young personifies the body of rugged Union Army volunteers from West Virginia during the Civil War: highly resilient, stubbornly independent, and fiercely patriotic. Using Captain Young's wartime letters to his wife, Paulina Franklin Young, and his daughters, Sarah and Emily Young, along with his diary and numerous other original soldier accounts, this book reveals the experiences of a Union soldier and his family who were truly willing to ""Sacrifice All for the Union."" Young, a farmer and Methodist-Episcopalian minister prior to the Civil War, during April 1861 raised a company of Union volunteers at the strongly pro-Southern village of Coalsmouth, Virginia, (modern St. Albans, West Virginia). He was adamantly opposed to slavery, yet often expressed a bitter ire at having to fight a violent civil war because his beloved nation had thus far failed to eradicate the awful practice. His company became Company G of the 13th West Virginia Infantry and was later transferred to the 11th West Virginia Infantry. While he displayed an unshakeable desire to preserve the Union, Young's convictions were severely tested as he and his family faced constant dangers from guerillas and Confederate raids in the Kanawha Valley. Captain Young also participated in more than one hundred skirmishes and eleven major engagements in the bloody Shenandoah Valley, and at Petersburg, and Appomattox; more than any other Union officer from West Virginia. He died from tuberculosis in 1867, a sad irony after surviving some of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War. ""...Stand firm to the good old Cause. I have just come from Charleston, and found while there that there will be a change of Commanders in the Department of [West] Virginia. The authorities feel determined that we shall have protection. But if we cannot have better protection than we have had, the country is ruined. But I assure you there will be a change for the better. I don't know how you will get up to see me now. Well, we must bear it the best we can. Sacrifice All for the Union."" - Captain John Valley Young, Letter to his wife, February 3, 1862"

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9781735073927

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Utilizing the wartime letters to his family and personal diary of Captain John Valley Young, in addition to documents from fellow soldiers, family members and friends, Philip Hatfield has woven a compelling and complex portrait of a Union officer from Putnam County, West Virginia, facing the harsh realities of the Civil War. Constantly plagued by military bureaucracy and inept commanders, Hatfield shows how Captain Young persisted in defense of the Union against bushwhackers and guerillas early in the war, and eventually against the Confederate army in the 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign, through the trench warfare at Petersburg, ending with the final shots at Appomattox. Older than the average soldier of his time and beset by ill health the last two ears of the war, Captain Young refused to relinquish his command until his beloved country was once again at peace. - Author/Historian Terry Lowry

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