Description
of the War's Effect on Highland County
The following
description is from an April 1864 court document asking the Secretary
of War to not conscript men between the ages of 17 and 18 and 45 and
50. Although it was written two years after the McDowell battle, it
gives a glimpse of the county's population and agriculture. It is not
clear when the destruction noted occurred.
"Whereas,
all the men of said county between the ages of 18 and 45 years have
been, since early in the first year of the war, in the military
service of the Confederate States of America, and whereas, the number
of slaves in said county, being very small at the commencement of the
war, has been very much diminished by escaping and being enticed away
by the common enemy, -- there are not more than ten or fifteen able
bodied male slaves in said county, -- that labor has become extremely
scarce, and whereas, the enemy by frequent raids into and through the
county, and remaining for a time, by robbing, plundering, and
wantonly destroying personal property, and carrying away negroes,
horses, cattle, and sheep, and almost everything essential to human
existence, and injuring human habitations, and laying waste the land
and destroying fences and all other improvements, -- and whereas,
detachments of the Confederate cavalry are continually amongst the
people without adequate means of transportation of supplies from a
distance, under the plea of necessity impressing and taking not only
what a citizen may have as a surplus, but the necessary support of
families, --and whereas, the said county is not well adapted
generally to grain raising on the account of cold climate and short
summer seasons, but is peculiarly adapted to grazing and raising
stock, which latter business has been almost entirely abandoned on
account of the temporary presence and continued proximity of the
enemy, together with the impossibility of procuring supplies beyond
the limits of the county with the present depreciated currency of the
country, has placed the said county in a condition almost upon a
point of suffering.."
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