by Karl Rhodes
Thomas Jefferson once wrote that “a little rebellion now and then is a good thing; as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions indeed generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them.”
Perhaps this was the principle at work in March 1862, when a significant number of Virginians in Rockingham County refused to comply with Gov. John Letcher’s declaration that all militiamen in the Shenandoah Valley must answer the bell for round two of the Civil War.
The first inkling of this little-known rebellion within the rebellion came from the pen of Jedediah Hotchkiss, who would become Stonewall Jackson’s topographer. “The Rockingham militia has been released for 10 days,” he wrote on March 18, as he passed through the county on his way to Jackson’s headquarters at Winchester. “They are quite averse to going.”
It was certainly no surprise to Hotchkiss or to Jackson that groups of Mennonites and Dunkers (German Baptist Brethren) were captured in mid-March as they tried to flee through the mountains of Western Virginia. But these nonviolent deserters were not alone in their refusal to return to the war. Jackson’s 10-day grace period had ended, and quite a few Rockingham militiamen were still AWOL. Some of these men had volunteered for military service at the start of the war, and under Virginia law, their one-year military obligation was about to expire. More disgruntled men joined the Rockingham Rebellion after March 29, when Governor Letcher proclaimed that all Virginia militiamen would be inducted as privates into “volunteer companies” of the Confederate ranks.
“There is much uproar among the militia,” Hotchkiss wrote. “I am glad that I have made my escape from the militia [onto Jackson’s staff] before this proclamation.” Continue reading
