3-011-461 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The War in America: march of Kershaw's and Fitz Lee's divisions of the Confederate Army up the valley of Virginia, 1864. 'We have received, from our Special Artist and Correspondent with the army of the Confederate States in Virginia...sketches illustrative of the recent operations in the Shenandoah Valley...[The engraving shows] the march of the divisions commanded by Kershaw and Fitz Lee...on their way to form a junction with the forces under General Early, near Winchester...the valley...here spreads to such width that it should rather be called a plain. The Blue Ridge is seen in the distance, to our right hand; and to our left is the smoke and flame of burning villages which have just been visited by the Federal army. Our Special Artist, indeed, from his actual observation, testifies that, on this occasion, "the Federals retreated, burning and laying waste every homestead in their track; thereby reducing hundreds of families to absolute poverty and possible starvation" - treating the State of Virginia as a hostile country, but in a spirit of wanton destructiveness unknown to modern European warfare'. From "Illustrated London News", 1864.