The Compassionate President Abraham Lincoln Intervenes to Allow a Grieving Father to Go to the Front and Collect the Body of His Stepson, Who Was Killed in a Battle With Mosby’s Rangers and Buried in Virginia

Many Patriotic young men on the West Coast had followed the Civil War in the newspapers and were anxious for a chance to join in the fight. But they knew that if they joined a California state unit, they would be stationed in the West, fighting Indians, guarding commerce trails, or doing garrison duty. In the late summer of 1862, a group of Californians contacted Governor John A. Andrews of Massachusetts and proposed to raise 100 volunteers to form a separate company in a cavalry regiment that was being raised in Massachusetts. The Governor agreed on condition that the Californians would provide their own uniforms and equipment. Officially they became company A of the 2nd Massachusetts Cavalry. This first contingent was soon followed by 400 more California volunteers who formed Companies E, F, L, and M. These Californians used their enlistment bounty to pay for their passage and set off by sea from San Francisco. At the Isthmus of Panama they debarked, transited the Isthmus by rail, then boarded a ship for the eastern seaboard. By April all the Californians were at Camp Meigs, Leadville, Mass. They were known as the “California Battalion”. One of these men was Walter S. Barnes, who enlisted in San Francisco on February 5, 1863, and was assigned to Company E. The remaining companies in the regiment were raised largely in Boston and other places in the eastern Massachusetts. The main body of the regiment left Readville, Mass. for the seat of war May 11, proceeding to Washington.

Loudoun County Virginia was an area of significant military activity during the Civil War. Located on the state’s northern boundary, the Potomac River, it became a borderland after Virginia’s secession in 1861. Loudoun County’s numerous Potomac bridges, fords, and ferries made it an ideal location for both Union and Confederate armies to cross into and out of Virginia. Likewise, the county’s several gaps in the Blue Ridge Mountains that connected the Piedmont to the Shenandoah Valley were of considerable strategic importance. The opposing armies traversed the county several times throughout the war leading to many battles and skirmishes, and the county changed hands six during the course of the war, the last time being in the summer of 1864. There continued to be fighting in Loudoun even later, with the last territory being contested in the county on March 21, 1865, just 19 days before Lee’s surrender.

Ashby’s Gap in Loudoun is a gap in the Blue Ridge Mountains, with the town of Upperville being the closest to the gap; the towns of Middleburg and Aldie are just east of it. In June 1863, Confederate General Robert E. Lee marched north to Pennsylvania for the Gettysburg Campaign, and General J.E.B. Stuart’s cavalry was ordered to hold the Ashby’s Gap to prevent elements of the Union Army from interfering with Lee’s plans. There was extensive fighting between the major cavalry units of both armies at Aldie and Upperville as Lee headed north. As Lee retreated and resettled in Virginia, possession of that gap again became a subject of dispute. On July 12, 1863, the 2nd Massachusetts Cavalry, in Col. Charles Lowell’s Brigade and under the command of Major Caspar Crowninshield, moved through Middleburg and Upperville. The 2nd Mass. sent some companies to Ashby’s Gap, which was then in the hands of John Mosby’s legendary Confederate Rangers, who operated widely in Loudoun throughout the conflict. Crowninshied’s men skirmished with the Confederates, driving them up the gap and then pursuing them three miles. At day’s end Federals held the gap, though they took casualties to gain the victory. Among these was Walter S. Barnes, who was killed and buried in Upperville.

James Hughes of Bloomington, Indiana was elected to the House of Representatives as a Democrat in the 35th Congress and served from March 4, 1857-March 3, 1859. He was then appointed Judge of the U.S. Court of Claims by President Buchanan and started serving in that capacity in 1860. Hughes supported the Southern Democrat, John C. Breckinridge, for President in the presidential contest of that year. After the formation of the Confederacy, however, he became an ardent Union man. He continued in that capacity under President Lincoln, who knew and liked him, remaining in office until he resigned and left the bench in February 1865. Walter S. Barnes was his step-son, and clearly the death of the young man would have hit the family hard.

Whether the decision to try and find young Barnes’s grave and remove his body to Indiana was reached after months of contemplation, or early 1864 was the first time that Loudoun County seemed safe and secure enough to allow for retrieval of the body is unknown. But the decision made, Hughes wrote Lincoln with the request: “Mr. President, Will you be pleased to write on the margin of the letter herewith sent or write below this, a note of request, or an order to Major Crowninshield, commanding the 2nd Mass. Cavalry, to furnish the bearer, the necessary guides and escort to recover the body and oblige….James Hughes.” The letter worded this way implies that Lincoln knew of the Hughes family’s loss, so no extensive detail was needed.

Lincoln was a man filled with compassion, and though there was still fighting in Loudoun, could not bring himself to refuse. He complied, so long as Hughes’s activities would not compromise the military on the spot. Autograph document signed, Washington, March 2, 1864. “Major Crowninshield is directed as above, unless it will interfere with the military orders, under which he is acting, or in his judgment, is dangerous, or improper….A. Lincoln.”

The body was retrieved from its grave in the war zone, and is now buried at Rose Hill Cemetery in Bloomington, Indiana, as is James Hughes.