DEEP BLUE IN A REB STATE
For Corporal Charles Lynch and his comrades in the 18th Connecticut Infantry, Martinsburg, W.Va., had the feeling of a second home by the time the regiment reached there July 11, 1864. Over the previous two years, the 18th Connecticut had been in Martinsburg on numerous occasions and under various circumstances. In fact, Lynch wrote in his diary on the 11th that the 18th Connecticut regarded Martinsburg as “our home town.” While familiarity with Martinsburg was partially responsible for that feeling, something else added to their comfort: Martinsburg possessed the most substantial Unionist population of any community in the Shenandoah Valley. While Lynch wrote of visiting Unionist “friends” when in Martinsburg, other Union soldiers who spent time in the community noticed the strong Unionist sentiment, too. More than two years earlier, Sheldon Colton, an officer in the 67th Ohio Infantry, wrote his mother that Martinsburg contained “some pretty good Union men and women…[they] are very kind to us, and help us all they can.”
As Virginia debated secession in late 1860 and early 1861, support for the Union remained strong throughout the Valley. Fifteen of the 19 delegates who represented the Valley’s communities at the secession convention in Richmond were pro-Unionist, including both from Berkeley County—Edmund (sometimes spelled Edmond) Pendleton and Allen Hammond. Both voted against secession on April 4, 1861. Thirteen days later, following the war’s opening salvos at Fort Sumter and Abraham Lincoln’s call for 75,000 volunteers to suppress the rebellion, both Pendleton and Hammond voted against secession, though Hammond later changed his vote and eventually signed the ordinance of secession. Pendleton, who earned the title “Edmond, the Staunch and Steady,” for his support of the Union, never wavered and refused to sign the ordinance.
While Unionist sentiment throughout the Valley waned in the wake of Virginia’s secession, Martinsburg and Berkeley County proved Unionism’s bastion. Of all the Valley’s counties, Berkeley was the only one
