TRAGEDY IN THE SHENANDOAH VALLEY: THE STORY OF THE SUMMERS-KOONTZ EXECUTION
by Robert H. Moore, II

Published by The History Press, Inc.
NOW AVAILABLE
128 pages, including index.

For pricing and availability contact:
Robert Moore
E-mail: cenantua@yahoo.com

About the Book (from the back cover):

"Try to meet me in Heaven where I hope to go."


These poignant words were written in the summer of 1865 by twenty-year-old Confederate Sergeant Isaac Newton Koontz, in a letter he penned for his fiancée just hours before his death at the hands of Union firing squad in the heart of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. The execution of Koontz and Captain George Summers came after the surrender at Appomattox Court House, and remains one of the most tragic yet little-known events of the Civil War.

One month prior to kneeling on the hard ground to face their deaths, Koontz and Summers, along with two other Confederate soldiers, had an altercation with a small band of Union cavalrymen, resulting in the Confederates returning to their homes with horses and other items seized from the bluecoats. Soon after the incident, the young men—remorseful and goaded by their fathers to uphold their honor—returned the horses and were offered a pardon by Union Colonel Francis Butterfield. The Page County Confederates returned home, free of mind and clean of conscious. All had been forgiven. Or so they thought.

Well before the sun crept over the horizon on June 27, 1865, Union soldiers—under new command—swarmed the family homes of Summers and Koontz in a swift raid and arrested the two bewildered men. They were told that their pardons were no longer valid, and later that same day they were tied to a stake and shot by a Union firing squad—no trial, no judge, no jury.

Before their deaths, Summers and Koontz were allowed to write farewell letters to their loved ones, and these heartrending documents serve as the basis for Robert Moore’s insightful recounting of the Summers-Koontz execution. An experienced Civil War writer and a direct descendent of Koontz’s fiancée, Moore brings this shocking story to life with a clarity that will appeal to Civil War experts and enthusiasts alike. Exhaustively researched and well written, Tragedy in the Shenandoah Valley tells one of the great and largely untold stories of the Civil War.


Recent praise for Tragedy in the Shenandoah Valley:

"Robert Moore's splendid new book displays precisely the kind of thorough, definitive research in primary sources that I love to see. His pathetic story, movingly told, of the murder of two Shenandoah Valley boys in an era of uncontrolled thuggery deserves the widest possible circulation."
- Robert K. Krick, author of Stonewall Jackson at Cedar Mountain


A quick look at the
TABLE OF CONTENTS
for Tragedy in the Shenandoah Valley


Contents
Acknowledgements
A Note to the Reader
"A Voice from the Ground" by Cornelia Jane Matthews Jordan (1830-1898)
Chapter 1 - A Community at War: Reflections of Alma and Grove Hill
Chapter 2 - Going Home: Spring 1865
Chapter 3 - The Trouble Begins
Chapter 4 - Tharp's Promise of Retribution
Chapter 5 - The Darkest of Days
Chapter 6 - In the Wake of Tragedy
Chapter 7 - The Enduring Legacy of Summers & Koontz
Appendix A - Complete Text of "A Fair, Candid and Unbiased Statement of the cause which led to the execution of my Son, Capt. GEO. W. SUMMERS And the circumstances connected therewith Grove Hill, Page Co., Va., July 24, 1865"
Bibliography
Index
About the Author


A Short Version of the Summers-Koontz Incident Story as it appeared in Blue & Gray Magazine in 1992.


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