A Matter of Injustice:
The Summers-Koontz Incident
by Robert H. Moore, II
Reprinted with permission from the February 1992 issue of Blue and Gray Magazine
PLEASE NOTE: The story that follows below is actually a very short version of the overall story that is now being featured in a full-length book (128 pages) titled Tragedy in the Shenandoah Valley: The Story of the Summers-Koontz Execution For more information about this new book to be released late in August 2006, go to /cenantuaheight/TragedyintheShenandoah.html. A direct link to the latest (August 2006) publications released by the History Press, Inc. can also be seen at http://www.historypress.net/index_new.php. Tragedy in the Shenandoah Valley can be seen at the bottom of that webpage.
As the earth glows orange, a warm June sun sets behind the blue hue of the mountains to the west. Occasionally the hum of a passing vehicle breaks the stillness along the picturesque Valley Pike.
The contemporary scene, apart from the occasional automobile, is little different from the one of 127 years earlier. Then too, cattle and green rolling hills have taken the place of Federal occupation soldiers and scorched earth. The place is just north of New Market, Virginia - better known for the battle where the cadets of the Virginia Military Institute gained undying fame. However, a lone graying five-foot monolith in a field near Rude's Hill does not pay tribute to the Confederate victors of that spring day in 1864. Instead, it gives evidence of a little known incident which took place almost three months after Lee surrendered.
Like most of the South's surviving residents, the people of the Shenandoah Valley took little pleasure in the continuing presence of the "damned Yankees." To make matters worse, many Confederate veterans, who had escaped capture or surrender, faced a difficult reality. Their cause was lost and they needed to obtain paroles from their former enemies.
Over a month after Appomattox and the subsequent but separate disbandment of the famous Laurel Brigade, four young veterans of Company D, 7th Virginia Cavalry set out from their homes in Page County for Woodstock to receive paroles. Twenty-two-year-old Captain George Washington Summers, Sergeant Isaac Newton Koontz, his cousin Jacob Dallas Koontz, and Andrew Jackson Kite started on their way in the early morning hours of May 22, 1865.
The passage across the Massanutten and down the Valley took them past a party of Union troops conveying ex-Governor Letcher. Passing the small caravan without incident, minutes later the group came upon a band of about half-a-dozen stragglers from Co. H, 22nd New York Cavalry.
What came over the ex-Confederates can only be guessed as they drew revolvers and demanded that the Federals surrender their horses. A lieutenant with the band of cavalrymen "resented" the demand and drew his pistol. In what would have otherwise been a classic scene from some western novel, one of the four assailants turned his piece toward the gun wielding lieutenant. Both men's weapons produced no more than a "pop" of the cap. The Rochester cavalrymen reluctantly consented to surrender.
Realizing that they had just carried out an illegal guerilla action, the four young men returned to their homes in the Luray Valley where they were ill-received by their rightfully disturbed fathers. After the facts of the incident had been ascertained, Captain Summers' father, also named George, set out to gather a group of the most respected local citizens to go to the Federal camp the next day and plead that the local soldiers' rashness be forgiven.
The following morning the group went to Rude's Hill and the camp of the 192nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry. The elder Summers recollected that they were "courteously" received by Colonel Francis W. Butterfield, commanding the post. After Summers explained his mission to the attentive colonel, they made an agreement that with the return of the stolen property the matter would be closed with no punishment to the four. As proof of the return of property, receipts were given to the ex-Confederates. Satisfied that the mission was a success, the four young men and their friends returned home. No account was made of the transaction in the Ohio regiment's Morning Order book.
Although for the ex-Confederates the matter appeared to be resolved, trouble again surfaced one Sunday following the return of the property. A local Union sympathizer, William Tharp, got into an argument with a former Confederate over an incident during the war. The elder Summers recollected that Tharp, "became very much enraged.: After one of the young men earlier involved in the stolen horse episode made a comment to Tharp, the Unionist snapped back: "You had better return those horses stolen from the Yankees!" The verbal battle heated up even more when Captain Summers and two others joined against Tharp. At the conclusion of the verbal confrontation one young man threatened to hit the Yankee sympathizer. Tharp swore he would go to the Federal camp and get revenge for his mistreatment.
Whether or not Tharp carried out his threat can only be ascertained due to the lack of information available. One event worthy of note, however, is that the previous week Colonel Butterfield had gone on furlough and Lieutenant Colonel Cyrus Hussey was left in command.
Another known fact is that on the following day, Monday, June 26, Special Order #3 was issued by Hussey to Captain Lycurgus D. Lusk, commanding Company H, 22nd New York Cavalry, to "proceed to Luray Valley at 9 p.m. and there arrest and execute severally and all without delay whatsoever, the followed named men who had been guilty of attacking U.S. troops and stealing horses since the surrender." The four young men were named and underlined several times in red. The order for the execution was according to General Order #1 and was also noted in a post-war reference as having been carried out in accordance with instructions "from Army and Department Headquarters."
Early on the morning of June 27 the company reached the vicinity of the homes of Summers and Daniel Koontz (Dallas' father) and proceeded to encircle them. Jackson Kite and Dallas Koontz succeeded in evading the Federals. George Summers was equally determined to make his escape. After some convincing by his father, however, Summers allowed himself to be arrested to face what his father expected would be a fair trial. Newton Koontz, arrested earlier at his home, soon arrived at the Summers' home escorted by Federals.
Before Newton's party had come to the Summers' home they had stopped briefly at Kite's Mill near Columbia Mills. Koontz apparently saw a familiar passerby and asked the lieutenant permission to draft a quick note and have the friend dispatch it to his betrothed. The lieutenant allowed it and Newton wrote:
I write to inform you that I was arrested this morning before daylight
at Uncle Daniel Koontz's in bed. I am now under arrest . . . I hope
dearest Emma you will bear up under this as well as you can, and doubt
not but that God will allow me to return to you[.] he will not allow such
innocence to be bereft of its happiness. I hope Mr. Shuler will take some
interest in my welfare and do some things for me if possible, I expect to
be carried to Mount Jackson, where I suppose they will give me an
honorable trial. The Lieutenant and men appear to be gentlemen . . . . I
am conscious of having acted the part of a gentleman in returning the
horses, I have the consolation of knowing I have faced death on a
hundred battle fields, and should it be my sad lot to suffer death, I shall
endeavor to doe a brave man, and a gentleman . . . .
The elder Summers tried to explain the earlier agreement made with Colonel Butterfield and showed the receipts for the returned items, but Captain Lusk was indignant toward Summers and had no knowledge of the transaction. However, Summers had "breakfast prepared for them and they ate at the same table with my son George." When the party was finished and ready to go, the elder Summers stated his willingness to accompany them back to Rude's Hill and see the officer in charge. Captain Lusk in turn told him it would be best to wait until the following day and possibly procure their release. The elder Summers was satisfied that he would be able to do so, but his son felt uneasy and bid farewell as if he were certain he would die.
The Rochester Cavalry arrived at the foot of the Massanutten Mountain on the Shenandoah County side sometime that afternoon and Summers and Koontz were told of their fate. Up to this point, no mention had been made by their captors of the requirements of Colonel Hussey's order and the boys pleaded for mercy. There was to be no trial, but the young men were permitted to request the services of the local reverend, Socrates Henkel, for the last rites. Still the boys pleaded until Captain Lusk said he would go ahead to the camp and see what could be done.
Sometime after the captain had departed, the detachment again started the march to the Federal camp. When within a hundred yards of the Federal bivouac, the company was greeted by yet another party tasked with an on-the-spot execution. Summers and Koontz were permitted to write final letters to loved ones. Summers' note was simple:
My Dear Father, Mother, Sisters, and Brothers: Very much to my
surprise, we must soon leave this world to try the realities of an
unknown one, but pray God that I had died upon the battlefield in
defense of my dear native South! But it has been otherwise ordered.
I submit to my fate. Pray for me, and try to meet me in heaven. I feel
as though God will forgive my sins. Don't grieve after me. Farewell,
my father, mother, sisters, brothers, and friends.
Newton Koontz wrote his fiancé and parents in two separate letters. To his "Darling Emma," Emma Jane Shuler, he wrote:
Oh, how can I bear to write you? Affliction is bearing me down!
But I will write you a few lines. They are now ready to shoot me.
Oh Emma, dearest in the world to me, how can I leave you but I
must. Oh, I have heard you often say it would kill you to hear of my
death. But dearest Emma take it as you can . . . . I wish to be buried
with this ring on my finger. Emma, my respect to your father and
mother whom I have loved as such, but no more.
Yours in death,
I.N. Koontz
P.S. Try to meet me in heaven where I hope to go.
To his parents he dictated a last note:
My Dear Father, Brother, Sisters, Nephews, Niece, Black ones and
family: I bid you all farewell in this world, hoping to meet you all in
a better and happier world. I have been bandaged and tied to be shot,
but have sent for Parson Henkel . . . . Remember dear ones that this
world is all a shadow, only a moment in life, and death everlasting.
Prepare to meet me in heaven every one of you, I will close . . . .I wish
to be buried beside my dear mother. No more, goodbye forever.
Reverend Henkel did not come, and at 7:30 p.m. the men stood before a firing squad.
Shortly thereafter they were riddled with bullets. In a post-war account from the 192nd Ohio, the conduct of the two condemned was exemplary.
On the morning of June 28, the elder Summers showed up with his friends in order to defend the two men. But before the campsite was reached, and near 11 a.m., Summers found his son and Newton laid out on the ground with "stones for pillows." Though the elder Summers had been a Unionist, he now felt a strong hatred toward the Yankees. He stated that he felt "cheated" out of the opportunity to influence the authorities. However, he later wrote, "To those that spoke evil and treated me unkindly I returned many kind acts."
On July 7, another party of 20 men under Lieutenant Henry E. Beeby, also of Company H, 22nd New York Cavalry, set out pursuant to Special Order #3, to apprehend and execute Jackson Kite and Dallas Koontz. Before the end of the day, though , orders from the Headquarters of the Army of the Shenandoah arrived calling for the action to cease. The two surviving men were pardoned by General Alfred T. A. Torbert, who a year earlier had carried out General Grant's orders to execute any of Mosby's men who were captured.
A monument today stands as a silent reminder of the little known incident and reads simply:
Captain George W. Summers and Sergeant Newton Koontz,
Company D, 7th Virginia Cavalry, were here executed on June
27, 1865, by order of Lt. Col. Huzzy [sic] 192 O.V.M.I., without
the privilege of any kind of trial, they having been arrested at
their homes in Page County, brought here and shot.
The grave of Captain Summers lies across from the old Ingham Station in Page County; Sergeant Newton Koontz rests peacefully in a family lot near Alma, Page County.
Read more about this story in the 128 page book recently released (August 2006) by the History Press, Inc. - Tragedy in the Shenandoah Valley: The Story of the Summers-Koontz Execution by Robert H. Moore, II
A Link to a Website Pertaining to the Life of Lt. Col. Cyrus Hussey
A Link to a Website Pertaining to Wartime Diary of Lt. Col. Cyrus Hussey (July 1862- July 1863)
Return to the Page County Confederate Units and Veterans Home Page
Return to the Summers-Koontz SCV Camp #490 Home Page
Return to Books Authored by Robert H. Moore, II