Shenandoah
Copyright© 2014 by Pappy
Prologue
The Shenandoah Valley is both a geographic valley and cultural region of western Virginia and the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia in the United States. The valley is bounded to the east by the Blue Ridge Mountains, to the west by the eastern front of the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians, to the north by the Potomac River and to the south by the James River. The cultural region covers a larger area that includes all of the valley plus the Virginia highlands to the west, and the Roanoke Valley to the south. It is located within the Ridge and Valley province and is a portion of the Great Appalachian Valley.
The Shenandoah Valley contains a number of geologically and historically significant limestone caves:
* Skyline Caverns
* Luray Caverns,
* Shenandoah Caverns
* Endless Caverns
* Grand Caverns,
* Dixie Caverns
You may wonder why all this is in the story or even important to it"
It is not the caves themselves but what some contain that this story is trying to unfold.
During March 1865 the 'War of Northern Aggression' had gone badly for us. The 'Blue Bellies' were marching, raping and pillaging the land and all we had to stop them were our women, children and old men(Sherman's March To The Sea).
The war between soldiers was bad enough, but when the 'Federals' decided to kill women and children it was then revenge and no longer just a war. We knew how those injuns felt when their families were slaughtered by them Yankees. The pro-Union federals resorted to capturing & imprisoning the female and children family members of the suspected Southern sympathizers and our patriot fighters.
These, some of them babies and teenagers, were jailed in Kansas City, MO, in George Caleb Bingham's house, on Grand Street. When imprisoning them did not result in the response they wanted, the federal soldiers (or Kansas jayhawkers) dismantled the foundations of the house they were kept in, causing it to collapse. Many women and children were maimed and killed. To this day, the cause of that building collapse remains controversial, as the 'Blue Bellies' claim the building was 'decrepit', though the house was only 7 years old.
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