Burn the Town and Sack the Banks: Confederates Attack Vermont!
By Cathryn J. Prince
(September 2008 Civil War News)

Illustrated, notes, bibliography, index, 279 pp., 2006. Carroll & Graf Publishers, 245 W. 17th St., New York, N.Y. 10011, $26.95 plus shipping.

Reviewer: Paul Taylor
Paul Taylor is the author/editor of four books on the Civil War. His forthcoming biography of Union officer and engineer Orlando M. Poe will be published by Kent State University Press. Visit www.paulrtaylor.com for details.

Review:
Vermont will hardly register in most minds as the site of a Civil War engagement, yet on the rainy afternoon of Oct. 19, 1864, 20 young Southern men who had at one time been Union prisoners and then escaped into Canada were about to bring the war home to the Green Mountain State.

Though they were thought to be ordinary civilians, the raiders revealed themselves as Confederate soldiers and proceeded to take over the sleepy town of St. Albans. With guns drawn, they rounded up numerous unsuspecting civilians into the town square, and then proceeded to relieve three banks of over $50,000.

Their next goal was to burn the town to the ground as vengeance for the havoc wreaked within the Confederacy; however, their bottles of “Greek fire” failed to properly ignite, causing virtually no damage.

These Confederate raiders, led by the dashing Lt. Bennett Young, then mounted their horses and made their escape back into Canada where they were eventually arrested by Canadian authorities.

 In what was angrily considered by Union authorities as an outlandish gesture of sympathy for Southern war aims, the Canadian courts refused the U.S. government's demand for immediate extradition.

Instead, the key focus of the trial would be to determine whether the raiders were lawful belligerents engaged in an act of war sanctioned by the Confederate government or merely common thieves and pillagers. The charges against Young and his men were ultimately dismissed or ignored in a courtroom drama that for its day rivaled any modern celebrity trial. 

Burn the Town and Sack the Banks: Confederates Attack Vermont! by author Cathryn J. Prince tells the story of what became the northernmost land action in the Civil War and of the diplomatic tensions that soon followed. The author is a professional journalist and it is apparent that her skills have served her well.

Burn the Town is a very smooth, easy read and often has the feel of an enjoyable novel. The depth of the research does not disappoint either. A review of the bibliography shows that Prince used numerous primary sources, both published and unpublished, to write an engaging tale that can be digested smoothly. Fourteen photographs of the key participants are also included in the book’s midsection.

There seems to be considerable extraneous background material, however. To this reviewer, much of the first half of the book seemed to bounce around from one topic to the next.

First up is a chapter devoted to Vermont and its early home front in the Civil War, which leads to a discussion of Phil Sheridan and the battle of Cedar Creek. Then down to Kentucky for a review of Lieutenant Young’s home state and finally back up north for a discussion of Canada’s neutrality.

Prince  ultimately connects the dots nevertheless the reader is at the midway point before the author starts to delve into her primary topic.

 As for citing her sources, Prince  chose not to utilize endnote numbers within the text. Instead, she lists the page numbers, the beginning and ending words from the particular passage being cited, and then the source within her endnotes section at the back of the book.

This forces the reader to constantly flip to the back of the book to discover if a particular piece of narrative is being cited. Still, this is only a minor annoyance.

Of far greater importance is the complete lack of maps to be found within the book, which inevitably leaves the reader groping around in the geographical dark.

Such an oversight in this type of work is what can turn a good book into a disappointment. A map of 1860s Canada and Vermont, or even a street map of St. Albans, surely would have enhanced the reading experience.

 The St. Albans Raid of 1864 is a fascinating piece of marginalia from the American Civil War. Much has been written in the past pertaining to that fall day that is now either out of print, obscure or otherwise unavailable to the average reader.

For modern readers unfamiliar with this event, Burn the Town and Sack the Banks will provide a sturdy retelling of the affair. Sadly, you’ll have to provide your own maps.