"My Old Carpetbagger": How a Yankee Saved the Capital from Rebel Invaders, Led Virginia Republicans during Reconstruction and Fought Governme

During the Civil War, not all Southemers were secessionists. Not all Yankees who later came south were "carpetbaggers" bent on exploiting their former foes. This book portrays exceptions to both rules - Simon Elliot Chamberlin, a Union cavalry officer who relocated to northern Virginia, and Edith Matthews, daughter of a Quaker family in Confederate Virginia. Their separate wartime experiences would deeply influence their subsequent courtship and marriage. His military career, especially with the 25th N.Y. Cavalry and its defense of Washington in 1864, is set against the contemporaneous experiences of young Edith and her farming family, part of a pro-Unionist enclave in Loudoun County that paid a heavy price for its support of the North.

Navigating between a shared love for Virginia's Piedmont and opposition to the former secessionists return to power was not easy. After a go at running, Elliot parlayed skill as a political activist among Union veterans to become chairman of Virginia's Republican Party during Reconstruction, putting him on a collision path with an old foe, John Mosby. Later as Treasury special agent, he helped uncover corruption and fraud from the N.Y. customhouse to faraway Cuba, yet at times seemed oblivious to failings closer to home. Through it all, we get to witness first hand the Chamberlin family grapple with immense changes that beset the nation and federal government during the last decades of the 19th century.

"From Mosby to Mugwumps, Confederates to carpetbaggers, panics to politics, Taylor Chamberlin's new historical exploration opens a fascinating mid-to-late 19th century world to the curious and discriminating reader. Virginia's sense of place pervades Chamberlin's work, since he is writing of places and people he knows, near and dear to his heart. Couple this with his deep knowledge of the region, of the Civil War here, and its neglected postwar story, this will engage many a reader."

-Richard T. Gillespie, former Director, John S. Mosby Heritage Area Association