SALISBURY — If you want to be a full-fledged Salisburian, you should know something about Stoneman’s Raid, which blew into in our town 150 years ago today.

The argument could be made that Union Maj. Gen. George Stoneman’s arrival — some historians say he probably rode into Salisbury on a wagon because his hemorrhoids made it too uncomfortable for him to straddle a horse — belongs on the Mount Rushmore of historic events in Salisbury.

It’s definitely top five. Think about it. This was an invasion. In the populace’s mind, the enemy cavalry of up to 4,000 soldiers — almost twice the city’s population — were outright terrorists whose mission was to put down any rebellious home forces and destroy anything of value to the Confederacy.

They did both.

“The tragic part of it was,” says Civil War enthusiast Dr. Norman Sloop, “the war was already over.”

Word had yet to reach Salisbury April 12, 1865, of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s surrender three days earlier at Appomattox Court House. The destruction that occurred in Salisbury under Stoneman’s orders probably hastened the real end to the Civil War because it destroyed vast storehouses of military arms and food supplies, which had been accumulated here to replenish Confederate forces such as those under the direction of Gen. Joe Johnston.

Johnston would surrender his large Confederate force at Bennett Place in Durham County April 26, 1865.

Brig. Gen. Alvan C. Gillem, Stoneman’s second in command, reported destroying the following items in Salisbury: 10,000 weapons, a million rounds of small ammunition, 10,000 rounds of artillery ammunition, 6,000 pounds of powder, three magazines, six depots, 75,000 uniforms, 250,000 blankets, 20,000 pounds of leather, $15 million in Confederate money, 80 barrels of turpentine, medical stores valued at more than $100,000 and over 200 tons of food.

All of these supplies — which had been shipped in from Columbia, S.C.,  Charlotte, Richmond, Va., and Danville, Va., besides the large amount of state property Gov. Zeb Vance had ordered to be stored in Salisbury — filled four blocks on North Main Street.

Poor people were allowed to carry away what they could, but most of it was set afire.

“Light from the giant bonfires reportedly (was) seen 30 miles away,” a Civil War Trails marker at the Rowan Museum says. “The stores had been sent to Salisbury to prevent them from falling into Gen. William T. Sherman’s hands as he marched north from Georgia.”

Stoneman, once a prisoner himself in Andersonville, also had made it a personal mission to destroy the notorious Confederate Prison in Salisbury. He did so, though there was no triumphant liberation because virtually all of the Union prisoners had been moved elsewhere earlier in the year.

If there were one bit of local redemption to Stoneman’s two-day occupation of Salisbury, it came at Fort York. There, a strong Confederate resistance beat back the Union troops’ efforts at destroying the railroad bridge across the Yadkin River.

It ‘s considered the last Confederate victory on a N.C. battlefield.

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You might find it hard to believe but some of today’s local history enthusiasts have a soft spot in their hearts for Stoneman, because he bowed to the wishes of city leaders and spared the 1854 County Courthouse, which is now home to the Rowan Museum.

And the destruction and pillaging overall could have been much worse.

Margaret Beall Ramsey, a Salisbury widow whose account of the events related to Stoneman’s occupation is often quoted by historians, wrote, “Salisbury … may well afford to hold Stoneman’s name in grateful remembrance.”

By sparing the courthouse, says Kaye Brown Hirst, executive director of the Rowan Museum, Stoneman saved for posterity all of the records stored in it, including those from the register of deeds.

Those documents help to make today’s History Room at the Rowan Public Library a treasured destination spot for genealogists. As much as the splendid building itself, Hirst says, “it was the contents that were in this building that were so wonderful.”

“If we would have been on Sherman’s route, we wouldn’t have had any of this,” Hirst says. “… We were lucky to have Stoneman instead of Sherman.”

Terry Holt, a history buff and president of the Rowan Museum board, says he guesses what shocks people when they study Stoneman’s Raid in relation to Salisbury is that there were enough supplies to restock upwards of 100,000 Confederate soldiers.

Things were being stockpiled here and not getting to Confederate soldiers because Vance, the N.C. governor, and Confederate President Jefferson Davis “couldn’t get on the same page,” Holt says.

The supplies should have been going to Lee’s and Johnston’s armies, but the agreement with Vance, for example, said uniforms made in North Carolina went to troops from North Carolina only.

A frustrated Davis said something to the effect that, if Vance wasn’t willing to share, keep the stuff in North Carolina, Holt says.

Holt notes that Chris Hartley’s definitive 2010 book on Stoneman’s Raid suggests that most Salisburians weren’t entirely upset that the prison went up in flames. He quotes one local resident who said, “No one was sorry when the Yankees made a bonfire of the evil smelling, empty, dolorous prison.”

As some evidence to demonstrate how restrained Stoneman was during his two days in Salisbury, Holt says Mary Ellis, wife of the late Gov. John Ellis, told Stoneman she needed a guard at her house. The first guard Stoneman dispatched was drunk, so Ellis sent word back that she needed a new soldier stationed at her house, and Stoneman obliged.

Overall, Holt adds, Stoneman passed down instructions to his troops, not always followed, that there should be no terrorizing of the community and no unnecessary looting. Nonetheless, residents were said to have buried their silver and hidden their jewelry and other valuables before the Yankees’ arrival.

Union soldiers went door to door, demanding silverware and pocket watches as they also searched through rooms, closets and drawers.

Holt says the family of Dr. Josephus Hall, who had a summer farm in the country, took a wagonload of valuables there for safekeeping against the Yankee hoard.

One notable story came from a family Bible, describing how Mrs. Francis E. Shober of North Fulton Street had given birth to a baby boy on the day Stoneman arrived, and in the folds of his diaper, she had hidden her diamond ring.

There was some “tomfoolery,” from the occupying Union forces, according to Holt. Stoneman stayed at the Mansion House, which was located at today’s Square, and some of the soldiers signed the registry book at the inn as “Robert E. Lee” and “Stonewall Jackson”

The Rowan Museum still has that registry book with those names inscribed.

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Ed and Sue Curtis, chief organizers behind each year’s Salisbury Confederate Prison Symposium, note that one of the primary reasons Stoneman came to Salisbury was to liberate the prison.

“Obviously, he was a little late for that,” says Sue Curtis, who now laments that Stoneman hadn’t spared the prison. In burning it, Stoneman also torched records of the Union prisoners who had been incarcerated and maybe even perished there, along with names of Confederates who were guards.

A big part of  the Curtises’ efforts through the years has been to help descendants of Union prisoners find out more about their stay here.

“I understand the sentiment for destroying the prison,” Sue Curtis says, “but those records would have answered so many questions.”

Ed Curtis says Stoneman took his own prisoners in Salisbury, and even though the war was surely over or winding down, he is amazed that the Union forces went to the expense of transporting them to a Union camp.

Ed Curtis describes a journey for those prisoners taking them to Nashville, Tenn., Louisville, Ky., and finally to Camp Chase in Columbus, Ohio.

The Curtises believe if Stoneman would have stayed a few days longer in Salisbury, he would have been able to capture Davis, the Confederate president, who came through Salisbury during his escape southward.

As for the overall effect of Stoneman’s Raid here, Sue Curtis says, “In a way, it affected the Confederacy more than Salisbury itself.”

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All told, what’s considered Stoneman’s Raid lasted two months, though Stoneman wasn’t with it the whole way, and it didn’t end until the capture of the fleeing Confederate President Davis in May 1865.

Stoneman’s Raid is considered on of the longest cavalry raids in U.S. military history.

To understand what it represented, Tom Layton says, you probably should start with the last line of “Stoneman’s Last Raid,” a 1961 book written by Ina Van Noppen.

“It was a knife thrust into the virtually undefended back of the Confederacy,” Van Noppen wrote.

In recognition of the 150th anniversary of Stoneman’s Raid, Layton created an online newspaper called The Stoneman Gazette, which has been posting stories daily, usually with some connection to where Stoneman’s forces were on the same date.

Today’s edition of The Stoneman Gazette (www.stonemangazette.blogspot.com) is scheduled to have a story related to Salisbury.

Stoneman’s huge cavalry force entered North Carolina from Tennessee in late March, and his men, often divided into various detachments, went through western North Carolina and into Virginia destroying factories, bridges and rail lines while also relying on the communities they passed through for food and supplies.

Along the way, historians say, the raiders captured artillery, took thousands of prisoners and blocked possible routes of retreat for Lee and Johnston.

According to a state history site, Stoneman’s men maybe confronted the biggest resistance on their advance toward Salisbury, particularly as they attempted to cross Grants Creek.

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A small force of 500 Confederates with two artillery batteries and 200 former prisoners from the Confederate Prison was assembled to defend Salisbury. But Stoneman’s sheer numbers overwhelmed the resistance.

Only a couple of hours after the first shots were fired at Grants Creek, the Confederate forces were routed, and Stoneman’s troops entered from three directions — down Old Mockville Road and across Shober’s Bridge on today’s North Ellis Street, on today’s West Innes Street and over the Old Plank Road.

Harriet Ellis Bradshaw wrote this description from that day: “The roadway was jammed with a surging mass of mounted soldiers and rampant horses spurred to a breakneck speed to overtake General Beauregard’s withdrawing troops.

“It was frightening, curiously thrilling, to see the capless cavalrymen standing erect in their stirrups as they rode, brandishing bared sabres in hand as they let out ear-splitting yells.”

Dr. Sloop, whose land bends along Grants Creek where the Union forces approached 150 years ago, says men from the 13th Tennessee crossed his property on their way to securing the railroad bridge still located at the far end of the  Hefner VA Medical Center and next to Kelsey-Scott Park.

There were still Confederate entrenchments on the property when his father bought it in 1941, Sloop recalls.

Sloop makes a good observation — 4,000 men on horses take up a lot of space. So when you consider the question of where they crossed Grants Creek, Sloop says, the answer has to be “everywhere.”

Some histories mention that Grants Creek was “deep” where the Union forces were attempting to cross, but Sloop says they were really talking about the steep banks leading to the creek, not the depth of the water itself.

There was nowhere to easily take a horse down and back up, and that’s why the bridge on today’s West Innes Street, where a state highway historical marker is posted, was so important.

“Here again, it was all academic,” Sloop says, “because the war was over.”

But to the residents of Salisbury, it was anything but over.

The Rowan Museum will commemorate Stoneman’s Raid at 4 p.m. today in front of the 1854 courthouse (Rowan Museum) at 202 N. Main St. the LandTrust for Central North Carolina also is conducting tours of the Fort York area along the Yadkin River every hour between 2 and 5 p.m. today. At Tuesday 7 p.m. meeting of the History Club at the Rowan Museum, author Chris Hartley will be talking about Stoneman’s Raid, and Hartley also will be guest speaker Friday night at Landmark Church for the opening of the Confederate Prison Symposium.