Lee’s
grand army departed Gettysburg “dog-tired and hungry.” Poorly fed, they
have existed on bread, berries and green apples and the horses eating
grass, -- only after arriving at Culpepper did the men enjoy a cooked
meal and the horses find loose corn. The residents of Culpepper learned to
fear the enemy as they found that its target was not only Lee’s army,
but them as well.
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
"Unsurpassed Valor, Courage and Devotion to Liberty"
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
War Against Virginia’s Civilians
“August 4
[1863]: Culpepper civilians are apprehensive again. [General JEB]
Stuart has not even enough men to protect them from the Federal raiders
who seem to cross the Rappahannock at will. Sally Armstrong’s family is
still plagued by the blue devils.
“Nothing but Yankees from morning to night,” she protested on July 29,
“no signs of them leaving yet.” She hears of how horribly the Federals
have been treating people in Fauquier County, and lives “in dread of
having the infantry come over and pillage.” “Great anxiety we live in .
. . our neighbors . . . have had almost every mouthful taken from
them.”
[Nearby
enemy regiments have] emboldened Culpepper slaves to dash toward Union
lines all along the river, from Kelly’s Ford to Waterloo. On one
evening alone, about forty “children of Ham,” as [the enemy commander]
calls them, moved within his picket lines . . . . Many of the boys and
men will be hired by Federal officers as body servants, although some
officers refuse under any circumstances to hire “wretched niggers.”
Most
have been mere field hands as slaves, complains one [Northern officer],
and therefore are ignorant of the duties of a personal servant. “To
this ignorance,” he elaborates, “must be added the natural laziness,
lying, and dirt of the Negro, which surpasses anything an ordinary white
man is capable of.” Not [all Northern troops] agree with this
assessment . . . A member of the 20th New York Militia
admires “the thousands” of contraband blacks laboring in [General]
Meade’s camps as cooks, teamsters and servants . . . he informs his
mother. He believes the blacks “as a class” exhibit more “native sense”
than the majority of white Southerners.
[Meade]
makes no move [and many sense] that Meade is not yet comfortable as the
army’s commander. Word has it that he nearly gave up the fight at
Gettysburg after the second day, and he now seems overly deliberate and
cautious.
Meanwhile,
Culpepper’s civilians hunker down. Captain Charles Francis Adams, Jr.,
commanding the Union picket force on the Hazel River . . . knows that
these people hate him and his men, but he understands the reason. He has
witnessed daily “acts of pillage and outrage on the poor and
defenceless” that make his “hair stand on end,” and cause him to “loathe
all war.” [His] Soldiers, usually under cover of darkness, break into
homes, rifle closets and drawers, take what they like, and abuse and
threaten their victims. Some citizens are too terrified to sleep.
“Poor
Virginia!” laments Captain Adams. “Her fighting men have been
slaughtered; her old men have been ruined; her women and children are
starving and outraged; her servants have run away or been stolen; her
fields have been desolated; her towns have been depopulated.”
“The
horrors of war are not all to be found in the battle-field,” he
laments, “and every army pillages and outrages to a terrible extent.”
“What
shall I write for these times?” [Sally] asks her diary. “Yankees doing
all conceivable wickedness.” “If God did not rule we would die in
despair. He only can help us.”
(Seasons of War, The Ordeal of a Confederate Community, 1861-1865, Daniel E. Sutherland, LSU Press, 1995, excerpts, pp. 269-276)
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