Civil War in Virginia

Ambrose Bierce is credited with the sardonic comment, "War is God's way of teaching Americans geography..." More recent satire in the New York Times highlights how time and places can be juxtaposed.

The physical geography of Virginia affected where the armies marched, where they camped, and where they fought. The war made a lot of places in Virginia special, even "hallowed." Efforts to preserve the special places today reflect the geography of tourism.

Union troops marching through Mount Jackson in 1862
Source: Frank Leslie's illustrated history of the Civil War (p.220)

On to Richmond in 1861

Map of the Virginia Railroads at the Start of the Civil War

After First Manassas

Yorktown in the Civil War

Site of Civil War Hospital in Mount Jackson, between Winchester and Staunton
(most Civil War hospitals were in areas remote from fighting but near railroads,
which brought the wounded and supplies... but Mount Jackson was in the middle of the Shenandoah Valley battles in 1864)

Links

• 1864 - The Valley Aflame
• Alexander Street Press - The American Civil War: Letters and Diaries
• American Civil War - original sources related to Virginia:
  • Memoirs: Archibald Atkinson, Jr, Surgeon, CSA, 31st Virgina Infantry and 10th Virginia Cavalry,1861-65
  • Letters: George Rust Bedinger, 33rd Virginia Vol. Inf., Capt., Co. E, January 10, 1861 to May 14, 1863, letters to and from him
  • Letter: Col. Arthur Cummings, 33rd Virginia Volunteer Infantry
  • Letters: Sgt. Ferdinand Dunlap, 33rd Virginia Volunteer Infantry
  • Letter: Jacob Golladay, Jr., 33rd Virginia Volunteer Infantry, Capt., Co. H, May 8, 1863
  • Memoir: Phoebe Yates Pember, first 8 chapters of A Southern Woman's Story; Pember was a nurse at the Confederate Chimborazo Hospital in Richmond
  • Charles Hutson, 22 July 1861, First Battle of Manassas, Va.
  • Isaac Howard, 25 December 1862, Fredericksburg, Va.
  • Edward Rowe, 11 May 1863, Chancellorsville, Va.
  • Lewis Warlick, 19 May 1864, Spotsylvania, Va.
  • Diary: Capt. Michael Shuler, 33rd Virginia Volunteer Infantry
• Archaeology Magazine - Vanishing Civil War Battlefields
• Bristoe Station
• Bermuda Hundred (In May, 1864 - after Cold Harbor - General Ulysses S. Grant recognized the futility of attacking entrenched positions manned with a full complement of Confederate soldiers. Burnside had failed at Fredericksburg, and Grant himself had failed at Cold Harbor. However, he knew that thinly-manned or hastily-built fortifications could be seized - he had already done so in the Overland Campaign at Spottsylvania and Fredericksburg. The question was... could Grant's subordinate, General Benjamin Butler, recognize if the trenches blocking the path to Petersburg were too strongly fortified?)
  • Bermuda Hundred Digital Orthophoto
  • Bermuda Hundred Campaign
  • The Dutch Gap "Action" Sequence
• Civil War at a Glance
• Cedar Creek Battlefield
• Civil War Generals
• Civil War Interactive
• Civil War Preservation Trust
• Civil War Battlefield Preservation
• Civil War Richmond
• Civil War Times
  • War-Watchers at Bull Run (August 2001)
  • The End - the final days of the Civil War (May 2000)
  • Damn These Torpedoes Too! - Admiral Farragut vists Richmond in 1865 (March 2000)
  • Nurse Pember and the Whiskey War (August 1999)
  • The Sperryville Outrage (March 1999)
  • They Paid To Enter Libby Prison (February 1999)
  • Robert E. Lee on Black Confederate Troops (February 1998)
  • Prelude to a Duel (June 1997)
  • Can We Ever Raise The Monitor? (June 1997)
  • Stuart's Revenge (December 1996)
  • Air War Over Virginia (October 1996)
• Civil War Traveler - Virginia
• Civil War Virginians of the Allegheny Highlands
• Colonel John Mosby
• The Memoirs of Colonel John S. Mosby
• Mosby Museum (in Warrenton)
• Combat Studies Institute
• Rails to Oblivion: The Decline of Confederate Railroads in the Civil War
• Staff Ride Handbook for the Overland Campaign, Virginia, 4 May to 15 June 1864: A Study in Operational-level Command
• Ford's Theater National Historic Site - John Wilkes Booth
• Historic Tredegar (in Richmond)
• Library of Congress - Civil War Maps
• MapMachine (National Geographic) - Civil War
• Maps of National Historic & Military Parks, Memorials, and Battlefields
• Museum of Confederacy Flag Collection
• National Archives "Eyewitness" Lt. Thomas O. Selfridge, Jr. - Sinking of the USS Cumberland, 1862
• Virginia units were often raised from one local area. You can track those soldiers throughout the war:
• Start at Virginia Infantry Regiments and follow units like the 42nd Virginia from Campbell County...
• or go to The Virginia Civil War Home Page and examine Virginia Confederate Units by unit and by county of origin.
• Guide to Virginia's Civil War Battlefields and Sites
• Fredericksburg - Civil War
• National Park Service
• Civil War
• American Battlefield Protection Program - Virginia battlefields
• Study of Civil War Sites in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia
  • Geography and Strategic Importance of the Valley
• Civil War Photographs from the Library of Congress, including pictures of the Peninsula Campaign and Fort Monroe and Hampton
• "Virginia Civil War Images" from Harpers Weekly from George Mason University
• Civil War Images of Northern Virginia
• Lower Shenandoah Valley Civil War Round Table
• Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Commission
• for those interested in Central Virginia, The Civil War in Central Virginia
• Historic Military Sites in Central Virginia from Visit Virginia
• Civil War era holdings - VMI Archives
• The Alexandria, Loudoun and Hampshire Railroad In The Civil War
• Virginia Division - United Daughters of the Confederacy
• Monitor National Marine Sanctuary (a National Marine Sanctuary off Cape Hatteras...)
• Civil War Center
• Bull Run Civil War Round Table
• West Virginia Military Research (mostly Civil War)
• Battlefields of Virginia (images in the Alexandria library, from the May 1887 "excursion" of the veterans of the 57th and 58th Massachusetts to the Civil War Battlefields of Virginia)
• John W. Fairfax
• H-CIVWAR Home Page
• Take the online Civil War trivia quiz from Rockbridge Publishing Company
• Matthew Fontaine Maury
• United Daughters of the Confederacy - Virginia Division
  • Interior Appropriations Act threatens Manassas Battlefield
  • burial of Stonewall Jackson's horse
• Terrell's Texas Cavalry, 34th Regiment CSA
• photos of Manassas Battlefield, from a then-and-now site
• The Fredericksburg Battlefield Virtual Tour from James M. Schmidt
• "Remember The Cause" Home Page (with a link to the Reenactor Ring)
• Buchanan County (Virginia) Civil War Web Page
• Battle of Cedar Mountain - August 9, 1862
• Battle of Brandy Station - June 9, 1863
• Christmas in the Confederate White House (Varina Davis' Recollections in 1896)
• Women Soldiers of the Civil War (from Prologue: Quarterly of the National Archives - Spring 1993)
• A Virginia Girl in the Civil War, 1861-1865: Being a Record of the Actual Experiences of the Wife of a Confederate Officer
• Civil War Records - An Introduction and Invitation (from Prologue: Quarterly of the National Archives - Spring 1990)
• Welcome to the Robert E. Lee Memorial (Custis-Lee House)
• from West Virginia History
  • General R. E. Lee's Northwest Virginia Campaign
  • John Brown at Harpers Ferry: A Contemporary Analysis
  • War Comes to the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal
  • Gray Forces Defeated in Battle of Lewisburg
  • The McNeill Rangers: A Study in Confederate Guerrilla Warfare The Beginning -- Philippi, 1861
  • Slavery in Present West Virginia in 1860
  • The Civil War Record of Albert Gallatin Jenkins, C. S. A.
  • Fayetteville, West Virginia, During The Civil War
  • Five Tri-state Women During the Civil War: Day-to-Day Life
  • A Confederate Journal
  • Lincoln and the "Vast Question" of West Virginia
  • Rich Mountain Revisited
  • Nathan Goff, Jr., In the Civil War
  • The Confederate Postal Service in West Virginia
  • War-Time Reminiscences of James D. Sedinger Company E, 8th Virginia Cavalry (Border Rangers)
  • Statehood for West Virginia: An Illegal Act?
  • The Civil War and Reconstruction in Henrico County
• Richmond National Battlefield Park
• 2nd U.S. Cavalry-Company A
  • and their 1997 schedule at Manassas
• The Virginia Civil War Home Page, including Virginia Confederate Units by unit and by county of origin
• Disney Documents, concerning the canceled Disney's America, Haymarket, Virginia
• Roads Projects on Manassas Battlefield:
  • I-66 Corridor Major Investment Study
  • Western Transportation Corridor Study
  • Citizens Against Roads for Developers (CARD)
• First Battle of Manassas
• The Longstreet Chronicles
• Civil War Round Tables Index
• Eastern National Park & Monument Association
• Events, Book Signings, and Shows from civilwarreader.com
• The 48th Virginia Infantry
• The American Civil War, 1861-1865- World Wide Web Information Archive
• 30th Virginia Infantry (2nd Battalion Virginia Volunteers)
• Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War
• Civil War Women - Primary Sources on the Internet
• Grand Army of the Republic
• United States Civil War (interactive tour of Virginia's role in the war)
• books... and links
• The American Civil War Institute of Campbellsville University in Campbellsville, Kentucky.
• Civil War Defenses of Washington Newsletter
• The Civil War Home Page, with its new Calendar of Events
• Antebellum Richmond
• The Bugle Call
• Selected Civil War Letters from the Southern Historical Collection, including a letter from Charles Hutson on 22 July 1861 (First Battle of Manassas)
• Civil War Resources on the Internet: Abolitionism to Reconstruction (1830's - 1890's)
• The American Civil War, 1861-1865 from Bryan Boyle
• Virginia Military Institute
• Civil War Archives
• Virginia Tech Digital Library and Archives
• American Civil War Manuscript Guides
• Lee's Retreat
• Virginia Civil War Images" from Harpers Weekly
• US Civil War and an excerpt from Virginia's Civil War: A Self-Guided Tour
• Did you know James River Publications has put all the Virginia historical markers on line, by theater?
  - Shenandoah Valley/(South)Western Virginia
  - Northern Virginia
  - Richmond/Central Virginia Area
  - Tidewater/Southern Virginia
• Gettysburg Discussion Group, with lots of links too
• The Library of Virginia "Directory of Repositories" of sites with Civil War holdings, like the Handley Regional Library in Winchester.
• The Red Legged Devils of the 14th Brooklyn, with a great set of links to other sites
• Civil War Poetry and Music
• Civil War and Reconstruction list of Web sites, selected by the History Department at George Mason University (including the Library of Congress Civil War Home Page)
• American Civil War Resources on the Internet from Dakota State University in - of all places - Madison, South Dakota
• Yahoo's Civil War links
• National Park Service Links to the Past and the American Battlefield Protection Program
• The National Park Service's official Web page for Manassas Battlefield
• Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park
• The Battlefield Web (with Fredericksburg, Falmouth, and Spottsylvania collections)
• The Smithsonian Associates Civil War Studies [describing local tours, too]
• the moderated soc.history.war.us-civil-war newsgroup
• Indiana University's links for the History Profession (including the American Civil War Home Page, with its Frequently Asked Questions list - Part 1 and Part 2 - from the alt.war.civil.usa newsgroup)
• Guide to Virginia's Civil War Battlefields and Sites
• the Library of VirginiaVA-HIST listserv Archives
• Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System
• Virginia County Vote on the Secession Ordinance, May 23, 1861
• Southern Claims Commission
• Mt Zion Church Preservation Association
• The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies and Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion (from Cornell University - Making of America)
• National Archives
  • Civil War and Reconstruction (1850-1877)
  • sound file of John Salling (.au file, 159K), saltpeter digger from Slant in Scott County. Interview was in 1957, when Salling was 100 years old and reputedly the last surviving Confederate (he died shortly thereafter).
• Rebel yell (.wav file)
• Pamplin Park
• The Civil War Drawings of Edward Lamson Henry on the James River - "War Sketches Oct & Nov - 1864"
• The Southern Homefront, 1861-1865, from Documenting the American South (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
• Geographic Information Systems for Civil War Battlefield Preservation (by William J. Drummond at the Georgia Institute of Technology)
• Bull Run Flyby from the Civil War Center.
• 1862 Peninsula Campaign - map of the Peninsula
• Sullivan Ballou's final letter from Manassas
• US Army Center of Military History Staff Rides:
  • Bull Run
  • Cedar Creek
  • New Market
  • Second Manassas
• Irish units
  • Irish Units in the American Civil War
  • 1st Virginia Infantry Co. C - Montgomery Guard (reenactors of Irish Confederate unit)
  • 27th Virginia Regiment (reenactors - The Virginia Hibernians)
  • 17th Virginia Regiment (reenactors)
• Maps of the American Civil War
• Manassas National Battlefield Park Bypass Study
• Bristoe Station
• The Battlefield of Manassas
• Documenting the American South First-Person Narratives (from University of North Carolina)
  • A Boy's Experience in the Civil War, 1860-1865
  • A Rebel's Recollections
  • A Sermon Delivered in the Market Street, M. E. Church, Petersburg, Va.: Before the Confederate Cadets, on the Occasion of their Departure for the Seat of War, Sunday, Sept. 22d, 1861
  • A Soldier's Recollections: Leaves from the Diary of a Young Confederate: With an Oration on the Motives and Aims of the Soldiers of the South
  • A Southern Girl in '61: The War-Time Memories of a Confederate Senator's Daughter
  • A Virginia Girl in the Civil War, 1861-1865
  • Acts of the General Assembly of the State of Virginia, Passed at
    • Adjourned Session, 1863
    • Called Session, 1862
    • Called Session, 1863
    • Session of 1863-4
  • Address of Hon. John S. Preston, Commissioner from South Carolina, to the Convention of Virginia, February 19, 1861
  • Address of the Baptist General Association [of] Virginia: June 4th, 1863
  • Call for enlistment of Virginians in the Potomac Military Department
  • Correspondence between the President of the Virginia Central Rail Road Company and the Postmaster General, in Relation to Postal Services
  • Diary of Anita Dwyer Withers
  • God our Refuge and Strength in this War. A Discourse Before the Congregations of the First and Second Presbyterian Churches, on the Day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer, Appointed by President Davis, Friday, Nov. 15, 1861
  • He That Believeth Shall Not Make Haste." A Sermon Preached on the First of January, 1865, in St. Paul's Church, Richmond
  • How a One-Legged Rebel Lives: Reminiscences of the Civil War: The Story of the Campaigns of Stonewall Jackson, as Told by a High Private in the "Foot Cavalry": From Alleghany Mountain to Chancellorsville: With the Complete Regimental Rosters of Both the Great Armies at Gettysburg
  • Journal of the House of Delegates of the State of Virginia for the
    • Called Session of 1862
    • Called Session of 1863
    • Extra Session, 1861
    • Session of 1861-62
    • Session of 1863-64
    • Adjourned Session, 1863
  • Journal of the Sixty-Eighth Annual Council of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Virginia. Held in St. Paul's Church, Richmond, on the 20th, 21st and 22nd May, 1863
  • Lieutenant General Jubal Anderson Early C.S.A.: Autobiographical Sketch and Narrative of the War between the States
  • Life Gleanings
  • Memoir and Memorials: Elisha Franklin Paxton, Brigadier-General, C.S.A.; Composed of his Letters from Camp and Field While an Officer in the Confederate Army, with an Introductory and Connecting Narrative Collected and Arranged by his Son, John Gallatin Paxton
  • Message from the Execttive [sic] of the Commonwealth: With Accompanying Documents, Showing the Military and Naval Preparations for the Defence of the State of Virginia, &c. &c.
  • One of Jackson's Foot Cavalry: His Experience and what He Saw During the War 1861-1865, Including a History of "F Company," Richmond, Va., 21st Regiment Virginia Infantry, Second Brigade, Jackson's Division, Second Corps, A. N. Va.
  • Opinion of the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia in Regard to Liability to Military Service of the Principals of Substitutes
  • Recollections Grave and Gay
  • Remarks on the Subject of the Ownership of Slaves, Delivered by R. R. Collier of Petersburg, in the Senate of Virginia, October 12, 1863
  • Report of the Auditing Board of the State of Virginia
  • Report of the Committee on Banks, Relative to the Currency, &c. &c. &c. Doc. No. XIV
  • Social Life in Old Virginia before the War
  • Some Reminiscences
  • The End of an Era
  • The General Military Hospital for the North Carolina Troops in Petersburg, Virginia
  • The Heart of a Soldier: As Revealed in the Intimate Letters of Genl. George E. Pickett C.S.A
  • The Memoirs of Colonel John S. Mosby
  • The Partisan Leader: A Novel, and an Apocalypse of the Origin and Struggles of the Southern Confederacy
  • The Soldiers' Almanac for 1863
  • The Story of a Confederate Boy in the Civil War
  • The Valley Campaigns: Being the Reminiscences of a Non-Combatant While Between the Lines in the Shenandoah Valley During the War of the States
  • The War; "Stonewall" Jackson, His Campaigns, and Battles, the Regiment as I Saw Them
  • To Arms! To Arms! $50 Bounty. Do Not Wait To Be Drafted, but Volunteer!!
  • True Courage: a Discourse Commemorative of Lieut. General Thomas J. Jackson
  • True Eminence Founded on Holiness. A Discourse Occasioned by the Death of Lieut. Gen. T. J. Jackson, Preached in the First Presbyterian Church of Lynchburg, May 24th, 1863
• Papers of Jefferson Davis:
  • Jeff Davis telegram from Manassas, July 21, 1861
  • Buena Vista
  • Beauregard's report on First Manassas
  • Jefferson Davis to Congress of the Confederate States, Richmond, February 25, 1862
    • The people of the Confederate States being principally engaged in agricultural pursuits, were unprovided at the commencement of hostilities with ships, ship-yards, materials for shipbuilding, or skilled mechanics and seamen in sufficient numbers to make the prompt creation of a navy a practicable task even if the required appropriations had been made for the purpose. Notwithstanding our very limited resources, however, the report of the Secretary will exhibit to you a satisfactory progress in preparation, and a certainty of early completion of vessels of a number and class on which we may confidently rely for contesting the vaunted control of the enemy over our waters.
  • Lee re: invading Maryland
• Civil War Preservation Trust
  • At Risk Battlefields
• Virginia Ordinance of Secession
• The Valley Campaigns; Being the Reminiscences of a Non-Combatant While Between the Lines in the Shenandoah Valley During the War of the States
• A Virginia Girl in the First Year of the War
• A Virginia Girl in the Civil War, 1861-1865: Being a Record of the Actual Experiences of the Wife of a Confederate Officer
• WideAwake.org (battlefield preservation)
• Coalition to Save Chancellorsville
• Central Virginia Battlefields Trust
• Civil War Maps and Charts of Virginia (US Coast and Geodetic Survey)
• Battle of Five Forks
• Flags of the Confederacy
• VA-HIST listserver: discussion of Confederate Flag (March, 2004)
• USS Alligator (the first US submarine)
• Secrets of the "USS" Alligator
• The Hunt for the Alligator (Navy & Marine Living History Association)
• University of Virginia
• Eastern Theater of the Civil War - follow the marches of the 5th Virginia Regiment, 1861-65 (requires Shockwave)
• Electronic Text Center
• American Civil War Collection
• Valley of the Shadow

Confederate Cemetery - Manassas National Battlefield Park
(click on images for larger versions)