Civil War devastated Culpeper

After three years of war, Culpeper County’s population dropped to less than 10,000 people in late 1863, with the remaining inhabitants about evenly divided between black and white folks.

Following the Bristoe Station Campaign, the Army of Northern Virginia withdrew into Culpeper, and while observing the desperate, starving plight of local citizens, Robert E. Lee wrote on Nov. 6, 1863, to Virginia’s Governor: “I find there is great suffering among the people … for want of the necessities of life.” General Lee added, “The farms and gardens have been robbed, stock and hogs killed, and these outrages committed, I am sorry to say by our own army … as well as the Federals.”

Closing his note, General Lee requested that the governor “forward such supplies of flour and meat as can be obtained to Culpeper Court House.”

But despite his compassionate sentiments toward Culpeper, General Lee’s army was defeated at Rappahannock Station on Nov. 7, 1863, and on Nov. 8, the Union Army of the Potomac crossed the river. And for the next six months, the “heel of the invader” further obliterated that which remained of Culpeper County, Virginia.

In noting that Culpeper “had been so much gone over by both armies that nothing was left,” one Federal officer wrote: “The Palatinate, during the wars of Louis XIV, could scarcely have looked so desolate as this country. The houses that have not actually burnt usually look almost worse than those that have, so dreary are they … Hundreds of acres of stumps show where once good timber stood, and the arable fields are covered with weeds and blackberry vines …”

Walt Whitman arrived in Culpeper and observed the town’s mud “at its deepest and palmist condition.” He noted that the two armies had chased themselves over Culpeper “like clouds in a stormy sky,” and had rendered the county “trodden with war.”

A private soldier added, “The country around Culpeper is desolate. No people — no crops. The country is more like a graveyard than anything else.”

An officer spoke of the “dreary wastes of the Culpeper plains … “The ceaseless tramping of men, horses and wagons … had pulverized the soil into dust, and rendered the landscape so desolate and barren that it hardly seemed possible that sun and rain would ever again be able to make a flower bloom or a plant grow.” Another concluded. “The county is dreary with dead horses, butchers’ offal, and the most stupendous flocks of crows.”

But already ravaged by war or not, depredations continued against local citizens, as the Union army’s Provost Marshal General complained his own army has “robbed every citizen of his forage and subsistence … and they have burned houses, barns, outhouses and meat houses.”

General Marsena Patrick bitterly complained to the army’s top general that Federal soldiers committed “all sorts of depredations and vandalism …”

Compassion toward Culpeper was again revealed when a general officer wrote: “I desire to … call the attention of the commanding general to the extreme destitution of the inhabitants … which if not promptly relieved, must result in the most intense suffering …”

He added, “It is scarcely necessary to describe … the full extent of this destitution… than the rigorous extremity to which a community … unfortunately situated between … two hostile armies … and at all times robbed and plundered by stragglers of both armies, must, in the course of three years of warfare, be reduced.”

General James Rice urged that no matter the loyalty of Culpeper’s citizens, the army must be allowed to feed them. For the most part, however, his appeal fell on deaf ears. Culpeper continued to starve.

And speaking specifically of the village of Culpeper, one returning Southern visitor noted that the town “has changed her features, and sack cloth and ashes fill the place of wine and scarlet.” He added, “My heart ached over old Culpeper, and sad and sick, I wandered for a while in the wild, neglected gardens …”

A Culpeper teenager offered her focused view of the war to a Yankee: “Before you people came, my father was worth 300,000; his large house was burned by your cavalry; we eat your pork and bread, and just think of it! I haven’t had a new dress or bonnet since the war began!”

On May 5, 1864, the Army of the Potomac departed Culpeper forever, and it would take decades for the county to recover from the savage conflict. Soon after the war, a Federal chaplain visited and presciently observed, “the Angel of Peace now hovers over Culpeper.” He prophesied that the county would one day “prosper like none other.”

We’ll leave the last word to Union Nurse Cornelia Hancock:

“What magnificent residences will rear their heads in these hills after the sounds of war ceases!”

 Clark B. Hall is an authority on the Civil War in Culpeper. He can be reached at Clark BHall@aol.com