Virginia plans bevy of 150th Civil War anniversary events

A century and a half ago, as the United States descended into a war that would fracture the nation and reshape its future, tensions were high in the Washington area. Virginia, a slave state fighting with the Confederacy, rubbed right up against the Union's capital, and when the war started, Union soldiers poured across the Potomac River into what would become the state with the largest number of battlefields.

As the 150th anniversary of the war's first shots draws close, the state's commemoration plans include a traveling exhibition of life on the battlefield and on the home front, events at battle sites and a project with the Library of Virginia to digitize diaries, letters and other documents from Virginians' private collections.

At the same time, Virginia communities are planning sesquicentennial commemorations, each with its own local flavor.

Alexandria had a unique role in the war, said Amy Bertsch, spokeswoman for the Office of Historic Alexandria. While surrounding communities sided with the South, Union soldiers occupied Alexandria.

"It really became the headquarters for many of the operations during the war, including transportation -- boats and trains," Bertsch said. However, "Alexandria's residents were by and large Confederate sympathizers, and men and boys served in the war but on the side of the South."

The occupation was not kind to the city, according to George Alfred Townsend, a correspondent for the New York Herald, writing in 1863:

"Many hamlets and towns have been destroyed during the war. But of all that in some form survive, Alexandria has most suffered. It has been in the uninterrupted possession of the Federals for twenty-two months, and has become essentially a military city. Its streets, its docks, its warehouses, its dwellings, and its suburbs have been absorbed to the thousand uses of war."

In addition, escaped slaves began to make their way to Alexandria in search of freedom. In 1864, the Contrabands and Freedmen's Cemetery was established at Church and South Washington streets, for freed and escaped slaves and African American soldiers from the Union side; next year, a memorial will be built there.

Other Alexandria plans include a Civil War Ball at Gadsby's Tavern Museum (to be held in January all four years of the sesquicentennial), a commemoration and reenactment of the day the Union Army began its occupation of Alexandria, and a bike trail touring Alexandria Civil War sites.

Loudoun County was a microcosm of what was happening across the country, said Pam Stewart, curator at the Loudoun Museum in Leesburg.

"There were people who were pro-Union. There were people who were pro-secession. There were slaveholders. There were people who were opposed to slavery," she said. "There were literally families fighting against each other, both in terms of the ideological and personal as well as literally fighting alongside each other" on different sides. "They all saw themselves as Virginians."

Although Loudoun was not home to as many battles as some of its neighbors, both armies swept through the county repeatedly, requisitioning livestock and food each time.