Civilians in the Civil War
By Jonathan Yardley
Dec. 17, 1995
Washingtonians can drive for a couple of hours in almost any direction with full confidence that sooner or later they will encounter a major battlefield of the Civil War. From Gettysburg to Manassas to Antietam, most of the war's most important conflicts occurred in the central Mid-Atlantic, in the territory attacked or defended by the Army of the Potomac. But the war in this part of the country wasn't just a succession of monumental collisions between the Union and the Confederacy; of greater moment for ordinary people, it was a state of siege for soldiers and civilians alike, one that lasted for four years and touched virtually everybody.
Daniel Sutherland's Seasons of War is an effort to recreate for today's reader what it was like to live for so long in such a state, to have one's existence permanently altered by "the destructive power and demoralizing forces of war." The community upon which he focuses is Culpeper County, southwest of Washington in rural Virginia, a place that at the outbreak of war was "a modest landholding, of no great account in the world's affairs, unless, of course, this is your world." Though only two battles of real consequence were fought there, at Cedar Mountain and Brandy Station, Culpeper's "strategic location on the Orange & Alexandria Railroad {made} it a natural place, much like Harper's Ferry, to stock supplies, rendezvous men, and train recruits," with the consequence that it was prized by both sides and fought over constantly.
Before the war it was "a pleasant place for most people," though certainly more so for whites than for blacks whether free or slave, in which "neighborhood and kinship {gave} people a sense of belonging." Its economy was agricultural but included some industry, commerce and transportation. It had few people of great wealth but many of modest prosperity; similarly, it had few large slave-owners but many small ones. Economically and topographically it had more in common with southern Pennsylvania than with the Deep South, but it was solidly pro-slavery and, once initial doubts had been assuaged, firmly behind the secessionist government.
Culpeper -- both the county and the county seat of the same name -- was in Rebel hands for most of the war, but this was a mixed blessing. On the one hand "the citizens always {felt} safer with the army here, at least safer than when it {was} away," but on the other hand the army was "a magnet for trouble," a reality that hit home with full force in 1862 when Yankee troops under the command of John Pope occupied Culpeper and put it under stringent orders that produced "confiscation, indiscriminate destruction and intimidation" from which only the county's few Union loyalists were exempt, albeit imperfectly so. A newspaper correspondent who visited the county saw a "melancholy picture of desolation and devastation," the result of the "unbridled license" exercised by Pope's men. Eventually Pope claimed that "the original order had been entirely misinterpreted," but by then the damage had been done.
By the fall of 1862 Culpeper was back in Confederate hands and remained that way until the war's final months, but it was hard for civilians "to proceed with life as usual, clinging to any remnant of their old world"; such remnants as existed were mostly in disrepair, and mere survival was the best that most could hope for. Yet there was a palpable sense of excitement, of being at the center of history, even as the war ground to its inevitable conclusion. Most of the great names of the war passed through Culpeper, and some stayed for a while, most notably Robert E. Lee, who made it his winter quarters for 1862-3 because of its "natural resources, railroad depot and friendly population." In time locals came "to look upon Lee's army as their private guard, a local militia."
During Lee's occupation Culpeper enjoyed a social life of sorts, including parties that featured "music, merriment and dancing but little else," known somewhat disparagingly as "Confederate parties." The arrival of any new military celebrity was occasion for one of these, and local belles got themselves up in what remained of their finery; some thus equipped were able to snare husbands, and even those who failed to make conquests found the parties a welcome break from the dislocations and carnage of war.
BY THE SUMMER of 1863 the tide had begun to turn with Lee's failure at Gettysburg, and "for the first time in the war, a Confederate army {entered} Culpeper as the vanquished." Union and Confederate troops began a long period of conflict that ranged throughout the county, inflicting upon its residents what one Union officer called "acts of pillage and outrage on the poor and defenseless" that caused him to "loathe all war." Another Yankee said that "the demon of destruction, roused by a spirit of resentment, prompts the best of men to deeds of rapine and plunder," and devastation was everywhere.
By 1864 Culpeper was back in Union hands and remained so for most of the rest of the war; the community was "transformed into a combination northern military bastion and extended soiree," with various dignitaries coming south from Washington to inspect the troops and get a harmless taste of war. Culpeper hung grimly on, awaiting the end and the opportunity to rebuild.
The county's story is rich material, and Sutherland has unearthed a great deal of it. He has not always made the most of it. In part this is not his fault, for more military than civilian documents have survived; one result is that what was meant to be a civilian story too often becomes just another recapitulation of twice-told military tales. A greater problem, though, is Sutherland's prose. Not merely has he chosen to tell the story in the present tense, but he is partial to a contrived folksiness that quickly becomes grating. "Now, understand," he writes, or, "Custer had a helluva good time," or, "Trouble is, most of the remaining folk...." A little of this lasts for a long while, and there is a great deal of it in Seasons of War. It quite unnecessarily detracts from what is in many other respects an admirable book.
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