Central Virginia Battlefields Trust

06/09/2026

In the months following the Battle of Fredericksburg, the Army of Northern Virginia defended a long front that ran along the Rappahannock River from several miles north of the city and southward into Caroline County. As the first month of 1863 came to an end, a soldier from Gen. Alexander Lawton’s Brigade penning under the name “Camp,” wrote from “near Port Royal” to the Atlanta Southern Confederacy newspaper to inform readers about the army’s situation.

Camp was confident. After recently visiting other parts of the army, he found all “them in good health and spirits—ready as they have ever been, to meet the insolent foe,” and claimed the army “in its present position, is invincible.” Still, the army had needs, Camp noted, particularly shoes and socks, “which are necessary for a soldier’s comfort in such a climate as this.”

Turning to logistics, Camp explained, “The roads here are all in horrible condition; in fact, many of them are impassable.” From Camp’s account, it seems the Confederates had a bit of a “Mud March” themselves. On the road from Guiney’s Station, Camp “saw teams stalling with empty wagons, while every few hundred yards a wagon was mired in the mud to the axles, and abandoned . . . at short intervals, lay numbers of dead mules and horses,” some of which blocked the road.

Camp penned that the men were largely in winter quarters and he found it “amusing to see what a variety of crude huts are constructed.” “Rations now are flour and pickled pork,” he noted, but “rather short” because the roads made delivery difficult. Camp suggested that the army would need to corduroy the road leading from the railroad to properly supply the men “with commissary stores” or “the army will have to change its position.”

Image courtesy of Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/item/2005625036/

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06/08/2026

The almost two-week long slugfest at Spotsylvania took its toll on army horses and mules. Writing on May 15, 1864, Col. Charles Wainwright, who commanded the Fifth Corps artillery, noted that “My poor horses are suffering terribly under this hard work. It is the same old story of corps commanders insisting that their artillery shall be hitched up all the time, even at night frequently. They have no consideration for the horses. . . .”

Additionally, “We have had our teams on half rations, five pounds of grain a day and nothing else; notwithstanding which, there is hardly a sack of grain in my whole command,” jotted a frustrated Wainwright. He fully understood he could not do his job without the animals, and if not properly cared for, they would not survive.

Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

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06/05/2026

In the fighting that occurred at Harris Farm near Spotsylvania Court House on May 19, 1864, among the units sent forward in the Confederate reconnaissance-in-force that day were those of Col. Bryan Grimes, who commanded a brigade in Maj. Gen. Robert Rodes’ Division, Lt. Gen Richard Ewell’s Corps.

In a letter written to his wife that day, he noted before the fight: “Enemy have disappeared; have orders to be prepared to move so as to meet them. This is the fifteenth day since we have met them. Have been fighting more or less every day. If they would retire beyond the river and give us a breathing spell, it would be decidedly advantageous. Nearly all are fa**ed out and need rest.”

Grimes’ prophecy of moving to meet the enemy came true, but Ewell’s Corps received a stiff arm from inexperienced but determined Federal Second Corps Heavy Artillery regiments fighting as infantry fresh from the Washington, DC fortifications. His hope for rest went unfulfilled. However, due largely to his performance at Harris Farm, the colonel received a promotion to brigadier general, dated May 19, 1864.

CVBT has preserved almost five acres at Harris Farm, the only land saved that was part of this battle.


Like our Facebook posts? CVBT is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit entity. We exist only because of the generosity of our members and donors. Please consider giving or joining to support our efforts.
https://cvbt.org/support-us/

06/04/2026

Have you registered for the 2026 CVBT Annual Conference weekend yet? Get your tickets soon! Saturday’s program promises to be extra special this year. We’re fortunate to have subject experts Chris Mackowski and Kris White with us to spend the morning discussing the often overlooked Second Battle of Fredericksburg and its role in the Chancellorsville Campaign. Then, after lunch, we’ll travel by bus to visit a number of sites associated with that May 3, 1863, fighting. You don’t want to miss it!

To learn more about the weekend’s events and to register, visit: https://bit.ly/4c5PrXn


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Central Virginia’s Civil War battlefields are significant sites where pivotal moments in American history took place. Your involvement is crucial in the fight to preserve these historic landscapes.

06/03/2026

An important part of each field artillery piece was the limber. This two-wheeled vehicle carried an ammunition chest for the artillery piece and served as the cannon’s primary method of movement. When the towing lunette on the piece’s trail was placed on the limber’s printle hook, a team of six horses pulled the limber and cannon together. Limbers could also pull caissons (a two-wheeled vehicle with two ammunition chests and a spare wheel), and the battery forge.


Historic image courtesy of the Library of Congress.
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06/02/2026

CVBT released its June 2026 "History Wire" e-newsletter yesterday. This month’s post focuses on accounts mentioning cowardice at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville.

If you missed it, it is available on the CVBT website at: https://bit.ly/4uHHRcu

If you don’t want to miss future CVBT email newsletters, you can sign up for them at: https://bit.ly/3IElLAr


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06/01/2026

Upon returning to camp, and perhaps as a way of venting his frustration following their defeat at the Battle of Chancellorsville, the 17th U.S. Infantry’s Lt. Edward Stanley Abbot, wrote to his cousin Mattie. His hopes about achieving a victory were common among Federal soldiers at that time: “The bitter fact is we have met with a grave disaster . . . . At any rate we will whip them at last. Forty years the Hebrews wandered in search of the Promised Land but at last they reached it. We too shall surely see the fulfillment of the heavenly promise. The God of Justice in Heaven shall yet smile on them that fight for justice upon earth. I see a future for my country more noble than has been permitted to any land thus far, a people just, tolerant, peaceful, giving freedom and education to a continent and true to the principles for which they have suffered.”

Abbot did not have to wait as long as he thought for that victory to arrive. It came two months later at Gettysburg, where he was mortally wounded, dying on July 8, 1863.

Image of Abbot as a sergeant courtesy of the Library of Congress.

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05/29/2026

The Chancellorsville Campaign’s fighting did not conclude on May 3, 1863. Combat continued the next few days as the Army of the Potomac fought withdrawals to get across the Rappahannock River at U.S. Ford and Banks’ Ford.

Capt. Hiram Seymour Hall, who served on Brig. Gen. Joseph J. Bartlett’s staff, remembered the fierce Federal defense on May 4 by Capt. William McCartney’s Massachusetts Battery that evening: “McCartney formed his guns . . . sent home the case-shot, and as the contest warmed his blood, raised in his stirrups, [and] shouted to his eager men: ‘Aim, right section to the right oblique, left section to the left oblique, fire! and shell the whole ______ country.’ The men blackened by powder smoke, worked like demons, the guns belched forth a flood of fiery death, and the hill seemed to rock under the terrific thunder of the battery; great gaps were opened in the enemy’s lines by the tornado of shot and shell; they retired into the friendly shelter of the woods, and night, darkness, and silence drew a curtain of mercy over the fearful scene.”

Image of Hall courtesy of the Library of Congress.

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05/28/2026

A major problem with the Union and Confederate armies being in such close proximity following the Battle of Fredericksburg, was the difficulty of masking major movements. On January 20, 1863, the day the “Mud March” officially began, a Confederate soldier under the pseudonym Tivoli, who probably served in Gen. James Longstreet’s Corps, wrote to the Atlanta Southern Confederacy newspaper from his “camp near Fredericksburg. He had already observed things that he believed heralded a movement by the Federals.

Tivoli wrote that, “For the past three days great activity has been noticed in the enemy across the [Rappahannock] river, and at a point ten miles below this, on the river. . . .” He saw that, “Their pickets have also been strengthened, and mounted blue coats riding hastily up and down, betokens that ‘bustle’ had become the order of the day with them. For what purpose these things are done, remains to be seen.” Tivoli used recent history to make a guess: “Judging by the past tardy action of the enemy, we will have a breathing time of several days ere we are called upon to hold bloody argument with them.”

Tivoli was correct, a movement was afoot, but Mother Nature had other ideas.

Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

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05/27/2026

On May 1, 1863, Maj. Gen. Henry Slocum’s XII Corps ran into elements of Maj. Gen. Richard H. Anderson’s Confederate division in fighting that occurred at the Alrich Farm in Spotsylvania County. Among the wounded that day was Corp. John C. Ellis of the 111th Pennsylvania Infantry. In a letter to his nephew three weeks later, Corp. Ellis explained, “the order was given to fall back to Chancellorsville on double quick and our Regt was to cover the retreat of the balance of [Gen. Thomas Kane’s] brigade[.] [T]he other Regt[s] were so slow in moving[,] the Rebs [were] upon us before we knew it[,] so that by the time that we got to the Plank Rd the Reb Sharpshooters began to pick off our men[.] the Bullets flew like hail arond our heads[.]”

One of the bullets found Ellis. “[T]he first thing I knew I was laying on my back in the ditch along side the Road,” he wrote. “[I was] struck by a bullet on the left side of the back of my neck coming out at the corner of my left eye making a verry dangerous wound[.] [W]hen I fell I was completely Paralized and Blind although I never lost my senses for a single moment[.] Ellis was believed dead, “and the Rebs were right at [our] heels so that if [my comrades] wanted to they could not have [stopped and] picked me up.”

One of Ellis’s fellow 111th Pennsylvania comrades, Pvt. James T. Miller, wrote home that “the reble sharpshooters opened on our column and kiled some two or three of our regt. . . .” More, like Ellis, were wounded. Corp. Ellis remained on the battlefield until captured by the advancing Confederates. Taken to a farmhouse, perhaps the Alrich House, he received treatment for four days until he was sent to a crowded Federal field hospital, where he was exposed to the elements for an additional three days. “[H]ow in the world I survived through it is more than I can tell[.] It was 15 days from the time I was shot untill I rejoined the Regiment again,” he explained.

CVBT’s current campaign seeks to raise $100,000 to save the initial parcel of what was the historic Alrich Farm and the site of two battles; the one described above and another on May 15, 1864, where the 23rd USCT skirmished with Confederate cavalry. To donate to this preservation effort, please visit: https://bit.ly/4nuW0FI


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