Life on the Virginia Home Front > Confederate Frontier

Confederate Frontier

More than anywhere else in Virginia, the pace of activity was heightened on the Confederate frontier; home front and battlefront often overlapped there. To the dismay of secessionists who resided north of it, placement of the frontier was determined by decisions in Richmond as to how much territory it could realistically defend while maintaining an impregnable Confederate seat of government. With the subsequent movement of large Union and Confederate armies that periodically overran this frontier, it inevitably shifted. As in no-man's-land, the threat of northern intrusion brought anxiety, followed by severe hardships when the federals actually came. A number of outposts—notably Winchester, Culpeper, and Fredericksburg—were in fact overrun and occupied on multiple occasions. Residents were sometimes terrorized by the proximity of combat, their food and property was often stolen or destroyed, and the landscape around them was ravaged. Slaves seized the opportunity either to escape to freedom or to demand improved conditions.

Despite the monumental challenges that they faced along the frontier, residents attempted to carry on life with some degree of normalcy. Some succeeded better than others.

Learn more about:   Winchester   |   Culpeper County   |   Fredericksburg   |   The Frontier Surrounding Richmond   |   The Lower Valley   |   The Upper Valley

Winchester

Winchester's strategic location made it a focus of military campaigns. To the Union army, the town was a gateway to the Shenandoah Valley; to the Confederacy, it marked the northern frontier and was an important agricultural market center and a railroad junction. Winchester changed hands more than seventy times during the war, sometimes twice in the same day. As one army and then the other alternately garrisoned the town, civilian governance ended and the lives of many residents were upturned.

The History of Occupation

Winchester was occupied by Confederate troops in June 1861, to the dismay even of secessionists, who were overwhelmed by the size of the army, the diseases it contracted, and in time by the number of wounded. Unionists of the town were forced to remain silent, else they be persecuted and arrested. Beginning in 1862, contending armies repeatedly occupied and then released the town. In March, Confederate troops under Stonewall Jackson withdrew, returned two months later, only to withdraw again. Following the Union defeat at Second Manassas that summer, it was the federals who retreated, burning buildings in the town. Soon thereafter, following the Confederate retreat from Antietam, the federals returned. Union occupation was particularly difficult for secessionists in 1863 when General Robert Milroy assumed command and expelled dissenters. The Confederate odyssey to Gettysburg that year brought a familiar pattern: brief periods of occupation and disruption. In the process of all of this change, Winchester took on a bleak appearance. Houses were increasingly deserted, as more of the population fled, heading north and south. At the end of the summer of 1864, Winchester changed hands six additional times.

Runaway slaves found refuge in Winchester when it was in Union hands. They took shelter in empty houses and warehouses, only to panic and flee on the return of the Confederate army.

Read more contemporary accounts

Pictured: View of Winchester, Va., from fort on the hill N.E. of the town, by Edwin Forbes, July 20, 1862 (Library of Congress)

Culpeper County

Residents of Culpeper County suffered some of the worst hardships of the war. Not only did Union troops engulf and desecrate the countryside, but Confederate armies foraged there as well.

Pope - "The Miscreant"

In July 1862, Union general John Pope moved an army of 80,000 troops into the county to seize control of the Orange and Alexandria Railroad, sever communications between the Shenandoah Valley and Richmond, and move toward the Confederate capital. Pope initiated a harsh policy that rejected the "gentlemanly" rules of war followed by his predecessors. He authorized his army to subsist upon the land (confiscate from local citizens whatever food, forage, animals, and other supplies they might require), destroy additional produce and supplies that his army could not use, and thereby deny them to the Confederacy, exile beyond federal lines all male citizens who refused to swear allegiance to the Union, execute all persons who fire upon federal troops and destroy their property, and hold residents responsible for guerrilla activity (force them to repair any railroads, wagon roads, or telegraphs destroyed in their neighborhoods). Southerners were outraged. Robert E. Lee ordered Stonewall Jackson not just to defeat the "miscreant Pope" but to "destroy" him.

Later Occupiers

The Union presence in Culpeper was removed only temporarily when Lee and Jackson defeated Pope at Second Manassas. In 1863, the war moved to Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and then back to Culpeper. The return of Confederate forces was received with ambivalence because so large an army would inevitably attract the enemy, as soon happened. From November 1863 to May 1864, federal forces again occupied Culpeper. General George Meade, unlike Pope, attempted to outlaw the destruction of private property by his soldiers, but to little effect. Union occupiers continued to ransack residences and barns, level forests, destroy farmland, and remove livestock. Increasingly, civilians fled to the safety of the Confederate interior; in 1864 one federal soldier estimated the population of the county at only 80.

Slaves and Free Blacks

Amid this turmoil, slaves in Culpeper County found opportunities to escape bondage. Many dashed to Union lines across the Rappahannock River. Some northern officers, who had come to associate the Union cause with black emancipation, viewed the blacks as heroic figures and readily employed male slaves as body servants. Other officers, however, refused to hire "wretched 'niggers.'" Culpeper's free black population was as much preyed upon by the federal army as were the whites. Nonetheless, most free African Americans remained as steadfast in their loyalty to the Union as did Culpeper's white unionists. During Union occupation, free blacks washed and cooked for the federals, served as guides, and provided useful information about their communities and neighbors. They feared that a Confederate victory would jeopardize their freedom and hoped that a Union victory would free those still enslaved.

Read more contemporary accounts

Pictured: Culpeper, Va. Encampment on the edge of town, by Timothy H. O'Sullivan, November 1863 (Library of Congress)

Fredericksburg

Located midway between the opposing capitals of Washington and Richmond, Fredericksburg held strategic importance. In December of 1862, the town encountered the ravages of modern warfare when it was shelled and invaded by a Union army commanded by Gen. Ambrose Burnside. This first battle of Fredericksburg was large (nearly 200,000 combatants) and deadly (18,000 soldiers were killed or wounded). It was as well the first major opposed river crossing in American military history and the war's first urban combat. The town sustained significant damage from bombardment and then from looting, which was described by some Union soldiers as wanton, ludicrous, and disgraceful. Robert E. Lee's army successfully repulsed the attack when Union forces futilely and repeatedly assaulted entrenched Confederate defenders on the heights behind the city.

In May 1863 a second battle of Fredericksburg unfolded. There were, however, far fewer combatants (35,000), and the encounter proved inconsequential (Marye's Heights were taken by Union troops who quickly abandoned it—to participate in the battle at Chancellorsville).

White and free black civilians in Fredericksburg all suffered hardships during the war. Some slaves escaped to freedom during the turmoil of the two battles.

Read more contemporary accounts

Pictured: Ruins of houses [Fredericksburg, Va.] (Library of Congress)

The Frontier Surrounding Richmond

Both early and late in the war, the Confederate frontier was pushed back dangerously close to Richmond—from the east in 1862 and from both the north and east in 1864–65. On both occasions, white residents on the frontier were overrun by Union armies that destroyed farms in their path and left civilians distraught. In the mayhem, some slaves seized the opportunity to escape; others were content to remain because many plantations had been vacated by white males. A number of free blacks were employed to farm those properties where no resident males remained to work them.

Read more contemporary accounts

Pictured: Charles City Court House, Va. Ruins of houses, by Timothy H. O'Sullivan, June 13, 1864 (Library of Congress)

The Lower Valley

The entire Shenandoah Valley held agricultural importance for the Confederacy, as a "breadbasket" for Lee's army. Its northern reaches held strategic importance as well, as a pathway for either army to invade the other's territory. The Lower Valley was quickly overrun by both armies, beginning in 1862 when Stonewall Jackson engaged federal armies there. Within a year, it was scarred by war. Graves, bones, and dead animals dotted a landscape devoid of fences and livestock. Residents began to emigrate.

"Burn[ing] out the Whole Country"

In June 1864, following the defeat of Union general Franz Sigel at New Market, his successor, Gen. David Hunter, struck hard at the civilian base of the Lower Valley. He destroyed buildings and supplies in both Staunton and Lexington. In retaliation, Confederate raider John Mosby shifted part of his guerrilla operation to the Valley's northern reaches. In August, tired of Union failure there, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant placed Maj. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan in command of a revived Valley campaign and directed him to target agriculture. The Union goal was to deny the Confederacy both the region's produce and in turn any utilization of its strategic importance. Sheridan proved to be both effective and ruthless. His troops destroyed immense quantities of provisions and forage, thousands of head of stock, 2,000 barns, and seventy mills as far south as Lexington, so that a sizeable Confederate army could not possibly subsist on the land there. Some residents faced starvation; many were forced to flee. By that date, deserters and guerrillas roamed the Lower Valley. Slaves escaped at will.

Read more contemporary accounts

Pictured: Cadet Barracks, Virginia Military Institute, after being burned on June 12, 1864, by Union general David Hunter. A. H. Plecker, c. 1866–70 (Virginia Historical Society, 2002.26)

The Upper Valley

Far southwest Virginia held material importance for its agriculture produce and its rich salt and lead deposits, all of which were tapped to bolster the Confederate war effort. The region, furthermore, held strategic importance, because the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad that linked Richmond with the western states of the Confederacy ran through it. The Upper Valley was too important and too vulnerable to lie overlooked by the federals.

Cavalry Raids

In contrast to the Lower Valley to the north, which was systematically "burn[ed] out" and occupied by Gen. Philip Sheridan, the Upper Valley suffered sporadic intrusion. During the last two years of the war, Union cavalry units repeatedly invaded the region. In July 1863, reserves and home guards in Wytheville fired from within houses at 1,300 federal cavalrymen who looted the town and burned buildings. That December, Union cavalry struck the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad at Salem. In May 1864 they raided the V&T at Dublin, and attacked Saltville, Wytheville, and Christiansburg. Additional raids on Saltville thrust 5,000 Union troops (September) and 4,500 troops (December) against weakened Confederate forces (3,000 reserves in September—many old men and young boys). The December raid destroyed both the salt works there and the railroad as far north as Salem, parts of the towns of Bristol, Abingdon, and Wytheville, railroad depots, railroad bridges, foundries, mills, factories, storehouses, wagon and ambulance trains, turnpike bridges, and military supplies. Homes were burned out and residents left homeless. Many were suddenly unemployed. Among those endangered by this warfare were African Americans resident at Cumberland Gap who were the wives and children of Union soldiers. In time, many residents of the Upper Valley tired of a war into which they had unwillingly been engaged.

Read more contemporary accounts

Pictured: Edward Beyer, View of Wytheville, 1855. (Virginia Historical Society, Lora Robins Collection of Virginia Art, 1999.5)

Back to "Life on the Virginia Home Front"

428 North Boulevard, Richmond, VA 23220    |    Mail: P.O. Box 7311, Richmond, VA 23221-0311    |    Phone: 804.358.4901
Hours   |    Directions   |    Contact us   |    Site map   |    Blog    |    Share