Ambrose Bierce may not have uttered the sardonic comment, "War is God's way of teaching Americans geography," but the quote is still relevant to the study of Civil War places in Virginia.1
Many people get introduced to Virginia geography when examining how their ancestors moved through the state in a Civil War unit. Sometimes, what appears to be obvious is not correct. The names of some places highlighted in The War Of The Rebellion: A Compilation Of The Official Records Of The Union And Confederate Armies have changed. For example, Stonewall Jackson's march in August 1862 through "Salem" refers to modern-day "Marshall" in Fauquier County, not to the city of Salem next to Roanoke. Genealogists studying family members who served in 1861-65 must match historical maps with historical events, before getting in the car to visit sites of interest.
More recent satire in the New York Times highlights how time and places can be juxtaposed by suburban sprawl, by using a mock battle report from Union General Irvin McDowell to illustrate the impact of modern suburban development on the historical setting at Manassas:2
Hdqrs. Department of Northeastern Virginia
Business Center, Radisson Hotel
Reagan National Airport
Arlington, Va., Aug. 4, 2011
Colonel: I have the honor to submit the following report of the battle of the 21st of July, near Manassas, Va.
...The First Division (Tyler's) was stationed on the north side of the Warrenton turnpike and on the eastern slope of the Centreville ridge just north of Centreville Crest Shopping Center, where an advance guard raided a Five Guys, then requisitioned disinfected bedrolls from Body & Brain Yoga/Tai-Chi/Meditation, where they encountered little resistance....
the 1861 farmland between Centreville and Bull Run has been transformed into suburban housing developments, plus rock quarries
Source: ESRI, ArcGIS
The physical geography of Virginia affected where the armies marched, where they camped, and where they fought. Efforts of slaves to achieve freedom, and of local residents to just survive, are recognized by numerous plaques on the roadsides and by including in the Virginia Landmarks Register and the National Register of Historic Places.
The war made many locations in Virginia special, even "hallowed." Efforts to preserve those special places have shaped the geography of tourism, as well as the conservation of historic sites in Virginia.
Manassas Battlefield was one of the first sites in Virginia where a monument was erected to commemorate the Civil War; Union troops dedicated stone memorials decorated with cannon balls and artillery shells on Henry Hill and Deep Cut to honor the battles in 1861-62. In the next 50 years, almost every courthouse in Virginia placed a statue of a Confederate soldier near the front door. Richmond extended Monument Avenue westward, and Memorial Bridge was completed over the Potomac River in 1932 to link the Lincoln Memorial with Arlington Cemetery and the pre-war home of General Robert E. Lee.
The legacy of the Civil War was commemorated by monuments erected next to most county courthouses in both northern and southern states that sent soldiers to fight. In the Confederate states, the myth of the Lost Cause was ingrained into white society for 150 years.
One reason for the sectional difference in viewing the Civil War was the much greater impact on southern states. Battle damage was primarily in the southern states. Where armies marched, farms were stripped of livestock and fences. The end of slavery altered the agricultural economy in southern states that relied upon unpaid labor, while northern states saw an economic boost from the industrialization required to supply the Union Army.
Southern cities such as Fredericksburg, Petersburg and Richmond were flattened by artillery and fires. Industrial targets such as the salt-making equipment at Saltville and iron furnaces were destroyed. Railroads and bridges were wrecked.
The cultural pattern in southern states established since 1619 was transformed by the end of slavery. A variety of legal and extra-legal mechanisms were used by whites after 1865 to limit the social and economic opportunities of black men and women, but 40% of Virginians gained more control over their lives. They gained the rights to move freely, to marry, to get an education, to own land, to testify in court, and to change employers.
The demographic impacts were significantly different between northern and southern states. According to a refined estimate in 2024 based on Census records, 698,000 people died as a result of the Civil War. Compared to normal mortality rates, there were 12% excess deaths in Virginia:3
The difference in death tolls across regions demonstrates powerfully how much deadlier the Civil War was for the Confederacy than the Union. Although the core of the Confederacy had fewer than one-third as many military-age NBWM [Native Born White Males] as the core of the Union, states at the core of the Confederacy suffered almost as many casualties (192,160 deaths in the Old South vs. 229,803 in the Old North). This translates into an excess mortality rate of 13% in the Confederacy against only 5% in the Union.
after Lincoln announced plans to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, Loudoun County slaveowners took their "property" further south
Source: Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora, Negroes Driven South by the Rebel Officers
Union forces expanded their control in western/northern Virginia between 1861-1864, but not in Tidewater
Source: Library of Congress, Historical sketch of the rebellion (United States Coast Survey, 1864)
Site of Civil War Hospital in Mount Jackson, between Winchester and Staunton
(most Civil War hospitals were in areas remote from fighting but near railroads,
which brought the wounded and supplies... but Mount Jackson was in the middle of the Shenandoah Valley battles in 1864)
Bermuda Hundred (In May, 1864 - after Cold Harbor - General Ulysses S. Grant recognized the futility of attacking entrenched positions manned with a full complement of Confederate soldiers. Burnside had failed at Fredericksburg, and Grant himself had failed at Cold Harbor. However, he knew that thinly-manned or hastily-built fortifications could be seized - he had already done so in the Overland Campaign at Spotsylvania and Fredericksburg. The question was... could Grant's subordinate, General Benjamin Butler, recognize if the trenches blocking the path to Petersburg were too strongly fortified?)
Battlefields of Virginia (images in the Alexandria library, from the May 1887 "excursion" of the veterans of the 57th and 58th Massachusetts to the Civil War Battlefields of Virginia)
The people of the Confederate States being principally engaged in agricultural pursuits, were unprovided at the commencement of hostilities with ships, ship-yards, materials for shipbuilding, or skilled mechanics and seamen in sufficient numbers to make the prompt creation of a navy a practicable task even if the required appropriations had been made for the purpose. Notwithstanding our very limited resources, however, the report of the Secretary will exhibit to you a satisfactory progress in preparation, and a certainty of early completion of vessels of a number and class on which we may confidently rely for contesting the vaunted control of the enemy over our waters.
aerial reconnaissance was used in the Civil War by both sides, but the Union had more resources to build balloons
Source: Library of Congress, Professor Lowe in his balloon (Fair Oaks, 1862)
in 1909, Virginia donated a statue of Robert E. Lee and it is displayed in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the US Capitol
Source: Architect of the Capitol, Robert E. Lee
1. "He Never Said It," The Ambrose Bierce Site, http://donswaim.com (last checked January 18, 2014) 2. "The First Battle of Manassas, 2011," New York Times, July 24, 2011, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/the-first-battle-of-manassas-2011/ (last checked January 18, 2014) 3. Joan Barceló, Jeffrey L. Jensen, Leonid Peisakhin, Haoyu Zhai, "New Estimates of US Civil War mortality from full-census records," The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Volume 121, Number 48 (November 18, 2024), https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2414919121 (last checked November 26, 2024)
Confederate Cemetery - Manassas National Battlefield Park
(click on images for larger versions)
the Union Army paid formerly enslaved men to work as wagon drives and as laborers, before recruiting black men as soldiers
Source: Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora, Union Supply Train, 1862-65
many contrabands fled to Union lines on foot, but some arrived driving a wagon from the farm
Source: Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora, Fugitive Slaves Escaping to Union Lines, 1864
