For those interested in the political and social history of Civil War home front Virginia, four books are recommended.
Unionists, Secessionists, free blacks and slaves are studied in “Old Southampton”, from the sectional crisis through the conflict and into Reconstruction. The black Virginian experience in the Civil War, whether slave or free, for blue or grey, is considered in “Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia”.
In “Seasons of War”, Culpeper County civilian society’s experience is chronicled, describing a true battlefield occupied and reoccupied by both armies. Union-garrisoned towns, no-man’s land, and on the frontier nearby Confederate lines are treated in “When the Yankees Came”, which applies to northern, western and southeastern Virginia for much of the Civil War.
Old Southampton
Old Southampton: politics and society in a Virginia County, 1834-1869 (1994, 2015) by Daniel W. Croft illuminates state and national developments over thirty-five years, in Union, Confederacy and Reconstruction through his study of the local history of agricultural Southampton County in Southeast Virginia. The experiences of two diarists represent partisan county divisions throughout the book, demonstrating that the white South was not monolithic.
Southwest of the Nottoway River bisecting the county where the traditional planter Daniel Cobb lived, was cotton plantation country of slave labor, Methodists and Democrats. Northeast of the river where the innovating merchant Elliott Story lived, was a mixed agricultural economy of “smallholders” with few slaves, Baptists, Quakers and Whigs.
The political awakening of the African-American community to emancipation and enfranchisement resulted in the election of a black delegate to the Virginia Constitutional Convention in 1868 from Southampton. Buy “Old Southampton” at Amazon.com here.
Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees
Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia (1995) by Ervin L. Jordan, Jr. explores the many roles African-Americans assumed in Virginia before and during the American Civil War. The first half of the book focuses on Virginian plantation slavery life, including their diet. The second looks at the diverse range of field hands, laborers, body servants, artisans, hired slaves, free blacks, and soldiers for both the Union and Confederacy.
Skilled slave artisans and free blacks including shopkeepers initially prospered in Confederate wartime Virginia. After the first white volunteers left rebel armies for home in 1862, Confederate military service was eventually conscripted among them from age 16 to 60; slaves were likewise taken from masters to provide ancillary services to the army, including teamsters, cooks and engineering laborers for fortifications. While there were “undoubtedly more blacks who preferred to assist Unionists”, some three hundred used their Confederate military service as a path to their personal freedom. Buy “Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees” at Amazon.com here.
Seasons of War
Seasons of War: the Ordeal of a Confederate Community, 1861-1865 (1996, 2013) – by Daniel E. Sutherland relates the experiences of people in Culpeper County Virginia during the Civil War on almost a daily basis. The county strategically lies between the Rappahannock and Rapidan rivers on the only North-South railroad to nearby Richmond. About half the book deals with the civilian community, about half with the military fighting over it and occupying it.
This is the place of Confederate riflemen of the Culpeper Volunteers and Robert E. Lee, commanding, of Willis Madden, free black farmer, and Unionist John Minor Botts and his daughters. Yankee privates, corporals and Ulysses S. Grant are introduced when they are here, as well as army nurses in three Confederate hospitals and Union nurses Clara Barton and Walt Whitman.
It was a time of war in Culpeper County, including big battles at Cedar Mountain and Brandy Station, but also forays, sniper fire, skirmishes, and minor battles as the two sides switched their occupations. Civilian property depredations followed the Yankee John Pope’s General Order No. 5. Following the Emancipation Proclamation there was a mass exodus of blacks from local churches in 1863, and active slave Unionist activity late in the war. Buy “Seasons of War” at Amazon.com here.
When the Yankees Came
When the Yankees Came: Conflict and Chaos in the Occupied South, 1861-1865 (1999, 2001) by Stephen V. Ash defines three spheres of Union occupation during wartime. Garrisoned towns provided physical safety, but greater military oppression. Confederate frontier was marked by slave patrols supporting secessionists and masters. No-man’s land featured economic suffering and physical danger for all from army marauders and bands of thieves; a majority of those occupied were refugees and women.
With Union occupation came internal divisions within the “rural communalism” typical in much of Southern hierarchical society, between Unionists and secessionists, masters and slaves, aristocrats and plain folk. These sometimes sparked guerrilla warfare, retaliatory raids and local feuds.
Eventually the forces of order among rebel citizens and Yankee occupiers combined against the chaos of bushwhackers, bandits and thieves. Although the initial “rose water” occupational policy became more stringent during the war in the face of civilian intransigence, Reconstruction proved too lenient and too short to alter persistent race and regional loyalties, and in large measure the old order survived. Buy “When the Yankees Came” at Amazon.com here.
For more books selections and reviews by topic area, click here. For The Virginia Historian’s 12-steps to building your library of Virginia history, click here.