Winter camp in Neabsco 1861
Photo: Library of Congress
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Leesylvania State Park, named after the Lee family and their
homestead in the bluffs covered with lush green trees, is located by the
Potomac River. A swampy area, rich with fauna and flora, surrounds the banks
and extend into tributaries in Prince William County, 24 miles south of the
political swamp of Washington, D.C. and 24 miles north of Fredericksburg,
Virginia.
During the Civil War, following the Confederate victory of
the battle at Ball’s Bluff in October 1861, both Confederate and Union armies
settled along the way between Richmond and Washington. Confederate soldiers
marched from Fairfax County to Prince William County to defend the line from
Manassas to Quantico.
Batteries located on a bluff in today’s Leesylvania State
Park on the Potomac River blockaded shipping to Washington. There are still two
cannons left in the original location in the park bearing witness to this
blockade.
In parts of the Neabsco and Quantico Creek area is where
Confederate units built log huts with clapboard roofs to shelter them in the
winter months. Gen. John Bell Hood’s Texas Brigade built its winter camp named
Camp Wigfall in the vicinity of the swampy area by the Potomac River in Prince
William County in the summer of 1861.
The museum archives describe how men who were not on fencepost
duty, cooked and cleaned the camp, played cards to pass the time, “foraged, and
visited brigade sutlers [civilian provisioners to an army post] or friends and
relatives in the nearby camps.”
A temporary Lone Star Theater was built for the Hood’s
Minstrels, a group of actors, brass band, and choir. Highly popular, this theater
saw performances by Sam Sweeney (banjo) and “The Bonnie Blue Flag” bard Harry
McCarty.
Texans near Dumfries in early 1862
Photo: Pictorial History of the Civil War (1866)
Because conditions were unsanitary, the camps experienced
outbreaks of measles, dysentery, diarrhea, and typhoid fever. According to
museum archives, more soldiers died from various disease outbreaks than died
from actual combat. Hailing from the Deep South, most soldiers relied on locals
for their care while army doctors struggled to control the epidemics.
Private James M. Polk from the 4th Texas Infantry
wrote that “Our losses in the winter of 1861 from sickness and exposure,
incident to camp life were very heavy. I had the measles; had a relapse and
developed a case of typhoid-pneumonia; and my fate was uncertain for about six
weeks. For ten or twelve days I did not eat a mouthful of anything.”
It is easy to understand how the soldiers, in their weakened
condition from battle and marching, would fall prey to the conditions in the
camps. The area today is swampy, reminiscing of surroundings back in 1861. It
is difficult to walk through the dense vegetation, mud, murky soil, and
infernal mosquitoes even though there are wooden planks placed strategically
around to help navigate the muddy flats.
When the Confederates withdrew towards Richmond in early
March 1862, the camps were abandoned. While the retreating soldiers took with
them what they could, the lack of enough wagons, the bad roads, and their quick
departure, forced them to destroy provisions and munitions to avoid their
capture by the Union soldiers. The few surviving camps were occupied by the
Union troops but were eventually destroyed.
I have seen the road signs of Neabsco, but I did not know of the war camps. Thanks.
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