Stafford Civil War Park

Opened in April 2013, the 41 acres of land throughout Stafford County, which had been camped on, traversed, fortified, and used by the 11^th Corps of the Union Army of the Potomac, has been compared to Valley Forge, Pa of the American Revolution.  

In 1863, over 135,000 Union Army soldiers established winter camps here after the Battle of Fredericksburg and the “Mud March” during which they suffered hundreds of desertions per night.

Spending the winter in the Stafford woods was not easy for the locals either, because the woods were decimated by hundreds of fires every night; the local population was outnumbered 15 to 1. Their farms were turned into army camps, homes became military headquarters or hospitals, and their woods disappeared rather quickly.

Union soldier morale was low especially after the terrible loss in the Battle of Chancellorsville. During the winter following the defeat, soldiers did their best to improve living conditions in the woods of Stafford County. By June 12, 1863, 160 years ago, the 11^th Corps of the Union Army of the Potomac, 1^st and 3^rd divisions moved North.

They left behind 3,500 graves of soldiers who died of exposure, disease, and other accidents. The deceased soldiers’ remains were moved to national cemeteries during 1866-1870. On this April day before Easter when we visited, temperatures were in the low 50s and the wind chill factor made the open fields and the woods so much colder.

The park preserves the remains of a winter camp, soldier-built and improved roads, a corduroy road, hut sites, chimneys, remains of a pre-Civil War bridge, an early Stafford quarry, and three large earthen artillery batteries built to defend the area. 11^th Corps Union soldiers moved to this area from Belle Plain and Stafford Courthouse in late February/early March 1863.

Soldiers wintered in tents, above ground in make-shift shelters, or in shelters dug below ground, taking advantage of the temperature insulating quality of the earth. Huts had fold-down bunks and were made of chinked logs, barrels, and even the occasional repurposed bricks. There is an intact sandstone hearth and large firebox. Sandstone was plentiful in the quarries. The huts resembled miniature cabins made of logs and topped with canvas or board roofs.

The museum displayed the letter of an 11^th Corps soldier to his parents in Germany. Sergeant Wilhelm Francksen, who immigrated in 1861 from Germany, had joined the Union Army. Badly wounded in the neck and his legs paralyzed in the Battle of Gettysburg, he was discharged from the Army in February 1864 and died in the 1870s.

In his letter to his father, dated March 1, 1863, from Stafford, Virginia, he described how they had marched 13 miles in 2 days, “drenched and frozen to the bone.” Setting up camp, they made coffee and ate crackers, hard bread, and salt pork. Huddled together to keep warm, soldiers woke up stiff on the frozen ground the next morning and surrounded by snow piled high on the linen tent.

In his awkward description to his dad, Sgt. Francksen of the 26^th Wisconsin Infantry Volunteers, wrote that the order came to make more permanent huts to stay warm. They cut down trees, dragging them through the woods, and built warmer shelters. They had to cook their own food and find water to do so.

“We were bustling around like ants in an anthill. A few days later a little town had grown out of this wasteland, consisting of good huts made from raw tree logs, with chimneys, a fireplace, and comfortable places to sleep.”

“The tree trunks were fit very skillfully together, the joints filled out with green moss, there was a porch in front of the hut with green fir, cedars, and wild laurel, with red berries with moss and colorful stones in front. Inside too, everything was very clean and tastefully furnished: a fireplace, seats, a little table, with the beds in the back, 2 bunk beds, each one for 2 men…”

Historical records dedicated a lot of time to Irish and African soldiers in the Civil War, but Germans were the largest ethnic group in federal service, enlisted in larger proportions to their overall population. In the Army of the Potomac, German immigrant-soldiers outnumbered Irish 2 to 1. They came mostly from New York, Pennsylvania, and some from Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, and Wisconsin.

“General Ludwig Blenker and his ‘German division’ were lauded for covering the Union retreat from Manassas.” After the Battle of Chancellorsville, where most of the 11^th Corps were German-speaking soldiers, under Major General Oliver Otis Howard, a West Point graduate from Maine, the German American soldiers became the scapegoats of the failed campaign after the 11^th Corps was flanked and decisively defeated by Stonewall Jackson’s veteran Confederate infantrymen.

The primary travel through the area was the Potomac Church Road dating from the 17^th century. The Union Army corduroyed sections of Potomac Church Road to enable troop and artillery movement and to protect and supply Union Army encampments.

When the soil is swampy, sandy, or loamy as in Stafford county, the roads must be corduroyed to allow troops and heavy equipment to march through. Good drainage and a foot or 18 inches above the natural surface insured that the road was passable with an army. Logs were covered with 6 inches of brush, and then with about 6 inches of almost any kind of earth over the brush.

Major-General Joseph Hooker ordered on February 15, 1863, that “the road from the Fitzhugh house (General Sickles’ headquarters) to the bridge across Potomac Creek, half a mile below the railroad bridge, thence to Stafford Courthouse, passing about a mile to the Westward of Brooke’s Station, be put in such condition as to be practicable for artillery at all times, corduroying it where necessary throughout its whole length; the corduroy material being of sufficient length, if possible to form a double-track roadway.”

The nearby sandstone quarry remains of the late 18^th and early 19^th century helped Stafford county’s progress. Archeological evidence showed that stone quarried here was loaded onto scows or shallow boats and floated down small tributaries to the larger and deeper Accokeek Creek.

Stone from nearby Government Island and other locations was used in the White House construction and U.S. Capitol. The quarry cutting operations were overseen by a Master Mason, usually a European. Skilled workers included stone cutters and stone carvers. Blacksmiths were needed to constantly sharpen the cutting tools.

Historians cannot exactly connect this quarry to the 1863 Union Army camp in Stafford. However, one encampment fire box, several chimneys remain, and one hearth used sandstone from nearby quarry sites.

Of the three Union Army batteries located in the Stafford Civil War Park, one of them is at 200 feet above sea level, the highest one, with a three-faced parapet which allowed it to support the other two batteries and encampments against attacks from multiple directions. “The steep approaches would have been cleared of trees in 1863 and, combined with its well-preserved 182’ of parapet and ditches, would have proven exceedingly difficult to attack from the Accokeek Valley.” It held four to five rifled guns.

The largest and strongest battery in the park had 300 linear feet of parapet, 30 feet thick. It indicates that heavy caliber rifled guns from the artillery reserve would have been used here.