Posterity and Commemoration
Like much of north-central Virginia along the I-95 corridor, Stafford County’s housing market exploded in the early 2000s. Where once the Army of the Potomac had built crude log huts, homes worth hundreds of thousands of dollars began to checker the landscape. In the rush to build, developers began to clear away some of the last traces of the Army of the Potomac’s stay in Stafford County.
For Glenn Trimmer, the last straw came in 2005 when a massive Union redoubt went under the plow. With sides 80 to 100 feet long, rising 10 feet from the bottoms of their ditches to the tops of their parapets, the redoubt had been well-known to some locals, but it went unprotected by any official agency. “They were really significant remains,” Trimmer says.1 He realized any preservation efforts for remaining sites would have to come from citizens and private grassroots groups, and not from government. At the same time, governmental assistance to undertake longterm operations would ultimately be critical.
It soon became clear, though, that no one quite knew what might still be hidden out in Stafford’s undeveloped-but-threatened landscapes. So Trimmer, a retired Air Force colonel in his early fifties, took to the woods with his friend, D. P. Newton, owner of the White Oak Civil War Museum. Their quest was to identify the remaining earthworks in eastern Stafford County, with an eye on preserving as many of them as possible. Trimmer envisioned a park, perhaps maintained by the county, to protect and interpret the works.
Enter Bill Shelton and his father, Bill, Sr. The Sheltons had spent much of their lives hunting in the woods of Stafford, and as a Civil War enthusiast, the younger Bill had mapped earthworks during his woodland sojourns. He provided Trimmer, who’d begun to compile his findings for local officials, with a full set of GPS coordinates for most of the former Civil War earthworks.
On one particular plot, where the Federal XI Corps had spent the winter before marching off to Chancellorsville, Trimmer and Newton found encampment remains, original corduroy roads built by the army, and a number of artillery and infantry earthworks, along with some earlier artifact sites. The property, on the backside of the county landfill, was actually jointly owned by Stafford County and the city of Fredericksburg. “D. P. and I were out there one day, and we found a stake in the ground that had some flagging tape on it,” Trimmer said. “We didn’t even know what it was for at the time—we assumed it was a surveying stake—but we knew it was a sign that we were running out of time.”
Soon afterward, they approached the county about the possibility of establishing a Civil War park. While the county had no available money for the project, they committed to preserving the land if local preservationists could raise the money and resources to build it. The county provided engineering support and, in exchange for a financial grant, they promised the Civil War Trust they would secure a permanent land easement with the Land Trust of Virginia. For six years, Trimmer, Newton, the Sheltons, and others—eventually coalescing into the Friends of Stafford Civil War Sites (FSCWS)—raised the donations of money, materials, and labor to make the park a reality. Vulcan Materials Corporation provided the essential rock and gravel underpinnings for the substantial road network, and engineer units of the Virginia Army and Air National Guards—using the opportunity to give guardsmen active-duty training—cleared the roadways and view-sheds, and built the roads with modern equipment where, once, thousands of their nineteenth-century comrades had worked with axes, picks, and shovels.
On April 27, 2013—one-hundred and fifty years to the day that the XI Corps marched out of the area on the road to Chancellorsville—Stafford County’s Civil War Park opened to the public.
“While it could represent any of the Union Corps around Stafford during this period, this was specifically an XI Corps area,” Trimmer says of the 41-acre park, located off Mount Hope Church Road. Some seven- to eight-thousand men of the first and third divisions made their home there during the “Valley Forge,” he estimates. These defenses were part of the network of fortifications planned by Hooker and Butterfield to secure Stafford Courthouse and Aquia Landing against a potential Confederate attack from the southwest and discussed extensively in this study.
The Stafford Civil War Park, like so many other preservation efforts in the Rappahannock Valley, represents an important grassroots victory. But unlike the higher-profile efforts to save the Slaughter Pen Farm at Fredericksburg or the Day One battlefield at Chancellorsville, the effort to establish the Stafford park is especially noteworthy because it is the only piece of the “Valley Forge” story to be intentionally preserved for interpretation—and, currently, the only such piece.
Fortunately, other places, including standing private houses, bridge sites, fortifications, hospital sites, artillery positions, camp sites, period churches, skirmish sites, and Aquia Landing still survive and can now be added to the story. The park fits nicely with the interpretive themes of Stafford’s privately-owned, award-winning White Oak Civil War Museum and the planned Stafford Museum. Another encouraging fact is that the park was brought to fruition mostly by people with roots in Stafford and Virginia. The acceptance of the “Valley Forge” as a truly Virginian and American story, along with its complementary tribute to the common soldiers of the war, may now be possible.
Lost to History?
There is also an interesting historiographic question: Why did the “Valley Forge” winter remain forgotten for so long, especially when the historical pieces of this story lay hidden in plain view in Official Records, unit histories, memoirs, diaries, and letters? Historians occasionally rummaged through the bits and pieces scattered throughout those proverbial dusty recesses, but they never focused wider attention on it, stranding the story in the temporal space between Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. Suspended in time between two dramatic battles, the so-called “winter encampment” could be easily dismissed or overlooked.
If there’s a starting point for this ongoing historiographic failure, it rests, through no fault of his own, with journalist William Swinton. His previously quoted May 2 report in the May 5 edition of The New York Times serves as a true “smoking gun” document that explains best how the “Valley Forge” was initially overlooked. Swinton wrote that he had been missing from the army for several months and did not personally witness the events described over that bleak midwinter. On his return, however, as he witnessed the resurgent army deploying for Chancellorsville, he was clearly struck by the army’s transformation, and he described the results in considerable detail. His later book, 1866’s Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac, touched only on the basics: “Driven hither and thither by continual buffets of fortune; losing its strength in unavailing efforts; changing its leaders, and yet finding no deliverance; misunderstood and unappreciated by the people whose battles it was fighting—it was not wonderful that it had sunk in energy.”2
In his battlefield dispatch of May 2, however, Swinton praised the triumphant-looking army as it marched off to battle and its obviously reformed leadership, secrecy, maneuvering, logistics, and transportation. With the army’s loss on the battlefield and Swinton’s inability to observe the subsequent fighting, that euphoric moment passed, and the correspondent returned to his normal skeptical self. Hooker’s failure, his post-Chancellorsville squabbles with Washington, and his eventual resignation and departure from the army in June 1863, tempered Swinton’s exuberance.
With Hooker out of the picture, there was no obvious “cause and effect” in the Gettysburg victory that could be traced to the previous winter in Stafford. Thus, as the war ground on, Swinton felt no call to revisit the un-witnessed “Valley Forge” resurgence that, although obvious on his return, had not produced a Chancellorsville victory. His 1866 history on the Army of the Potomac made only passing reference to Hooker’s reforms, which were, he said, “judicious”:
[Hooker] cut away the root of many evils; stopped desertion and its causes; did away with the nuisance of the ‘Grand Division’ organization; infused vitality through the staff and administrative service; gave distinctive badges to the different corps; instituted a system of furloughs; consolidated the cavalry under able leaders, and soon enabled it not only to stand upon an equality with, but to assert its superiority over, the Virginia horsemen of Stuart.3
From there, Swinton focused on chronicling the army’s battles and campaigns—significantly, a practice followed by others. In that way, not feeling a compulsion to ferret out a turning point, Swinton inadvertently buried the story and influenced subsequent scholarship.
About the same time, however, historian Frank Moore made three allusions to the 1863 “Valley Forge” in his 1866 work Women of the War. Moore was apparently the earliest historian to make a direct connection between the Revolutionary and Civil War events. Moore had authored Songs and Ballads of the American Revolution (1856) and the two-volume study Diary of the American Revolution in 1860, so perhaps he was more sensitive to those connections than his contemporaries. Curiously, Volume VI of Moore’s The Rebellion Record does not reference the “Valley Forge” connection. He presumably drew that conclusion around 1864 or 1865.4
Otherwise, the “Valley Forge” winter, except in Union regimental histories and tangentially in general histories, remained nearly forgotten for almost a century.
In 1952, journalist-historian Bruce Catton finally encouraged the “Valley Forge” historiography in the right direction. His widely read The Army of the Potomac: Glory Road devoted two large chapters, “All Played Out” (pages 63-110) and “Revival” (pages 111-170), to the period between Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. Catton described the period in precise terms and incisively analyzes many aspects of events, but he did not attribute wider meaning to those events except to say:
There exists an informal history of one of the New York regiments in this army, a book in which the military career of every member of the regiment is briefly summarized. The regiment had an eventful career and suffered numerous losses, and after many of the names in its roster are entries like ‘Killed in the Wilderness,’ ‘Died in Andersonville Prison,’ and so on. But the commonest one of the lot is the simple ‘Died at Falmouth.’ The Wisconsin officer who said that this winter was the army’s Valley Forge was hardly exaggerating.5
Similarly, Allan Nevins’s 1960 work The War for the Union: War Becomes Revolution 1862-1863, bemoaned the army’s situation in a key paragraph in the chapter “Fredericksburg and Government Crisis,” alluding to the army’s morale nadir: “People said later that this was the Valley Forge winter of the war.”6
Not until historians began looking at specialized aspects of the war—e.g., cavalry, artillery, common soldiers, camp life, etc.—did the winter of 1863 start to get more attention. Those historians include Alan T. Nolan’s The Iron Brigade: A Military History (1983), which quotes Dawes’ “Valley Forge” allusion, but goes on to state this “was perhaps exaggerated” (due to Dawes’ subsequent remark about no increase in courts-martial compared with the previous year); William K. Goolrick, in Rebels Resurgent: Fredericksburg to Chancellorsville (1985) brilliantly traces the combat and logistical aspects of the battles and describes the “Valley Forge”; and John Hennessy’s 1996 insightful essay on the army on the eve of the Chancellorsville Campaign, “We Shall Make Richmond Howl” in Chancellorsville: The Battle and its Aftermath.7
Later historians came even closer to broader conclusions. Eric J. Wittenberg, in his The Union Cavalry Comes of Age: Hartwood Church to Brandy Station, 1863, summarized as follows:
Bloodied and discouraged after the disaster at Fredericksburg, the Army of the Potomac went into winter quarters near the town of Falmouth, Virginia, across the Rappahannock from the scene of their December defeat. There a remarkable transformation took place. During the long lull in the fighting, the demoralized army, rife with desertions and disease, again became a powerful, confident force. Much of the credit went to a new commander, Major General Joseph Hooker, who improved rations and medical care. But the men and their officers, with the timeless ingenuity of troops in the field, helped ease their own lot.
Wittenberg goes on to describe the encampment and recreational events in February and March, adding, “By the time Hooker’s forces broke camp in late April, a veteran recalled, ‘the discipline and morale of the army were about perfect.’ The troops, one soldier reported, ‘were once more ready to fight.’”8
Jeffry D. Wert, in The Sword of Lincoln, also outlines the basic elements “The weeks after Fredericksburg had marked the nadir of the army’s morale. It had boiled to the surface in the despair found in their letters and diaries, acts of insubordination, and the rampant desertion,” he writes. “Beneath the evident demoralization, however, lay one of the army’s defining characteristics, resiliency. They had passed through Fredericksburg’s slaughter, endured serious shortages of food and clothing, and witnessed a reshaping of Union war aims with the Emancipation Proclamation.” Wert continues: “They had clamored for a change in commanders and fled the ranks by thousands. But the majority stayed, steeled by a belief in a cause that transcended their sufferings and defeats and by a commitment to duty and to each other.”9
The approach taken by Catton and others—describing but not ascribing larger significance to the “Valley Forge” period—has been followed by other historians who’ve either focused on Fredericksburg and its aftermath or the build-up to Chancellorsville. Mainly, their accounts use the space between as a way to set the context for the battles rather than focus on the period as having its own military-historical significance.
Thus, the difference between the Union Army’s “Valley Forge” or “Winter Encampment” or “Winter Quarters” or “Winter of Transition”—or, for that matter, between Seizing Destiny or “All Played Out” or “Revival”—becomes a crucial matter of degree. Regardless of this study’s success or failure, it must recalled that qualitative and quantitative differences between history and memory are primarily matters of emphasis, making judgments, ascribing significance, and providing tones and shades to existent facts. Put another way, all history and memory are enduring arguments.
But what has been missing from the argument at all, until now, has been any overarching conclusion as to what that winter of 1863 meant.
With specific regard to the period, at the strategic level, the Army of the Potomac undeniably reached its wartime lows in morale and effectiveness in January 1863. With the possible exception of Antietam’s Pyrrhic result, the army had lost all of its battles before the “Valley Forge” and, despite a setback at Chancellorsville, won at Gettysburg and in nearly all of them afterward. That alone suggests a non-battle turning point. Beyond that, detailed accounts and analysis of the precise progress made in restructuring and revitalizing the army add necessary weight to the argument. Another critical dimension not covered in existing histories is that the army’s soldiers, from their Stafford camps, demanded their nation’s vital homefront support and attacked the antiwar movement—the only such effort by a deployed force in American military history. The soldiers also assumed the military responsibility for the outcome of the War in the East. This alone commands greater attention and likewise presents new evidence of the period’s historic significance.
With general regard to Civil War historiography and scholarship, it should also be mentioned that to this point there is a definite shortfall in dealing with the non-battle operational art (military activities of national authorities, field armies and corps) in the war. This book, it should be further noted, essentially covers a seven month period of the war and deals with the inner workings of military leadership at the operational level in about the same space normally covering a typical five-day battle with its prelude and aftermath. Similar research, focusing on the operational-strategic interactions of national command authorities and field commands, as well as the internal activities of operational forces, needs to emerge from America’s capable military historians in the future.
Commemoration and Legacy
In 1900—thirty-five years after their war—a transformative event took place in Fredericksburg: The Society of the Army of the Potomac held its first reunion below the Potomac River. Memories of battles fought and privations suffered returned to the old veterans. As Joseph Hooker had been the improbable leader of the army’s 1863 renaissance, Daniel E. Sickles now became its improbable twentieth-century spokesman. He spoke of past scenes, reconciliation, and a “New South.” Reflecting on the recent Spanish-American War and postwar rise in Southern economics, education and industrialization, he equally praised Lincoln and Lee, and spoke with hope for African Americans. He spoke with unbridled Gilded Age excitement of the growing shared wealth, power, and influence of North and South.
As part of his comments, Sickles proposed creating a national military park in the Fredericksburg area:
Our battle-field parks are an American institution…. They hand down our military traditions to succeeding generations. They keep alive the martial character of our people. They teach the American boy that he belongs to his country and that his country belongs to him. Here, in the National Military Park of Fredericksburg, let all the heroic dead, on both sides, who fell in those memorable struggles, be gathered in one common cemetery, where they may lie forever in peaceful slumber, honored by the citizens of a common country, now happily reunited and inseparable, as a memorial of a reconciliation which has made us one people—under one flag—under one constitution—and under one God.10
Sickles saw clearly the direction of America’s future, if not its timing, pace, or scope. While the “common cemetery” for Union and Confederate alike never happened, the national park came along a quarter-century later. Encompassing four major Civil War battlefields (the eclectic grouping of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and The Wilderness and Spotsylvania Courthouse), the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park is currently the second-largest military park in the world. The park’s headquarters, “Chatham Manor,” which played a role in the “Valley Forge” and so much more of America’s history, stands in Stafford County.
The national miliary park has been a work in progress since its founding, growing as land has become available and as understanding and interpretation of the battles has evolved.11 None of that translated to the commemoration of the 1863 “Valley Forge,” primarily because it faced the perfect storm of local indifference, the always “dollar-able” value of the land on which it took place, and the abject failure of historians to plumb the depths of the story or even correctly define or acknowledge the place where it happened. The national military park Sickles had once dreamed of—originally created to preserve the fortifications and earthworks of the battlefields in public memory—adjoins the original area of the “Valley Forge.” Yet, not one square inch of the “Valley Forge” was intentionally conserved by the nation. That happened only through the efforts of the local FSCWS private preservation group and Stafford County government, with critical support by the Virginia Army and Air National Guards and local businesses and donors/supporters.
* * *
If the Union Army’s 1863 “Valley Forge” was as significant as the evidence suggests, and if these events were, indeed, ninety-three days that saved the Union, then what might have happened differently if posterity had previously understood this story?
It is intriguing to ponder what might have happened during the Vietnam and Iraq wars when they became politically unpopular and were opposed by analogous home front antiwar factions? We suggest that, if Americans had been armed with a common knowledge and precedent of the Army of the Potomac’s confrontation of the home front population, demanding their support and loyalty in 1863 and 1864, American soldiers of 1968 or 2005 might have acted and demanded something similar and better.
It might be argued the citizen-army of 1863 was somehow different from the forces of Vietnam (greater regular force leadership of conscripted and volunteer troops) or Iraq (an all-volunteer, professional force). If those differences mean anything, then modern armies in the field could not legitimately demand the support of their fellow citizens. However, if that is so—and presumably all would now agree that saving America in 1861-1865 was the historically right thing to do—why did we drift so far from our citizen-army roots in forming an all-volunteer force? The armies we send forth were and remain citizen-soldiers in citizen-armies—men and women tied in every respect to the American people. Only the Army’s organizational forms have changed.
We can return the discussion to a poor understanding of the history itself. There are many direct lessons of value from the “Valley Forge”—lessons related to strategic policy and action, mobilization, staffing, intelligence, training, logistics, civil-military relations, and special operations. However, if America failed to grasp the significance of this (or any) period or sequence of historical events, it could not help but fail to learn and apply these lessons. That, in turn, would be a colossal object lesson of its own.
To be true to the Army of the Potomac’s history and memory, Americans must forever understand that, once an army is committed by the nation to war, anything less than full support and all-out effort is inexcusable. It is not possible to “support the troops” and simultaneously oppose what they do. The armies draw their ultimate strength from the sincere support of the people through the government that represents them, and the patriotism and faith of the soldiers themselves. That is the “Valley Forge” army’s ultimate legacy—if America will only hear what those men are shouting to us from their Stafford, Virginia, camps of 150 years ago.
1 Quotes in this Postscript are from a November 7, 2013, interview with Chris Mackowski.
2 Swinton, Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac, 267.
3 Ibid, 268.
4 Frank Moore, Women of the War: Heroism and Self-sacrifice (Hartford, CT, 1867). The Rebellion Record, a 12-volume war document collection, covers items published between 1861-1868; Volume VI covers the October 1862-June 1863 period.
5 Catton, Glory Road, 93.
6 Allan Nevins, The War for the Union: War Becomes Revolution, 1862-1863 (New York, NY, 1960), Volume II, “War Becomes Revolution,” 367.
7 Catton, Glory Road. Alan Nolan, The Iron Brigade: A Military History. William K. Goolrick, Rebels Resurgent: Fredericksburg to Chancellorsville (Alexandria, VA, 1985), 122 (see, in particular, Chapter 4, 92-117, including the sidebar “Rebirth of a Beaten Army”); John Hennessy, “We Shall Make Richmond Howl,” Chancellorsville: The Battle and its Aftermath, 1-35.
8 Wittenberg, The Union Cavalry Comes of Age.
9 Wert, The Sword of Lincoln: The Army of the Potomac.
10 BV 52, part 9, FSNMP. Sickles’ speech to the Society of the Army of the Potomac at Fredericksburg, 25.
11 The Slaughter Pen Farm at the south end of the Fredericksburg battlefield offers a good example. Mostly ignored for 135 years, the property finally garnered the interest of preservationists after historian Frank O’Reilly’s groundbreaking research revealed that Burnside’s main attack was to have crossed that part of the field. This contradicted an earlier understanding of the battle, which placed the focus on the action at Marye’s Heights farther north. The shift in understanding triggered the involvement of the Civil War Trust, which purchased the land after conducting the largest fund-raising initiative in its history to date.