An Encyclopedia of Early Civil War Virginia
Accidental deaths of soldiers often receive less attention than battlefield casualties. However, for these soldiers of the First Virginia Regiment, sworn to fight for the Union, their fates marked some of the earliest losses of the Civil War. Were it not for a handful of brief newspaper articles and a sparse pension file, their stories…
Photographic Portrait of Orlando B. Willcox. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Orlando Bolivar Willcox (1823–1907) was born on April 16, 1823, in Detroit, Michigan Territory. He graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1847. Commissioned as a second lieutenant in the 4th U.S. Artillery, Willcox served at the end…
Continue reading ➞ Thank God for Michigan: Orlando B. Willcox (1823–1907)
In the tense opening days of the Civil War, a single gunshot would mark the first true casualty of battle—but whose name deserves that grim distinction? Between riots, duels, and chaotic skirmishes, the first soldier killed in action is a title claimed by many, but only one truly fits the definition. Because of its proximity…
Continue reading ➞ Who Was the First Civil War Soldier Killed in Action in Virginia?
This unfinished pencil drawing by famed artist Alfred Rudolph Waud (1828-1891) depicts Fort Ellsworth on Shuter’s (or Shooter’s) Hill, west of Alexandria in late June / early July 1861. Illustration has been enhanced to show details. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Click on the image to expand. The illustration is titled, Earthwork fort…
Continue reading ➞ Earthwork Fort at Alexandria Protecting the Left of the Line of the Grand Army
This pencil drawing by famed artist Alfred Rudolph Waud (1828-1891) depicts a Union artillery piece and camp of 2nd United States Cavalry, Company B, led by Lieutenant Charles H. Tompkins, near Falls Church, Virginia on July 1, 1861. Exactly one month earlier, Tompkins led a chaotic reconnaissance on Fairfax Court House, in which several of…
Continue reading ➞ Outpost Watching Falls Church, Virginia, 1861
On Friday, July 19, 1861, a seven-man patrol from Captain Henry W. Burdsall's Independent Company of Ohio Cavalry was ambushed along the West Fork of the Greenbrier River, near present-day Durbin, West Virginia, in Pocahontas County. Confederate reports claimed that all but one of the men were killed, but the reality was different. One man…
The incident near Red House not only serves as a lesson in the hazards of nineteenth-century warfare but also underscores the importance for historians of cross-referencing newspaper reports with multiple sources. It was shortly after sundown on July 14, 1861. The Ohio longshoremen and steamboat crewmen of the 1st Kentucky Infantry Regiment (U.S.) were packed…
Continue reading ➞ Clash at Red House: Friendly Fire or Something More?
The town of Wheeling, located along the Ohio River in what was then the Virginia panhandle (today, West Virginia), was Virginia’s fourth largest city in 1860. Sandwiched between the free states of Ohio and Pennsylvania, it was largely populated by German immigrants with no affinity for Virginia’s Anglo-American planter class. When the Secession Convention in…
Based on a careful analysis, it’s reasonable to conclude that the Union force had approximately 4,518 men on the field that day. The Battle of Big Bethel, June 10, 1861, on the Virginia Peninsula was unequivocally the first pitched battle of any magnitude in the American Civil War. Approximately 6,000 Union and Confederate soldiers participated,…
Connecticut-born James Harmon Ward (1806-1861) was a dyed in the wool Yankee steeped in his region's maritime tradition. He graduated from the American Literary Scientific and Military Academy at Norwich, Vermont in 1823 and entered the U.S. Navy as a midshipman. His varied naval career included interdicting illegal slave traders off the African coast and…
Spirit of '61 