Susan Caldwell lived in Warrenton, with her four children, while her husband worked in Richmond. Throughout their years of separation, Susan wrote to her husband regularly, and with a keen eye for the events transpiring around her. In a letter begun on April 17, Caldwell explained how word of the Yankee’s approach reached the Southern troopers…

Just two weeks after Elon Farnsworth’s encounter with the guerrillas, Gen. George Stoneman set out on the mounted raid deemed vital to the success of Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker’s spring campaign. Hooker’s “high expectations” were immediately crushed, however, by a “drenching northeast storm of wind and rain.” Rather than a quick dash across the Rappahannock…

During the winter of 1862 and the spring of 1863, several Southern units conducted guerrilla operations in Northern Virginia. Companies A and H, 4th Virginia Cavalry, known as the Prince William Cavalry and the Black Horse Troop respectively, were detached from the regiment and, based in Warrenton, conducted independent operations, predominately in Fauquier and Prince…