The 8th Illinois Cavalry relieved the 8th Pennsylvania Cavalry from picket duty in King George County on Christmas Day 1862. Leaving their camps in Stafford County, the men headed south and east along present-day Route 3 into King George County. Stafford County was desolate, stark and war-ravaged; fences had disappeared, forests denuded and farms abandoned. …
Writing after the war, Bvt. Col. Benjamin Crowninshield, 1st Massachusetts Cavalry, explained the vital importance of outpost, vidette or picket duty. “On the skill and fidelity of cavalry depends the safety of the army.” Cavalry, Crowninshield continued, “is constantly employed…in the hardest and most inglorious service in the world, outpost and vidette duty, – where…
I built my last post, Willow Hill, around the following letter written by Col. William Gamble, 8th Illinois Cavalry, to Brig. Gen. James Wadsworth. I have received your letter of this date informing me of the arrest of Mr. Thompson overseer of Mr. Arnold, sent with an orderly to identify and have returned a wagon,…
King George County saw several skirmishes but no great battles during the Civil War. Still, the long tenure of the two great armies along the Rappahannock River in 1862 and 1863 insured a military presence in the county. Southern soldiers crossed the Rappahannock River routinely seeking food and forage from the farms in the county. …
When the Civil War tore the United States apart in 1861, the nation was 85 years old. Marmion, the home of the Lewis family, in King George County, Virginia, may have been 100 years older. The two-story frame house, which presents a rather unprepossessing face to the outside world, boasts one of the most elegant…
Earlier this summer, on the eve of the Virginia Presidential Primary, I spent some time searching the papers of Austin Blair, Michigan’s Civil War governor, housed in the Burton Historical Collection at the Detroit Public Library. I came upon a letter which hinted at the political divisions which plagued the Union war effort in 1864…
Col. Benjamin Franklin ‘Grimes’ Davis, 8th New York Cavalry, remains an intriguing figure, largely because he is so elusive. A Regular Army officer, Davis’s rigid adherence to strict discipline put him at odds with the volunteers who served under him. One perpetually disgruntled surgeon termed him “a proud tyrannical devil.” Upon learning that Davis had…
