Odds and Ends, April 2014

This week I offer readers a few odds and ends of interest. There is a lot going on, and sometimes it's good to just throw it all out there!

*The busy season for the 1864 Sesquicentennial is about to begin. Over the next few months, we will commemorate the Overland Campaign, the siege of Petersburg, Jubal Early's raid and the Battles of Monocacy and Ft. Stevens, and the Atlanta Campaign, to name a few. Most immediately, Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park is observing the 150th anniversary of Wilderness and Spotsylvania. The park has set up a dedicated web page for all Sesquicentennial-related matters. Check here for a complete program of events, including living history and Ranger-led, real-time hikes. The offerings are truly dizzying, and I hope you'll be able to attend at least some of these very special events, which start May 3. I unfortunately have limited vacation time right now, but whatever I do, I'll be sure to report back. And look for my buddy, fellow blogger, and Sesquicentennialist extraordinaire Craig Swain, who will be in the thick of it, live Tweeting and all that good stuff.

*Closer to home, Falls Church will hold its annual Civil War Day on Saturday, May 17, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the grounds of the historic Cherry Hill House and Farm (c. 1845), a Unionist property during the conflict. The Cherry Hill website promises a day filled with numerous activities:

Learn how the Civil War affected Falls Church as re-enactors portray both civilians and soldiers from the period. Watch soldiers conduct firing and drilling exercises, listen to spy stories, letter readings and period music. Look for our children’s tent filled with lots of activities for kids.  

Old-fashioned box lunches with fried chicken, cole slaw, corn bread, ginger cake, and lemonade can be pre-ordered for $8.00. Call (703) 248-5171 for more information.This event is always a fun and interesting time for those interested in the Civil War in these parts.

My sons meet General Lee (Frank Orlando) while Fairfax Museum Curator Susan Gray looks on.

*Speaking of local happenings, last Saturday I took my boys to the 14th Annual Fairfax Civil War Day at Historic Blenheim in the City of Fairfax. This was my first time attending the event, which offered activities for young and old alike. Exhibits, tours, and lectures covered a variety of topics, including German-American caricaturists in the Civil War, preserving Fairfax history, railroads, and medicine. Visitors could see an 1862 traveling forage in action, as well as the remnants of a corduroy road recently unearthed along VA-123. My twins are only three, so we were limited to the taking horse-drawn wagon rides, visiting the camp of the 17th Virginia, meeting General Lee, feeding the horses of the Black Horse Cavalry, and climbing the hay pyramid. But I was happy to expose the boys to Civil War history and introduce them to our rural past. I take it as a good sign that they rushed to buy souvenirs in the gift shop! (A Springfield musket pen and 34-star flag....) I was also pleased to see so many other families with young children enjoying the day. As an added bonus, I had a chance to catch up with a few local historians.

*I have begun work on a possible Civil War Trails marker to commemorate the winter encampment of the Pennsylvania Reserves at Camp Pierpont in Langley. As readers know, my interest in this topic borders on an obsession. At the present time, nothing in Langley marks the site where one of the Army of the Potomac's most storied units spent the first winter of the war under the leadership of McCall, Meade, Reynolds, and Ord. Hopefully this will change in the relatively near future. I will keep everyone informed as I move forward with this project.

*The April 2014 edition of the Civil War News includes an article by reporter Nancy J. Olds about a nineteenth-century Sunday school tract that a reader gave me last year. The book contains an inscription indicating that it was taken from the home of a "Rebel" near Lewinsville,Virginia by Sgt. William A.C. Oaks of the 7th Pennsylvania Reserves. I wrote a post about the artifact last year.

Looking over graveyard towards Lewinsville Presbyterian Church in McLean.

*Last week I had the pleasure of meeting Roland McElroy, a freelance writer and congregant of Lewinsville Presbyterian Church. During the government shutdown in October, I found myself with free time and decided to do some field research at the church. Lewinsville Presbyterian was established in 1846 and sustained extensive damage during the Union occupation of Lewinsville, now part of McLean. The original church building is long gone, but the old cemetery survives. An assistant in the church's office gave me Roland's name and told me that he had just written a history of Lewinsville Presbyterian. When we finally met for coffee, he presented me with his work, Pilgrims and Pioneers Always: The History of Lewinsville Presbyterian Church, 1846-2013. Roland also gave me a copy of The Lewinsville Presbyterian Church: A Concise History of the Congregation, written by Frank W. Gapp in 1976. I am indebted to Roland for these two books, which contain priceless details about the church during the Civil War. (Incidentally, copies of Roland's book can be purchased in person at Lewinsville Presbyterian, 1724 Chain Bridge Road, McLean for $10.) Roland and I also plan to collaborate on research. He is going through the church archives and uncovering some very useful and interesting information. I hope to blog about the church in upcoming posts. Like for many congregations around Northern Virginia, the war brought tremendous and often unwanted change.

Rebel Property Returns to Lewinsville: A Priceless Relic of Northern Virginia's Civil War Past

A few weeks ago I received an email from a woman named Susan in Ohio. She was going through her father's personal effects and found an antique book from the mid-nineteenth century. Inside was written the following inscription:

Contraband Captured at the House of a Rebel near Lewinsville Va. by William A.C. Oaks Seargent of Co. C. 7th Regt P.R.V.C.

I was floored. I have blogged about the Pennsylvania Reserve Volunteer Corps (P.R.V.C.) in Northern Virginia since starting this blog. The Pennsylvania Reserves arrived in Langley, Virginia in October 1861, where they established Camp Pierpont. Lewinsville was not far up the road, and Sgt. Oaks apparently found this book in one of the abandoned secessionist homes during his stay in the neighborhood. The Reserves bid farewell to Langley in March 1862.

Inscription by Sgt. William A.C. Oaks

Susan was unfamiliar with Lewinsville, and her research had led her to my blog. (Incidentally, both Langley and Lewinsville are part of present-day McLean, Virginia.) She was extremely generous and offered to send the book to me free of charge. Needless to say, I was thrilled.

The Book

The small book, entitled Sketches of Home Life, was published by the American Sunday School Union. Founded in Philadelphia in 1824, this organization was dedicated to the spread of literacy and Christianity through the establishment of Sunday schools. The book carries a copyright of 1848, although the actual date of printing remains uncertain. A blurred handwritten inscription on the inside front cover appears to say, "Lewinsville Sab. School No. 44." It is possible that the book was one of many belonging to the Lewinsville Presbyterian Church. The church may have numbered them and distributed them to children for use in Sabbath, or Sunday, school. Lewinsville Presbyterian, established in 1846, was the only church in Lewinsville at the time of the Civil War.

Title page

Inscription reading "Lewinsville Sab. School No. 44." on the inside front cover

According to the Oaks' inscription, he took this book from a "house of a Rebel" near Lewinsville. Unfortunately, the book contains no indication of which home. Several secessionist families lived in the vicinity of Lewinsville, and without additional clues, it is impossible to say where Oaks found the book. Presumably if Oaks had come across the book in the church, the inscription would have noted this fact. I assume that Oaks scribbled this information himself around the time that he took the book, but it is possible that he wrote it well after the fact, or that someone else wrote the inscription years later.

Marbled cover of Sketches of Home Life.

The Story of William A.C. Oaks

I immediately wanted to know more about William A.C. Oaks. What I found reveals a man with a varied and interesting service record who survived the war and built a life in Berks Country, Pennsylvania and beyond. Oaks was born in the Keystone State in February 1835. He joined Company C of the 7th Pennsylvania Reserves (36th Pennsylvania Infantry) in August 1861. The unit, raised in Lebanon Country, Pennsylvania, was known as the "Iron Artillery" or "Iron Artillerists." (I am unsure why an infantry company carried this nickname.)

Oaks soon joined his regiment in front of Washington on the Maryland side of the Potomac. The 7th Pennsylvania Reserves marched to Langley at the start of October 1861 and remained at Camp Pierpont until the following March. The regiment was sent to fight with the Army of the Potomac on the Peninsula in June 1862. Oaks, as a part of the 7th Reserves, likely saw intense action during the Seven Days Battles and at Second Manassas, South Mountain, and Antietam. In December 1862, Oaks was dismissed on a surgeon's certificate. Conflicting dates are provided in various military records, and no medical reason is given, so it is unclear whether Oaks participated in Fredericksburg on December 13, and whether he was wounded there.

Even a medical discharge could not keep Oaks from volunteering again. When Robert E. Lee's Confederates threatened Pennsylvania, Oaks enlisted with Co. H of the 31st Pennsylvania Militia. He served as both a First Lieutenant and Captain before being mustered out in August 1863. The 31st Pennsylvania Militia, like nearly all such militia units, never saw any action. Not one to remain away from military life for very long, Oaks was back again in February 1864, as a First Sergeant with Co. E of the 186th Pennsylvania. This regiment mainly performed provost duty in Philadelphia.

Oaks was motivated to seek even greater opportunities with the Union Army. In January 1865 he passed the examination in Washington to become an officer of African-American troops and was recommended for a captaincy. A commission did not come until after the war had ended. In June 1865, Oaks was finally appointed as a Second Lieutenant of the 29th Connecticut Infantry (Colored). He met his new regiment in City Point, Virginia and set sail for Texas on June 10, 1865.  Arriving at Brazos de Santiago on July 3,  the 29th Connecticut (Colored) marched to Brownsville and remained there until ordered to report back to Connecticut in October 1865. Oaks was mustered out and returned to civilian life in Reading, Pennsylvania.

Flag of the 7th Pennsylvania Reserves (courtesy of Pennsylvania Capitol Preservation Committee)

In 1869, Oaks married Sarah Deysher, a widow from Reading who already had a couple children of her own. The 1870 Census listed Oaks as a machinist. It appears that two young children, ages 10 and 5, lived with William, Sarah, and her two children in Reading. (An 1880 Census returns indicates that Oaks was their father, which means that he may have been married before Sarah. Subsequent records confirm this likelihood of a prior marriage, which means that Oaks had a family when he left for war.) Oaks even dabbled in local politics. From 1873-75 he served as a councilman for Reading's First Ward.

By 1880, Oaks had moved his family to Jeffersonville, Indiana, where he worked as a foundry man. William and Sarah had two children of their own. The family experienced tragedy in 1882, when Sarah passed away. At some point in the 1880s, Oaks took a job as a mechanic in Antrim, New Hampshire. Here he met Margaret H. "Maggie" Kane, a young Irish immigrant. Oaks married her in 1887, and the couple had a son in 1890.

Oaks eventually returned to Reading. In his later years, the old veteran secured a patent for an apple-paring machine. He died in May 1917 at the age of 82 and was buried at Charles Evans Cemetery in Reading. In 1922 Maggie donated her husband's iron leg brace to the Historical Society of Berks County. According to an article in the Reading Eagle:

The leg-brace, worn by Capt. Oaks in the Civil War [after he had been wounded], enabled him to continue in command of his company. Gov. [Andrew] Curtin declined at first to commission him, but Capt. Oaks proved that with his leg and knee-cap supported by this peculiar device of the blacksmith's art, he could proceed along as well and as rapidly as most men.

In 1930, Congress awarded Maggie an increase in her widow's pension to $40 per month.

Postscript

I count Oaks' book among my most cherished possessions. Over 150 years after being taken from a "Rebel house," this small volume found its way back to Lewinsville through pure happenstance. Holding the book, I wonder whether Oaks carried this with him during the bloody battles of 1862. Did he derive some degree of spiritual comfort from this Christian publication? Or was it simply a reminder of far easier days at Camp Pierpont?  This book is a gateway to the past, and ties together my strong interest in the Pennsylvania Reserves and local Civil War history in a way that no other object could. I am thankful to Susan for entrusting me with this relic and am happy to share it with my readers, who are equally as passionate about our nation's most trying ordeal.

Sources

An Act Granting pensions and increase of pensions to certain soldiers and sailors of the Civil War and certain widows and dependent children of soldiers, 71st Cong. (1930); Samuel P. Bates, History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-1865, Vol. 1 (1869); Samuel P. Bates, History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-1865, Vol. 5 (1871); Compiled Military Service Records of Volunteer Union Soldiers Who Served with the U.S. Colored Troops: Infantry Organizations, 26th Through 30th, Including 29th Conn., available at fold3.com; "Martin Deysher (1833-1860)," Find-a-Grave (website); Index to Compiled Service Records of Volunteer Union Soldiers Who Served in Organizations from the State of Pennsylvania, available at fold3.com; C.M. Ingersoll, Catalogue of Connecticut Volunteer Organizations, (Infantry, Cavalry, and Artillery,) in the Service of the United States, 1861-1865 (1869); Lewinsville Presbyterian Church, "Our History" (website); Ellen Little, Elizabeth Nesbitt Room: American Sunday School Union Resource (website of Univ. of Pittsburgh); Morton L. Montgomery, Political Hand-Book of Berks Country, Pennsylvania, 1752-1883 (1883); National Park Service, Soldiers and Sailors Database (website); New Hampshire, Marriage Records Index, 1637-1947, available at ancestry.com; New Hampshire, Marriage and Divorce Records, 1659-1947, available at ancestry.com; Official Gazette of the United States Patent Office, Vol. 183 (1912); Organization Index to Pension Files of Veterans Who Served Between 1861 and 1900, available at fold3.com; Pennsylvania Church and Town Records, 1708-1985, available at ancestry.com; Pennsylvania, Veterans Burial Cards, 1777-1999, available at ancestry.com; Phila. Press, Jan. 30, 1865; P.R.V.C. Hist. Soc., Co. C, 7th Pennsylvania Reserves Muster Roll; Reading Eagle, July 2, 1922; U.S. Census Bureau, 1860, 1870, 1880, 1900, and 1910 Federal Census Returns for the States of Indiana and Pennsylvania, available at ancestry.com

The Presentation of the Colors to the Victors of Dranesville

The month of January 1862 was cold, damp, and miserable for the Pennsylvania Reserves encamped at Langley.  The men huddled inside their crude huts as the snow and rain fell and the ground outside turned into mud.  The winter weather even interfered with the daily routine of army life.  As a soldier from the 7th Pennsylvania Reserves wrote to the Philadelphia Press, "owing to the unfavorable weather with which we have been visited, drill and other duties have been almost suspended."  Nothing, however, not even the elements, could get in the way of bestowing honors on the victors of Dranesville. 

The Pennsylvania Reserves had become the darling of  the political and military establishment ever since the battle.  At the end of the December, Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin visited the Reserves at Camp Pierpont and declared that the regiments involved at Dranesville would have the name of the battle inscribed on their standards.  (See here for a recent post on the governor's visit.)  The flags were soon sent to Washington to be painted with the battle honors. 

Flag of the 6th Pennsylvania Reserves with a barely visible "Dranesville" inscription (courtesy of Pennsylvania Capitol Preservation Committee)

Flag of the 9th Pennsylvania Reserves with a faded "Dranesville" inscription (courtesy of Pennsylvania Capitol Preservation Committee)

A couple weeks later, on January 11, the entire division participated in the presentation of the colors to the men who had won the day at Dranesville.  All fifteen regiments, "in full uniform," formed and marched out to the parade ground, which was "in a wretched condition, occasioned by the rains of the previous day."  ("Letter from Camp Pierpont," Phila. Press, Jan. 20, 1862.)  A fifteen-gun salute was fired by the Reserves' artillery, and various regimental bands "returned the compliment."  ("Letter from Camp Pierpont," Phila. Press, Jan. 20, 1862.)  Speaker of the House Galusha Grow of Pennsylvania traveled to Langley for the occasion and met the Reserves on the parade ground.  As the soldier from the 7th Pennsylvania Reserves described the scene:

. . . the color companies attached to the different regiments in [E.O.C.] Ord's brigade took an advanced position, when the flags on which were neatly inscribed the word "DRANESVILLE," in honor of the late victory, were presented by [Grow] -- the ceremony winding up with a few complimentary remarks from that gentleman.  The cavalry and artillery that accompanied the brigade were also on the ground, and were presented with new flags similarly inscribed.*

Rep. Galusha Grow,  Speaker of the House, 1861-63 (courtesy of Wikipedia)

The regiments then filed past Grow and the other notables gathered on the parade ground.  Overall, the soldier from the 7th considered that "the affair passed off admirably" despite the muck and mire.  Perhaps the review lifted more than a few spirits in the middle of the harsh winter.  The glow of Dranesville, however, would grow dimmer as the new year progressed and the war's toll grew to unimaginable proportions.

Note
*Ord's brigade was comprised of the 6th, 9th, 10th, and 12th Pennsylvania Reserves.  All of these regiments were engaged at Dranesville. The 1st Pennsylvania Rifles ("the Bucktails"), although not part of Ord's brigade, also participated in the battle, and it is likely that they also received the inscribed flag during the ceremony.

Sources
"Letter from Camp Pierpont," dated Jan. 14, 1862, Philadelphia Press, Jan. 20, 1862;  O.R. Howard Thomson & William H. Rauch, History of the "Bucktails" (1906).

Music at Camp Pierpont

My post from a few weeks ago got me thinking about the role of music during the Civil War.  The soldiers of the Pennsylvania Reserves, like many others, passed the time in camp by listening to popular tunes and singing songs. Their long stay at Camp Pierpont around Langley, Virginia provided plenty of opportunities.  Letters written by members of the division reveal a lively bunch.  E. de W. Breneman of Company B, 1st Pennsylvania Reserves didn't let the "very, very cold night in Virginia" get him down, even though "[t]he wind is howling through the trees, and threatening destruction to all it may come in contact with."  As he told the Lancaster Express in an October 24, 1861 letter, "All is cheerful in Camp – some of the men are now singing 'Gay and Happy,' in groups; others 'Be kind to the loved ones at Home,' others, 'The Home I left behind me.'"




"Songs of War," by Winslow Homer, Harper's Weekly, November 23, 1861 (courtesy of sonofthesouth.net)


Others enjoyed the entertainment offered by regimental bands. In October 1861, an anonymous soldier in Company A, 11th Pennsylvania Reserves, was relieved that "[o]ur Brass Band which was impatiently looked for during the past month has arrived in camp."  He noted that the band, led by a Professor Filer, "discourses much excellent music."  The self-styled "Typo Warrior," of Company A, 7th Pennsylvania Reserves, put it best when he wrote to the Shippensburg News on October 17, 1861:

Now that we have a band, the twilight hours are whiled delightfully away. Dixie, Wait for the Wagon, Jordan is a Hard Road to Travel, and Home Sweet Home, are among the pieces generally selected by the men, with an occasional air from La Travita [sic], Norms or some flashy polka masourka, making altogether a mélange of eleven pieces, and executed in a manner worthy of an older organization. The fact is the men work hard every day. What time between picket and guard duty, wood chopping, and erecting fortifications (which takes a large number of our men daily), digging and ramming, the poor fellows return to their quarters completely tired out, and are entitled to some entertainment in the evening, if it be only till taps.

All letters courtesy of the Pennsylvania Reserve Volunteer Corps Historical Society.

The Grand Review at Bailey's Crossroads

Looking today at the commercial sprawl of Bailey's Crossroads in Northern Virginia, it is difficult to imagine the rural character of the landscape during the nineteenth century.  In November1861, Bailey's Crossroads was the site of the largest military review ever seen on North American soil up to that time.  Throughout the previous months, the area around Bailey's Crossroads lay in a virtual "no-man's land" between Confederate forces at Munson's Hill to the northwest and Union lines outside of Alexandria.  The area fell into Northern hands when the Confederates withdrew in late September 1861.

General George B. McClellan, commander of the Army of the Potomac, had expended much effort after the defeat at Bull Run whipping his raw recruits into a fighting force.  A Grand Review would provide McClellan with an opportunity to showcase the results of his organizational prowess.  Early on the cold morning of November 20, 1861, troops from seven divisions of the Army around Washington began marching towards Bailey's Crossroads.  McClellan wanted a great display of force, but as the New York Times reported, he ensured that the "pickets on the outposts [were] considerably strengthened" while the divisions were away.

Around 20,000 to 30,000 spectators gathered to watch the review.   According to the Times:

As no passes were required it was free to everyone who could procure a conveyance, or who chose to walk, the distance being about eight miles by the route which they were obliged to take. The roads were guarded the entire distance, so that civilians without written permission could not diverge from the prescribed limits of travel. 

The scene made an impression on Sergeant Oren M. Stebbins of the famed 1st Pennsylvania Rifles, also known as the "Bucktails." In a November 24, 1861 letter to his local newspaper, he noted that spectators were "filling the trees, covering the house tops and barns, and swarming on every vacant spot, all anxious to behold the grandest military display, that ever was witnessed in America."

As the troops arrived in Bailey's Crossroads, they were organized into a semi-circle of four miles.  At the start of the ceremony, fifteen batteries fired a salute and then McClellan, along with President Lincoln, Secretary of War Simon Cameron, and Secretary of State William H. Seward, "all on horseback, rode rapidly along the line, meeting with continuous and enthusiastic cheers from the soldiers."  (New York Times, Nov. 21, 1861.)  As J.P. Sheibley of the 7th Pennsylvania Reserves described the scene to his brother, McClellan, Lincoln, and the Cabinet, "were welcomed with loud huzza's from the soldiers, and bands playing 'Hail to the Chief'.  It was a sight that made the pulse beat quick."



"The Great Review at Bailey's Cross Roads, Virginia, on November 20, 1861 -- Sketched by Our Special Artist From the Top of a Barn," Harper's Weekly, December 7, 1861 (courtesy of sonofthesouth.net)

The dignitaries returned to the review stand, and at one-thirty in the afternoon, the seven divisions began to file past in a procession that lasted three hours.  General George A. McCall's Pennsylvania Reserves, led by the  "Bucktails," went first, followed by the divisions of Generals Samuel P. Heintzelman, William "Baldy" Smith, William B. Franklin, Louis Blenker, Fitz John Porter, and Irvin McDowell.  According to the Times, the force consisted of "a total of 76 regiments of infantry, 17 batteries and seven regiments of cavalry, perhaps in all about 70,000 men."  (Most accounts, including Harper's Weekly, reported 70,000; McClellan claimed 65,000 in a letter written that day, while the historical marker in Bailey's Crossroads notes 50,000.) After passing the review stand, the soldiers headed back to their camps around Washington.

Bailey's Crossroads, at the corner of Leesburg Pike and Columbia Pike (in 1861, the Leesburg & Alexandria Turnpike and the Columbia Turnpike).  In 1837, Hachaliah Bailey from Westchester County, New York purchased land at this intersection and built his home "Moray" here.  Union officers and their families boarded at Moray during the Civil War.  Today, only Moray Lane remains.  The windmill to the left of the highway marker is all that is left of the rural landscape. (Thanks to my wife for snapping the picture.)

The reaction of officers present in the stands was described by Harper's Weekly in the December 7, 1861 edition:

The passage of this large army of volunteers elicited the strongest praise from the very formidable body of old army officers who sat in review. General Stunner, who now for the first time since his return from the Pacific witnessed an exhibition of the progress in drill of the volunteers, expressed much surprise that men coming from civil life should, in so short a period, have been able to compete in soldierly appearance with the veterans of the regular army.

McClellan also was very content with his Army's performance.  He wrote to his wife that night at half past eight:

The Grand Review went off splendidly. . . not a mistake was made, not a hitch.  I never saw so large a Review in Europe so well done -- I was completely satisfied & delighted beyond expression.

Unfortunately for McClellan, his skills on the battlefield did not match his skills as an organizer of military reviews. 

Encounters with Slavery in Northern Virginia, Fall 1861

While researching the Union Army camps around present-day McLean, I have come across various accounts of slavery in the region.  During the mid-19th century, large-scale slave holding became unprofitable in Fairfax County due to the economic downturn.  Instead, families who owned large farms and small plantations began to use free labor alongside a smaller number of slaves.  I have not yet researched the 1860 Census returns for Langley and Lewinsville, but the 1860 Census data for Fairfax give us an idea of the extent of slavery in the county.  Out of a total population of 11,834, there were 3,116 slaves and 8,046 whites.  In addition, the county was home to 672 freed blacks.  Nearby Alexandria became the center of one of the largest slave-trading businesses in the United States, as Virginians sold off slaves for use on large cotton plantations of the Deep South.



Price, Birch & Co., Slave Dealers, Duke Street, Alexandria, Virginia.  When the Union Army occupied Alexandria in 1861, they took over this business and converted the building into a prison and home for contraband blacks.  (Library of Congress)



The Northerners who entered Virginia in the fall of 1861 were struck by the vestiges of slavery that existed not far across the river from the nation's capital.  In October 1861, a correspondent from the New York Times visited a homestead that had served as General "Baldy" Smith's headquarters.  He wrote of one slave who became free simply by virtue of abandonment:

But at the little old house there is nothing living to be seen. Even the cornstalks in the garden, the vines on the walls, and the shrubbery in the front, are dressed in the livery of death. . . .  Oh! yes, there is one living thing. Hale and hearty, too, he is -- and he is living all over. It is one of the institutions of the country -- indeed, it is "the institution." He sits on the broken porch, and looks as if he was luxuriating on the desolation around him. He don't know, just now, where he belongs, or to whom. His master is "off there somewhere," and he "tinks he's a fightin." But he does know that for once he is free to go and come anywhere within the lines, and that he gets enough to eat without having "berry much to do." 

Wartime photo of a slave family (Library of Congress)



Samuel Lascomb from Co. C, 7th Pennsylvania Reserves was based in Camp Pierpont around Langley.  On an excursion to Prospect Hill in October 1861, he encountered slave life first-hand.  He described the scene in a letter to the editor of the Lebanon [Penna.] Courier:

While out to Prospect Hill yesterday I embraced the opportunity offered to examine the miserable huts which the wealthy planters of Old Virginia furnish to their much-loved servants. To the left of the hill are three low hovels constructed on bogs and mud. There is no manner by which light is left into the building except by a hole in the wall, over which there is a shudder made of a trap door. The interior of the building is about as well furnished as such buildings are, viz: a chair which showed as though it once had an oak plated seat in it. I don’t know but the inmates of that house can say with the poet: “I love it, I love it, and who shall dare to chide me for loving that Old Arm Chair.” Then there are one or two large boxes, a rude table constructed of boards which had never come into close contact to a Jack-plane; a gourd serves the place of a dipper. A stove is an article altogether foreign to such an institution as a negro shanty, and a monstrous fire-place topped out with a chimney at the end of the house, serves the purpose of both warming, ventilating and lighting the house, while for bedding a heap of corn husks in the corner is the only thing upon which the weary slave can rest his aching bones after a hard day’s work. The inmates of the house were an old lady, who could not tell me how old she was, yet she knew she had a son that was born last spring 82 years ago! The son with his wife live with her in the same hut, and the son who is an old man already, told me that he could still do a respectable day’s work, yet they are happy and contented, for “Where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise.” As a proof of their ignorance allow me to state that when my comrade (a member of the 11th Pennsylvania Reg’t) offered to pay the young woman for two cups of coffee which we had bought and drank there, and he having offered her a dime and a half, she refused the half dime saying that she “knew what a ten-cent piece was, but she didn’t know what de oder was,” and that he “couldn’t fool her, he must give her two pennies yet;” thus absolutely refusing fifteen cents because she did not know of what denomination the smaller piece was. (Letter courtesy of the Pennsylvania Reserve Volunteer Corps Historical Society.)

The war had turned the slaves' familiar world upside down.  Even a simple monetary transaction was alien to the family at Prospect Hill.  Now a Union force occupied the region, and some slaves, like the one at Smith's former headquarters, were coming to the realization they could find freedom within the Union lines. The Northerners had likely read much about slavery; now they were personally meeting its victims and witnessing its effects.  In the fall of '61, Northern Virginia must have seemed like another planet to slave, soldier, and war correspondent alike.