Spotsylvania Battlefields

Spotsylvania Battlefields Spotsylvania Battlefields grew from local preservation efforts and continues to support work to save and spotlight the battlefields in this county.

Four major Civil War battles and campaigns happened in Virginia’s Spotsylvania County: Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Wilderness, and Spotsylvania Court House. We are passionate about our local Civil War history and love to share interesting facts about the current preservation and historical facts.

Juneteenth, now a national holiday, commemorates the announcement of emancipation to the enslaved people of Texas by Gen...
06/19/2026

Juneteenth, now a national holiday, commemorates the announcement of emancipation to the enslaved people of Texas by Gen. Gordon Granger on June 19, 1865. It read in part: “The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection therefore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired laborer.”

After the surrender of Confederate armies at Appomattox, Virginia, and Durham, North Carolina, a significant number of United States Colored Troops regiments were sent to Texas to maintain a presence on the Texas/Mexico border. Among those units were the 19th, 23rd, and 43rd United States Colored Infantry regiments, who all served in Spotsylvania County in the spring of 1864, during the Overland Campaign as part of the Fourth Division of the IX Corps.


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During the Battle of Chancellorsville, the majority of the Army of the Potomac’s cavalry was raiding with Gen. George St...
06/18/2026

During the Battle of Chancellorsville, the majority of the Army of the Potomac’s cavalry was raiding with Gen. George Stoneman to disrupt Confederate communications from Richmond. Yet, some cavalry under Gen. Alfred Pleasonton remained. On the evening of May 2, 1863, as Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s Confederates pushed the Eleventh Corps eastward, a call came for the 8th Pennsylvania Cavalry, then posted at Hazel Grove, to come to Howard’s assistance. Riding north toward the Orange Turnpike the troopers ran into part of Jackson’s infantry.

Maj. Pennock Huey, who commanded the 8th Pennsylvania Cavalry, reported that after receiving orders they rode forward and finding elements of the enemy, “The regiment made a desperate charge, completely checking the enemy.” Drawing sabers, hacking and slashing for about 100 yards, the horsemen caught the infantry off guard. However, quickly gathering themselves, the Confederate infantrymen sent a volley that emptied saddles and toppled steeds.

Riding in a second squadron, Capt. Andrew Wells and his men barrelled into the now clogged road and found the Confederates between volleys and on empty rifles. “The enemy were as thick as bees and we appeared to be among thousands of them in an instant,” Wells remembered. “The whole affair was accidental,” Wells added. It was a situation where a decision was made that required action. Huey noted, “In the charge we lost Captain Arrowsmith and Adjutant Haddock, with about thirty men and eighty horses.” The excitement over, Huey and the 8th assisted in corralling Eleventh Corps stragglers.

Image courtesy of historical artist Don Troiani.

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Civil War soldiers who wrote home often mentioned their dreams. Episodes of intermittent sleep, interrupted sleep, or de...
06/17/2026

Civil War soldiers who wrote home often mentioned their dreams. Episodes of intermittent sleep, interrupted sleep, or deep sleep from exhaustion sometimes produced vivid visions. Those who described their dreams usually explained that they involved happy family situations. Writing to loved ones at home about their dreams helped soldiers maintain strong bonds between the front lines and the home front. Other dreams, like those about battles or being captured, only added to the stresses and anxieties of soldiering.

Image from Harper’s Weekly, Nov. 7, 1863.

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Writing in his journal about his experience at Fredericksburg on December 13, 1862, the 5th New Hampshire’s Col. Edward ...
06/16/2026

Writing in his journal about his experience at Fredericksburg on December 13, 1862, the 5th New Hampshire’s Col. Edward Cross, provided a vivid description about how full the air was with Confederate projectiles and his subsequent wounding:
“We were thus advancing when a shell exploded in the air directly in front of me and about the height of my head. A large fragment hit me on the breast, a smaller piece knocked out two of my teeth—& filled my mouth with sand; another bit struck me on the forehead, making a slight wound, another bit over the eye, and still another along the back of my hand. I was knocked clean off my feet, & lay insensible until roused by a violent blow on the left leg—made by a piece of shell which hit me there. Getting on my hands & knees, & spitting the sand, stones, & blood out of my mouth I looked around. The tattered colors of my Reg’t thank God were in the van! I tried to get on my feet, but could not stand. I then tried to crawl, but the balls came so thick & tore up the ground so spitefully that I could not go it—besides a ball struck my sabre scabbard, knocking me over. After that warning I concluded to lie still.”

Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

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For several decades following the Civil War residents of central Virginia easily found relics on local battlefields. Evi...
06/15/2026

For several decades following the Civil War residents of central Virginia easily found relics on local battlefields. Evidence of this is supported by a published Catalogue of War Relics, Curiosities, Etc. listing almost 500 items that were acquired and displayed at the Exchange Hotel (corner of Caroline and Hanover Streets) in Fredericksburg during the late nineteenth century. While not all of the listed artifacts were found in central Virginia, the majority were. To browse the list visit: https://bit.ly/40owV60

However, today, in effort to maintain the historical integrity of battlefield landscapes, Virginia Code § 10.1-2306(A) states: “It is unlawful to intentionally deface, damage, destroy, displace, disturb, or remove any object of antiquity on any designated state archaeological site, state-controlled land, or land owned by a battlefield preservation organization or on which such organization holds an easement.”


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Barely two weeks into the Overland Campaign, the wear and tear on the soldiers was clearly evident in their letters. Sgt...
06/12/2026

Barely two weeks into the Overland Campaign, the wear and tear on the soldiers was clearly evident in their letters. Sgt. Isaac Lefevers, 46th North Carolina, wrote home to his wife Catharine on May 19th from “Spotselvania Coart House,” explaining that “this is 7 Days that the most Desporate Battle has bin going on and Stil no Sine to sease.” Lefevers noted that he missed the first two day while attending to the wounded. However, “Since that time I have bin with the Regt wat few is left.”

In the fight of the previous evening, Lefevers “Received a slite wond in my left Shoulder al tho I am Stil with the co” and trusting Providence that would escape unharmed. “I tel you their neaver has bin such a Sloughter in men Since the war commenced we have lost a menny a good man,” he wrote. Apparently on the skirmish line at the time, Sgt. Lefevers closed that he “would like to Rite more but cant at this time we air loocken for the yankes Every minute they air Stil in site I wil Rite a gain in a few Days If I am permited to.”

Sgt. Lefevers died at a Richmond Hospital about a month after receiving a wound in a nearby skirmish on June 15, 1864.

Map image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

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In describing his regiment’s experience of fighting at Spotsylvania on May 12, 1864, the 148th Pennsylvania’s Lt. Joseph...
06/11/2026

In describing his regiment’s experience of fighting at Spotsylvania on May 12, 1864, the 148th Pennsylvania’s Lt. Joseph W. Muffly remembered: “Words can give no adequate idea of the dreadful sanguinary conflict. Hour after hour, all day long men grappled over the works in bloody struggle. They fired their guns full in each other’s faces. They lunged at each other with bayonet thrust. They leaped upon the works and fired down among the maddened crowd on either side. They grappled in mortal combat to wrest flags from each other. They held their guns and overhead and shot downward into the enemy. Hour after hour, all day long, they fought like demons. It was a literal saturnalia of blood. It was grim visaged war in full panoply of horror.”


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During their movement toward what would develop into the Battle of the Wilderness, the 124th New York’s Capt. Henry S. M...
06/10/2026

During their movement toward what would develop into the Battle of the Wilderness, the 124th New York’s Capt. Henry S. Murray, took a minute to write to his father while stopping to rest on the Chancellorsville battlefield where they had fought the year before as part of the Third Corps: “I have been over the old field—seen the place where I was wounded, the identical bog on which I was kneeling when I fell, and the place I was carried to by our boys. Our dead were but partially buried, and skulls and bones lay about in great profusion. I found a skull where [Corp. George] Shawcross fell, with a hole in the forehead just where he was shot. Capt. [David] Crist found an India rubber blanket marked with the name of the first man who fell in his company. It made my heart sick to look over the ground. I enclose some flowers picked from the spot where my company stood in the fight, and the [pages] of an old testament [Bible] found at the same place.”

Image of Capt. Murray later as a major courtesy of Spared and Shared 23.

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In the months following the Battle of Fredericksburg, the Army of Northern Virginia defended a long front that ran along...
06/09/2026

In the months following the Battle of Fredericksburg, the Army of Northern Virginia defended a long front that ran along the Rappahannock River from several miles north of the city and southward into Caroline County. As the first month of 1863 came to an end, a soldier from Gen. Alexander Lawton’s Brigade penning under the name “Camp,” wrote from “near Port Royal” to the Atlanta Southern Confederacy newspaper to inform readers about the army’s situation.

Camp was confident. After recently visiting other parts of the army, he found all “them in good health and spirits—ready as they have ever been, to meet the insolent foe,” and claimed the army “in its present position, is invincible.” Still, the army had needs, Camp noted, particularly shoes and socks, “which are necessary for a soldier’s comfort in such a climate as this.”

Turning to logistics, Camp explained, “The roads here are all in horrible condition; in fact, many of them are impassable.” From Camp’s account, it seems the Confederates had a bit of a “Mud March” themselves. On the road from Guiney’s Station, Camp “saw teams stalling with empty wagons, while every few hundred yards a wagon was mired in the mud to the axles, and abandoned . . . at short intervals, lay numbers of dead mules and horses,” some of which blocked the road.

Camp penned that the men were largely in winter quarters and he found it “amusing to see what a variety of crude huts are constructed.” “Rations now are flour and pickled pork,” he noted, but “rather short” because the roads made delivery difficult. Camp suggested that the army would need to corduroy the road leading from the railroad to properly supply the men “with commissary stores” or “the army will have to change its position.”

Image courtesy of Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/item/2005625036/

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The almost two-week long slugfest at Spotsylvania took its toll on army horses and mules. Writing on May 15, 1864, Col. ...
06/08/2026

The almost two-week long slugfest at Spotsylvania took its toll on army horses and mules. Writing on May 15, 1864, Col. Charles Wainwright, who commanded the Fifth Corps artillery, noted that “My poor horses are suffering terribly under this hard work. It is the same old story of corps commanders insisting that their artillery shall be hitched up all the time, even at night frequently. They have no consideration for the horses. . . .”

Additionally, “We have had our teams on half rations, five pounds of grain a day and nothing else; notwithstanding which, there is hardly a sack of grain in my whole command,” jotted a frustrated Wainwright. He fully understood he could not do his job without the animals, and if not properly cared for, they would not survive.

Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

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1115 A Tyler Street
Fredericksburg, VA
22401

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