Swamps and the Civil War

Leesylvania State Park, named after the Lee family and their homestead in the bluffs covered with lush green trees, is located by the Potomac River. A swampy area, rich with fauna and flora, surrounds the banks and extend into tributaries in Prince William County, 24 miles south of the political swamp of Washington, D.C. and 24 miles north of Fredericksburg, Virginia. During the Civil War, following the Confederate victory of the battle at Ball’s Bluff in October 1861, both Confederate and Union armies settled along the way between Richmond and Washington. Confederate soldiers marched from Fairfax County to Prince William County to defend the line from Manassas to Quantico.

Batteries located on a bluff in today’s Leesylvania State Park on the Potomac River blockaded shipping to Washington. There are still two cannons left in the original location in the park bearing witness to this blockade. In parts of the Neabsco and Quantico Creek area is where Confederate units built log huts with clapboard roofs to shelter them in the winter months. Gen. John Bell Hood’s Texas Brigade built its winter camp named Camp Wigfall in the vicinity of the swampy area by the Potomac River in Prince William County in the summer of 1861. The museum archives describe how men who were not on fencepost duty, cooked and cleaned the camp, played cards to pass the time, “foraged, and visited brigade sutlers [civilian provisioners to an army post] or friends and relatives in the nearby camps.” A temporary Lone Star Theater was built for the Hood’s Minstrels, a group of actors, brass band, and choir. Highly popular, this theater saw performances by Sam Sweeney (banjo) and “The Bonnie Blue Flag” bard Harry McCarty.

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Because conditions were unsanitary, the camps experienced outbreaks of measles, dysentery, diarrhea, and typhoid fever. According to museum archives, more soldiers died from various disease outbreaks than died from actual combat. Hailing from the Deep South, most soldiers relied on locals for their care while army doctors struggled to control the epidemics. Private James M. Polk from the 4th Texas Infantry wrote that “Our losses in the winter of 1861 from sickness and exposure, incident to camp life were very heavy. I had the measles; had a relapse and developed a case of typhoid-pneumonia; and my fate was uncertain for about six weeks. For ten or twelve days I did not eat a mouthful of anything.” It is easy to understand how the soldiers, in their weakened condition from battle and marching, would fall prey to the conditions in the camps. The area today is swampy, reminiscent of surroundings back in 1861. It is difficult to walk through the dense vegetation, mud, murky soil, and infernal mosquitoes even though there are wooden planks placed strategically around to help navigate the muddy flats. When the Confederates withdrew towards Richmond in early March 1862, the camps were abandoned. While the retreating soldiers took with them what they could, the lack of enough wagons, the bad roads, and their quick departure, forced them to destroy provisions and munitions to avoid their capture by the Union soldiers. The few surviving camps were occupied by the Union troops but were eventually destroyed.