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The Federal surgeon’s kit was the mainstay of field surgery. These kits gave the surgeon the limited capability to perform amputations and general surgery necessary to keep wounded alive for evacuation or convalescence.

Field Ambulances (actually wagons with springs) increased in the AOP to about 1,000 vehicles. Officers were assigned to lead the Ambulance Corps in battles to evacuate the wounded to field hospitals, and to rail and steamboat transport. Drivers were detailed from units, trained, drilled and ready for operations.

In March 1863, corps badges were ordered for the entire AOP. The unique shapes, shown here, designated each corps. Colors designated specific divisions (red for 1st, white for 2nd, blue for 3rd, and green for 4th). Intended as much to identify failing or straggling units, these badges were an instant source of unit pride in…

The Army of the Potomac’s (AOP’s) primary mission was the defense of Washington, D.C. Click on map to enlarge. Lee’s army (in red) occupied the Rappahannock’s right bank. Often inaccurately depicted as a “Winter Encampment,” the AOP’s winter of 1863 was a strategic pause in which the army occupied a 200-square-mile, gourd-shaped defensive perimeter. Fully-manned…

This is the camp of 150th Pennsylvania Infantry at Belle Plain in March of 1863. Click on picture to enlarge and see details.  This reflects life in the camps and exposure to the radically changing elements. Note the choking smoke in the regimental streets from crude, improvised chimneys. The troops are in formation in the…

Captain Shaw’s father traveled by steamboat to Aquia Landing.  From there he went by train to Brooke Station.  Once he found his son, he presented him with Massachusetts’ Governor John Andrew’s offered command of the first black regiment of Massachusetts.  Shaw thought about it and even wrote to his parents and fiancé.  He finally accepted…

While Captain Robert Gould Shaw was in Stafford, his personal destiny was being planned in Washington and Boston, as Secretary Edwin Stanton, Massachusetts Governor John Andrew and activist Frederick Douglass sought to organize the first black volunteer regiment in the North, the 54th Massachusetts Infantry. Governor Andrew gave Shaw’s father an offer for his son…

On January 24th, 1863, Captain Robert Gould Shaw, 2nd Massachusetts Infantry, arrived by steamboat at Aquia Landing . Wounded at Antietam, he returned to the XII Army Corps via Brooke Station and found his dispirited regiment encamped near Stafford Court House. Shaw wrote, “The corps had a very hard march down…it was raining hard here,…

Confederate “Come Retribution” Gold From Stafford? The Confederacy spent $500,000 in gold for “Secret Service” and “Necessities and Exigencies” between 1861 and 1863. It spent $1,500,000 in gold in 1864 and the first four months of 1865. That gold could have been mined covertly in Stafford during periods when Confederate troops occupied and when Federal…

By the outbreak of the Civil War, most of Stafford’s mines were owned by Northern capitalists who went home at the beginning of hostilities. The mines were located in a remote area and most of the employees were locals well familiar with the lay of the land and the locations of the gold deposits. Historians…

Stafford’s most productive mine was Eagle, also known at various times as the Rappahannock Gold Mine, which operated from before 1833 to around 1897. By 1847, it was operated by the Virginia Gold Belt Company of Philadelphia who changed the name from Rappahannock to Eagle Gold Mine. By 1850, it was owned by Bettle Paul…

From 1800 to the present there have been approximately 245 gold mines in Virginia. The New Yorker newspaper (June 2, 1838) reported that, in 1831, the “weekly product of the [Virginia] mines was then about $100,000 in value, or $5,000,000 annually. But a small part of the gold is sent to the U. S. mint;…