Army of Northern Virginia
The Army of Northern Virginia was the primary military force of the Confederate States of America in the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War. It was the primary command structure of the Department of Northern Virginia, it was most arrayed against the Union Army of the Potomac. The name Army of Northern Virginia referred to its primary area of operation, as did most Confederate States Army names; the Army originated as the Army of the Potomac, organized on June 20, 1861, from all operational forces in northern Virginia. On July 20 and July 21, the Army of the Shenandoah and forces from the District of Harpers Ferry were added. Units from the Army of the Northwest were merged into the Army of the Potomac between March 14 and May 17, 1862; the Army of the Potomac was renamed Army of Northern Virginia on March 14. The Army of the Peninsula was merged into it on April 12, 1862. Robert E. Lee's biographer, Douglas S. Freeman, asserts that the army received its final name from Lee when he issued orders assuming command on June 1, 1862.
However, Freeman does admit that Lee corresponded with Joseph E. Johnston, his predecessor in army command, prior to that date and referred to Johnston's command as the Army of Northern Virginia. Part of the confusion results from the fact that Johnston commanded the Department of Northern Virginia and the name Army of Northern Virginia can be seen as an informal consequence of its parent department's name. Jefferson Davis and Johnston did not adopt the name, but it is clear that the organization of units as of March 14 was the same organization that Lee received on June 1, thus it is referred to today as the Army of Northern Virginia if, correct only in retrospect. In addition to Virginians, it included regiments from all over the Confederacy, some from as far away as Georgia and Arkansas. One of the most well known was the Texas Brigade, made up of the 1st, 4th, 5th Texas, the 3rd Arkansas, which distinguished themselves in numerous battles, such as during their fight for the Devil's Den at the Battle of Gettysburg.
The first commander of the Army of Northern Virginia was General P. G. T. Beauregard from June 20 to July 20, 1861, his forces consisted of six brigades, with various militia and artillery from the former Department of Alexandria. During his command, Gen. Beauregard is noted for creating the battle flag of the army, which came to be the primary battle flag for all corps and forces under the Army of Northern Virginia; the flag was designed due to confusion during battle between the Confederate "Stars and Bars" flag and the flag of the United States. Beauregard continued commanding these troops as the new First Corps under Gen. J. E. Johnston as it was joined by the Army of the Shenandoah on July 20, 1861, when command was relinquished to General J. E. Johnston; the following day this army fought its first major engagement in the First Battle of Manassas. With the merging of the Army of the Shenandoah, Gen. Joseph E. Johnston took command from July 20, 1861, until May 31, 1862. First Corps – commanded by General P.
G. T. Beauregard Second Corps – commanded by Maj. Gen. G. W. Smith Left Wing – commanded by Maj. Gen. D. H. Hill Center Wing – commanded by Maj. Gen. James Longstreet Right Wing – commanded by Maj. Gen. John B. Magruder Reserve – commanded by Maj. Gen. G. W. SmithUnder the command of Johnston, the Army entered into the First Battle of Manassas. On October 22, 1861, the Department of Northern Virginia was created ending the Army of the Potomac; the Department comprised three districts: Aquia District, Potomac District, the Valley District. In April 1862, the Department was expanded to include the Departments of the Peninsula. Gen. Johnston was forced into maneuvering the Army southward to the defenses of Richmond during the opening of the Peninsula Campaign, where it conducted delay and defend tactics until Johnston was wounded at the Battle of Seven Pines. During the months after the First Battle of Bull Run, Johnston organized his Shenandoah Army and Beauregard's Potomac Army into two divisions under a unified command with Gustavus Smith and James Longstreet as division commanders.
Beauregard quarreled with Johnston and was transferred to the Western theater over the winter months. Jackson was sent to the Shenandoah Valley in October 1861 with his own old Stonewall Brigade and with two other brigades from Western Virginia. Several newly arrived brigades were added to Johnston's army in late 1861-early 1862; when the Peninsula Campaign began, Johnston took his army down to the Richmond environs where it was merged with several smaller Confederate commands, including a division led by D. H. Hill as well as Benjamin Huger's Department of Norfolk, John Magruder's Army of the Peninsula, miscellaneous brigades and regiments pulled from various Southern states. Richard Ewell was elevated to division command in the spring of 1862 and sent to join Jackson in the Valley. On May 27, an additional new division was created and led by A. P. Hill consisting of several new brigades from the Carolinas and Virginia, soon augmented with James Archer's brigade from Smith's division. At Seven Pines and Smith served as temporary wing commanders, operational control of their divisions went to Brig.
Gen William H. C. Whiting and Brig. Gen Richard H. Anderson. Maj. Gen. Gustavus Woodson Smith commanded the ANV on May 31, 1862, following the wounding of Gen. J. E. Johnston during the Battle of Seven Pines. With Smith having a nervous breakdown, President Jefferson Davis drafted orders to place Gen. Robert E. Lee in command the following day. On June 1, 1862, its most
United States
The United States of America known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U. S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D. C. and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico; the State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean; the U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The diverse geography and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century; the United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies following the French and Indian War led to the American Revolution, which began in 1775, the subsequent Declaration of Independence in 1776; the war ended in 1783 with the United States becoming the first country to gain independence from a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, with the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, being ratified in 1791 to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties; the United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century, acquiring new territories, displacing Native American tribes, admitting new states until it spanned the continent by 1848. During the second half of the 19th century, the Civil War led to the abolition of slavery.
By the end of the century, the United States had extended into the Pacific Ocean, its economy, driven in large part by the Industrial Revolution, began to soar. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a global military power; the United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only country to use them in warfare, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Sweeping civil rights legislation, notably the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, outlawed discrimination based on race or color. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in the Space Race, culminating with the 1969 U. S. Moon landing; the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world's sole superpower. The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation, it is a representative democracy.
The United States is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States, other international organizations. The United States is a developed country, with the world's largest economy by nominal GDP and second-largest economy by PPP, accounting for a quarter of global GDP; the U. S. economy is post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge-based activities, although the manufacturing sector remains the second-largest in the world. The United States is the world's largest importer and the second largest exporter of goods, by value. Although its population is only 4.3% of the world total, the U. S. holds 31% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share of global wealth concentrated in a single country. Despite wide income and wealth disparities, the United States continues to rank high in measures of socioeconomic performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP, worker productivity.
The United States is the foremost military power in the world, making up a third of global military spending, is a leading political and scientific force internationally. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America in honor of the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci; the first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" is from a letter dated January 2, 1776, written by Stephen Moylan, Esq. to George Washington's aide-de-camp and Muster-Master General of the Continental Army, Lt. Col. Joseph Reed. Moylan expressed his wish to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the revolutionary war effort; the first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia, on April 6, 1776. The second draft of the Articles of Confederation, prepared by John Dickinson and completed by June 17, 1776, at the latest, declared "The name of this Confederation shall be the'United States of America'".
The final version of the Articles sent to the states for ratification in late 1777 contains the sentence "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be'The United States of America'". In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" in all capitalized letters in the headline of his "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence; this draft of the document did not surface unti
Jackson's Valley Campaign
Jackson's Valley Campaign known as the Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1862, was Confederate Maj. Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson's spring 1862 campaign through the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia during the American Civil War. Employing audacity and rapid, unpredictable movements on interior lines, Jackson's 17,000 men marched 646 miles in 48 days and won several minor battles as they engaged three Union armies, preventing them from reinforcing the Union offensive against Richmond. Jackson suffered a tactical defeat at the First Battle of Kernstown against Col. Nathan Kimball, but it proved to be a strategic Confederate victory because President Abraham Lincoln reinforced the Union's Valley forces with troops, designated for the Peninsula Campaign against Richmond. On May 8, after more than a month of skirmishing with Banks, Jackson moved deceptively to the west of the Valley and drove back elements of Maj. Gen. John C. Frémont's army in the Battle of McDowell, preventing a potential combination of the two Union armies against him.
Jackson headed down the Valley once again to confront Banks. Concealing his movement in the Luray Valley, Jackson joined forces with Maj. Gen. Richard S. Ewell and captured the Federal garrison at Front Royal on May 23, causing Banks to retreat to the north. On May 25, in the First Battle of Winchester, Jackson defeated Banks and pursued him until the Union Army crossed the Potomac River into Maryland. Bringing in Union reinforcements from eastern Virginia, Brig. Gen. James Shields recaptured Front Royal and planned to link up with Frémont in Strasburg. Jackson was now threatened by three small Union armies. Withdrawing up the Valley from Winchester, Jackson was pursued by Shields. On June 8, Ewell defeated Frémont in the Battle of Cross Keys and on the following day, crossed the North River to join forces with Jackson to defeat Shields in the Battle of Port Republic, bringing the campaign to a close. Jackson followed up his successful campaign by forced marches to join Gen. Robert E. Lee for the Seven Days Battles outside Richmond.
His audacious campaign elevated him to the position of the most famous general in the Confederacy and has been studied since by military organizations around the world. In the spring of 1862 "Southern morale... was at its nadir" and "prospects for the Confederacy's survival seemed bleak." Following the successful summer of 1861 the First Battle of Bull Run, its prospects declined quickly. Union armies in the Western Theater, under Ulysses S. Grant and others, captured Southern territory and won significant battles at Fort Donelson and Shiloh, and in the East, Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan's massive Army of the Potomac was approaching Richmond from the southeast in the Peninsula Campaign, Maj. Gen. Irvin McDowell's large corps was poised to hit Richmond from the north, Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks's army was threatening the Shenandoah Valley. However, Jackson's Confederate troops were in "excellent spirits," laying the foundation for his performance in the Valley that spring, which helped derail the Union plans and re-energize Confederate morale elsewhere.
During the Civil War, the Shenandoah Valley was one of the most strategic geographic features of Virginia. The watershed of the Shenandoah River passed between the Blue Ridge Mountains on the east and the Allegheny Mountains to the west, extending 140 miles southwest from the Potomac River at Shepherdstown and Harpers Ferry, at an average width of 25 miles. By the conventions of local residents, the "upper Valley" referred to the southwestern end, which had a higher elevation than the lower Valley to the northeast. Moving "up the Valley" meant traveling southwest, for instance. Between the North and South Forks of the Shenandoah River, Massanutten Mountain soared 2,900 feet and separated the Valley into two halves for about 50 miles, from Strasburg to Harrisonburg. During the 19th century, there was but a single road that crossed over the mountain, from New Market to Luray; the Valley offered two strategic advantages to the Confederates. First, a Northern army invading Virginia could be subjected to Confederate flanking attacks pouring through the many wind gaps across the Blue Ridge.
Second, the Valley offered a protected avenue that allowed Confederate armies to head north into Pennsylvania unimpeded. Early in the Valley Campaigns of 1864. In contrast, the orientation of the Valley offered little advantage to a Northern army headed toward Richmond, but denying the Valley to the Confederacy would be a significant blow. It was an agriculturally rich area—the 2.5 million bushels of wheat produced in 1860, for example, accounted for about 19% of the crop in the entire state and the Valley was rich in livestock—that was used to provision Virginia's armies and the Confederate capital of Richmond. If the Federals could reach Staunton in the upper Valley, they would threaten the vital Virginia and Tennessee Railroad, which ran from Richmond to the Mississippi River. Stonewall Jackson wrote to a staff member, "If this Valley is lost, Virginia is lost." In addition to Jackson's campaign in 1862, the Valley was subjected to conflict for the entire war, most notably in the Valley Campaigns of 1864.
Stonewall Jackson's command, the Valley District of the Department of Northern Virginia, expanded during the campaign as reinforcements were added, starting with a force of a mere 5,000 effectives and reaching an eventual peak of 17,000 men. It remained, however, g
Battle of Thoroughfare Gap
The Battle of Thoroughfare Gap known as Chapman's Mill, took place on August 28, 1862, in Fauquier County and Prince William County, Virginia, as part of the Northern Virginia Campaign of the American Civil War. Confederate forces under Maj. Gen. James Longstreet drove back Union forces under Brig. Gen. James B. Ricketts and Col. Percy Wyndham, allowing his corps to unite with that of Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson prior to the Second Battle of Bull Run. On August 26, Maj. Gen. Stonewall Jackson led his corps of the Army of Northern Virginia through Thoroughfare Gap, on his way to raiding the Union supply depot at the Manassas Junction. In response to the raid, the following day Union Maj. Gen. Irwin McDowell set out from Warrenton to Manassas Junction to engage Jackson. In order to protect his army's left flank, he dispatched Brig. Gen. James B. Ricketts's the 1st New Jersey Cavalry under Sir Percy Wyndham towards the Gap. Ricketts stopped at 6 miles to the east, while Wyndham occupied the gap.
Maj. Gen. James Longstreet's corps, followed in the path of Jackson's march and was approaching the gap from the west late on the evening of August 27. At 9:30 a.m. on August 28, Wyndham's troopers encountered Longstreet's vanguard while attempting to fell trees across the road on the east side of the gap. Wyndham dispatched a courier to Ricketts at Gainesville. Ricketts's advance was slow, he had only reached Haymarket, 3 miles to the east, by 2 p.m. By that point, Wyndham had been driven from the Gap and Longstreet took possession of it; the Federal position was still strong though, as a series of low-lying ridges east of the gap provided an excellent ground for defending the road to Gainesville, the Confederates had not occupied the hills to the north and south of the gap. In order to meet this Union threat, Longstreet developed a plan, whereby he would command the gap from the high ground on either side and outflank the Union position on the eastern ridge; the 9th Georgia from Col. George T. Anderson's brigade was sent to Chapman's Mill on the east side of the gap to repulse a Federal attack by the 11th Pennsylvania, who to reach the gap, had to remove the trees felled by Wyndham earlier that morning.
The impediment allowed Anderson to send half of his brigade up to the slope to the north of the gap to occupy the high ground while still having sufficient men to repulse the 11th Pennsylvania. To the south of the gap, the 2nd and 20th Georgia regiments from Henry Benning's brigade raced up the slopes on the west against the 13th Massachusetts, climbing up the east side; the Georgians drove the 13th Massachusetts back down the steep slopes. With the gap in Confederate control, Col. Evander M. Law's brigade was ordered up and over the ridge to the north of the gap to attack the Federal right. At the same time, Brig. Gen. Cadmus M. Wilcox was sent with three brigades 6 miles to the north, through Hopewell Gap, to outflank the Federal position and attack its rear; when Law's brigade came down the eastern slope of the mountain and attacked the Federal right, Ricketts sent the 84th New York against them, temporarily checking Law's advance. The 2nd and 20th Georgia, pressed down the slopes to the south and soon attacked the Federal left.
With his position becoming untenable, Ricketts decided to fall back on Gainesville, leaving the gap to the Confederates before Wilcox could cut off his line of retreat. In terms of casualties, the battle was small, with only 100 combined, but had major strategic consequences. Ricketts failed to comprehend the importance of keeping the two wings of the Confederate army apart. Rather than entrenching his force in a strong defensive position at the gap, the easiest and quickest crossing of the Bull Run Range, he left only cavalry there while he sat a half-day's march away at Gainesville, protecting the railroad, a job much more suited for his cavalry; as such, he lost the advantage and the only hope his small force had in hindering Longstreet's advance. His failure to do so allowed the two wings of the Confederate army to unite at Manassas and ensured Pope's defeat during the Second Battle of Bull Run on August 29; the Thoroughfare Gap Battlefield was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999.
The Civil War Trust and its partners have preserved 109 acres of the battlefield. The battlefield is accessible from a walking trail adjacent to the ruins of Chapman's Mill, located north of Interstate 66 on Beverly Mill Drive. Sharpshooters used the mill's upper floor windows to defend the pass. Historic and wayside markers are placed along Virginia Route 55 just south of the mill. Hennessy, John J. Return to Bull Run: The Campaign and Battle of Second Manassas. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993. ISBN 0-671-79368-3. Salmon, John S; the Official Virginia Civil War Battlefield Guide. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2001. ISBN 0-8117-2868-4. National Park Service battle description CWSAC Report Update The Battle of Thoroughfare Gap: Maps, facts and preservation news
George B. McClellan
George Brinton McClellan was an American soldier, civil engineer, railroad executive, politician. A graduate of West Point, McClellan served with distinction during the Mexican War, left the Army to work in railroads until the outbreak of the Civil War. Early in the war, McClellan was appointed to the rank of major general and played an important role in raising a well-trained and organized army, which would become the Army of the Potomac in the Eastern Theater. Although McClellan was meticulous in his planning and preparations, these characteristics hampered his ability to challenge aggressive opponents in a fast-moving battlefield environment, he chronically overestimated the strength of enemy units and was reluctant to apply principles of mass leaving large portions of his army unengaged at decisive points. McClellan organized and led the Union army in the Peninsula Campaign in southeastern Virginia from March through July 1862, it was the first large-scale offensive in the Eastern Theater.
Making an amphibious clockwise turning movement around the Confederate Army in northern Virginia, McClellan's forces turned west to move up the Virginia Peninsula, between the James and York Rivers, landing from the Chesapeake Bay, with the Confederate capital, Richmond, as their objective. McClellan was somewhat successful against the cautious General Joseph E. Johnston, but the emergence of General Robert E. Lee to command the Army of Northern Virginia turned the subsequent Seven Days Battles into a partial Union defeat. General McClellan failed to maintain the trust of President Abraham Lincoln, he did not trust his commander-in-chief and was derisive of him. He was removed from command in November after failing to decisively pursue Lee's Army following the tactically inconclusive but strategic Union victory at the Battle of Antietam outside Sharpsburg and never received another field command. McClellan went on to become the unsuccessful Democratic Party nominee in the 1864 presidential election against Lincoln's reelection.
The effectiveness of his campaign was damaged when he repudiated his party's platform, which promised an end to the war and negotiations with the southern Confederacy. He served as the 24th Governor of New Jersey from 1878 to 1881, became a writer, vigorously defended his Civil War conduct. Most modern authorities have assessed McClellan as a poor battlefield general; some historians view him as a capable commander whose reputation suffered unfairly at the hands of pro-Lincoln partisans who made him a scapegoat for the Union's military setbacks. After the war, subsequent commanding general and 18th President Ulysses S. Grant was asked for his opinion of McClellan as a general. George Brinton McClellan was born in Philadelphia, the son of a prominent surgeon, Dr. George McClellan, the founder of Jefferson Medical College, his father's family was of Scottish heritage. His mother was Elizabeth Sophia Steinmetz Brinton McClellan, daughter of a leading Pennsylvania family, a woman noted for her "considerable grace and refinement".
The couple had five children: Frederica. McClellan was the great-grandson of Revolutionary War general Samuel McClellan of Woodstock, Connecticut. McClellan attended the University of Pennsylvania in 1840 at age twelve, resigning himself to the study of law. After two years, he changed his goal to military service. With the assistance of his father's letter to President John Tyler, young George was accepted at the United States Military Academy in 1842, the academy having waived its normal minimum age of sixteen. At West Point, he was an energetic and ambitious cadet interested in the teachings of Dennis Hart Mahan and the theoretical strategic principles of Antoine-Henri Jomini, his closest friends were aristocratic Southerners such as James Stuart, Dabney Maury, Cadmus Wilcox, A. P. Hill; these associations gave McClellan what he considered to be an appreciation of the Southern mind and an understanding of the political and military implications of the sectional differences in the United States that led to the Civil War.
He graduated at age nineteen in 1846, second in his class of 59 cadets, losing the top position to Charles Seaforth Stewart only because of poor drawing skills. He was commissioned a brevet second lieutenant in the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers. McClellan's first assignment was with a company of engineers formed at West Point, but he received orders to sail for the Mexican War, he arrived near the mouth of the Rio Grande in October 1846, well prepared for action with a double-barreled shotgun, two pistols, a saber, a dress sword, a Bowie knife. He complained that he had arrived too late to take any part in the American victory at Monterrey in September. During a temporary armistice in which the forces of Gen. Zachary Taylor awaited action, McClellan was stricken with dysentery and malaria, which kept him in the hospital for nearly a month; the malaria would recur in years—he called it his "Mexican disease". He served as an engineering officer during the war, was subject to enemy fire, was appointed a brevet first lieutenant for his services at Contreras and Churubusco and to captain for his service at Chapultepec.
He performed reconnaissance missions for Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott, a close friend of McClellan's father. McClellan's experiences in the war would shape his political life, he learned that flanking movements are bette
Falmouth, Virginia
Falmouth is a census-designated place in Stafford County, United States. Situated on the north bank of the Rappahannock River at the falls, the community is north of and opposite the city of Fredericksburg. Recognized by the U. S. Census Bureau as a census-designated place, Falmouth's population was 4,274 as of the 2010 census. Founded in 1728 by the same act of the Virginia Assembly that established neighboring Fredericksburg, Falmouth was created as a port town on the Rappahannock to serve inhabitants living north of the river within the vast Northern Neck holdings of Lord Fairfax, his agent, Robert "King" Carter, promoted the establishment of the town, the Carter family played a dominant role in the town's development throughout much of the colonial period. Hunter's Ironworks known as Rappahannock Forge, was an iron furnace located near Falmouth. Thomas Jefferson made special provision to protect the ironworks during the American Revolution; the Falmouth Road was a colonial road that served as the main route connecting Winchester in the Shenandoah Valley to the port of Falmouth.
This road follows a northwesterly route, called the Shenandoah Hunting Path and crossed through the piedmont counties of Stafford and Fauquier before passing over the Blue Ridge at Ashby's Gap. Modern day US Hwy 17 follows much of this route. Located within King George County, Falmouth became part of Stafford County when county lines were redrawn in 1776, it was a stop on the Richmond and Potomac Railroad in the nineteenth Century, replaced by, CSXT Today. During the American Civil War, Falmouth was occupied by Union forces in 1862 and 1863, Northern commanders located their headquarters southeast of the town during the Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville campaigns. In May 1864, Union wounded and Confederate prisoners from the battles of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania Court House were transported through the area to the wharves at Belle Plain on Potomac Creek, a tributary of the Potomac River, located east of Falmouth. Today Falmouth is a suburb of Fredericksburg. Among the community's significant historic structures is Belmont, the home of American artist Gari Melchers, now a historic house museum administered by University of Mary Washington.
Chatham Manor, the 1771 home of William Fitzhugh and a Union headquarters during the Civil War, is located downstream from Falmouth, opposite the historic district of Fredericksburg. It is administered by the National Park Service as part of Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania County Battlefields Memorial National Military Park and now serves as park headquarters. In addition to Belmont, Clearview, Conway House, Falmouth Historic District, Hunter's Ironworks, Union Church and Cemetery are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Falmouth is located at 38°19′54″N 77°27′41″W. According to the United States Census Bureau, Falmouth has a total area of 3.2 square miles, of which, 3.1 square miles of it is land and 0.1 square miles of it is water. As of the census of 2000, there were 3,624 people, 1,323 households, 997 families residing in the CDP; the population density was 1,155.6 people per square mile. There were 1,412 housing units at an average density of 450.3/sq mi. The racial makeup of the CDP was 89.29% White, 6.46% Black or African American, 0.22% Native American, 1.08% Asian, 0.61% from other races, 2.35% from two or more races.
Hispanic or Latino of any race were 2.15% of the population. There were 1,323 households out of which 35.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 58.5% were married couples living together, 11.9% had a female householder with no husband present, 24.6% were non-families. 18.9% of all households were made up of individuals and 6.7% had someone living alone, 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.68 and the average family size was 3.03. In the CDP, the population was spread out with 26.2% under the age of 18, 7.3% from 18 to 24, 27.6% from 25 to 44, 25.6% from 45 to 64, 13.3% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 38 years. For every 100 females, there were 92.3 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 89.3 males. The median income for a household in the CDP was $57,697, the median income for a family was $66,989. Males had a median income of $39,280 versus $31,202 for females; the per capita income for the CDP was $25,544. About 5.9% of families and 7.3% of the population were below the poverty line, including 12.6% of those under age 18 and none of those age 65 or over.
Moncure Daniel Conway, abolitionist Bazil Gordon, America's first millionaire. Wellington Gordon, Virginia state legislator William J. Howell, Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates Gari Melchers, artist; the climate in this area is characterized by hot, humid summers and mild to cool winters. According to the Köppen Climate Classification system, Falmouth has a humid subtropical climate, abbreviated "Cfa" on climate maps. Rappahannock United Way Falmouth Union Church Historic Site
Rapidan River
The Rapidan River, flowing 88 miles through north-central Virginia in the United States, is the largest tributary of the Rappahannock River. The two rivers converge just west of the city of Fredericksburg; the Rapidan River begins west of Doubletop Mountain in Shenandoah National Park where the Mill Prong meets the Laurel Prong at Rapidan Camp 3 miles south of Big Meadows. Sections of the lower Rapidan River are preserved by a conservation easement; the Rapidan River was the scene of severe fighting in the American Civil War, historic sites such as Ely's Ford, Brandy Station, Kelly's Ford, the Battle of the Wilderness are nearby. The name is a combination of the word "rapids" with the name of Queen Anne of England, it was known as the Rapid Ann River. The Rapidan River ranks #38 in Trout Unlimited's Guide to America's 100 Best Trout Streams. In 2000, the upper Rapidan River was nominated for EPA designation as a Tier III Exceptional Waterway. In 2001, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality rejected the application, citing uncertainty about the impact of the designation.
Mill Prong Trail to Rapidan, 3.6 miles - Enjoyable hike to Rapidan Camp. The trail starts high in the Blue Ridge Mountains on Skyline Drive, goes southeast 1.8 miles to the headwaters of the Rapidan River and returns to the point of origin. Note: This trail will not take you to the Rapidan Canal of the Rappahannock Navigation. Shenandoah National Park - Rapidan Loop, 7.4 miles - The trail starts high in the Blue Ridge Mountains on Skyline Drive and loops, following the Mill Prong and Laurel Prong and includes the confluence of the two prongs. The Rapidan River is formed at the confluence. Note: This trail will not take you to the Rapidan Canal of the Rappahannock Navigation. List of rivers of Virginia
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