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5 H the family war january–december 1863 I had an idea of resigning some time ago, but I have come to the conclusion that the Yankees are too close by Home to resign. —John Peter Jones, 56th Virginia Infantry, May 27, 1863 A s the Civil War entered its third year, military fortunes and home front conditions assumed a curiously inverted relationship . At the start of 1863, the Federal army was recovering from its debilitating defeat at Fredericksburg and confined to the northeastern corner of the state, while Confederates relished their recent victory. By contrast, civilian hardship and su√ering in Virginia reached its wartime apogee in the winter of 1862–63.∞ In May 1863 Confederates scored a stunning victory over the Yankees at Chancellorsville, just outside Fredericksburg , and then moved north once again. Although the Confederates did not achieve the tactical or strategic success they sought in the ensuing Pennsylvania campaign, their departure brought much-needed logistical relief to the state. As military fortunes declined, then, home front conditions improved. The contrasting experiences of war in Virginia weighed heavily on soldiers, who maintained connections to both the civilian and military worlds. The challenge of the year would be how soldiers balanced the competing interests and experiences of their two worlds. Nearly two years of war in northern and central Virginia thoroughly denuded the region of crops, livestock, and residents, many of whom had fled south to Richmond. Throughout the state, enslaved Virginians seized on the chaos of war, and the opportunity o√ered by the Union’s increasing interest in fostering emancipation, to push against the bonds of slavery, or to break them altogether. The harder the North fought to destroy slavery, the harder the Confederacy sought to protect it. The challenge of defending slavery and controlling slaves demanded aggressive measures from individuals and government at all levels, many of which angered citizens unaccustomed to an invasive state. People across Virginia, and across the Confederacy, began to express their discontent with their national government’s policies in more public ways. Ironically, citizen’s objections and protests revealed the success of the national project. By 1863 most white southerners expected their new 112 H the crucible of war national government to defend slavery and protect them from hostile armies and hunger. The inability of the Confederate government to accomplish these goals encouraged Virginians to refine their vision of the how war should be managed. In some cases, Virginians blamed the Confederacy, with its aggressive policies of conscription and taxes for their misfortunes. In others, residents advocated a stronger hand for the government, granting it the power to defeat the despised Yankees. In both situations, they treated the Confederacy like their nation. The ferocity of battle in 1863, the experience of capture and confinement in northern prisons, and the Confederates’ own tentative use of hard-war tactics all created an increasing distance between soldiers and their homes. On the one hand, this distance threatened to alienate soldiers from one of their most important sources of motivation—defense of family. On the other, many soldiers seem to have almost appreciated the distance because it con- firmed for them that the military life they despised was not the only possible world. Soldiers’ idealized reminiscences of domestic life o√ered relief from the fear and pain that characterized the military experience.≤ But soldiers could not ignore the distress of those at home. The increasing hardships experienced by civilians forced soldiers to seek ways to understand how their military service protected their families. Most emerged from the long hiatus in the late summer and fall of 1863 with a more clearly defined belief that staying in the army would meet their families’ needs. This sense of motivation inspired Virginia soldiers until the end of the war. M any Virginians began the new year as they had those of the 1850s, by attending to the business of hiring slaves. A thirty-four-yearold Virginia soldier, named George Washington Peebles after the Revolutionary patron of liberty, noted the strong market in slave rentals just two days after Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. ‘‘January 3, 1863: Clear and moderately warm. Went to the hiring at Daniel’s More negroes hired very high indeed,’’ he reported.≥ The rise of slave hiring in the 1850s generated an annual tradition of seeking out slaves and negotiating contracts in early January. For those Confederate families now devoid of white men to labor in fields or factories, obtaining...

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