Winter Encampment 1863-4

In studying the Civil War and the service of my Great Great Grandfather, Peter Stroup, I noticed that in 1863 a winter encampment was set up at Brandy Station. In June of 1863 the largest cavalry battle in the United States took place at Brandy Station....and this was the first engagement in the Gettysburg Campaign. But what about the winter encampment? It kind of reminds me of the winter encampment at Valley Forge. So I went straight to the wayside marker in Brandy Station, VA to find out just what happened. Here is what it says:

On the night of December 1, 1863, following its unsuccessful advance against Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia during the Mine Run Campaign, a cold and tired Army of the Potomac withdrew across the Rapidan River and returned to Culpeper County.

On these fields and throughout most of Culpeper and part of Fauquier Counties, 100,000 Union soldiers set up a massive winter encampment that disrupted the lives of local residents.

Union commander Maj. Gen. George G. Meade ordered that the army establish its camps in an enormous oval-shaped configuration. As protection, an outer ring of cavalry pickets stretched around the army, backed up by an inner line of infantry.

Supplies from Alexandria, Virginia rolled down the Orange and Alexandria Railroad into Brandy Station, the army's principle supply depot, and to Ingalls Station, 1.2 miles to the north.

The encampment, which lasted from December 1, 1863 to May 4, 1864, was described by one soldier as a time "when the shattered regiments regained form and fair; when the new men learned the ways of the old, and caught the spirit of the organization they had entered....and the new body, thus composed, was to be thrown into one of the most furious campaigns of human history."

"A man could walk for miles and never leave the camps around Brandy Station." Anonymous Union Soldier

"A few weeks ago it was a wilderness; now it is a city of log huts, hardly a tree to be seen." 126th New York Soldier.

One thing that bothers me about this whole thing (although the army had to have an encampment for the winter) but it says that it "disrupted the lives of local residents. Living here in Gettysburg and understanding what the civilians had to put up with....just for a three day battle, I can't imagine what it must have been like for the people who lived in Brandy Station. Was there enough water, food, wood, space? Were the residents forced to "help" feed the soldiers? How many homes might have been broken into and ransacked? These are all questions that I would love an answer to....but may not actually receive. This was a tough time for everyone involved. It's a shame we don't hear more about these poor civilians.