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The Freedom Foundation

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CULPEPER CIVIL WAR SITES

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History informs the modern world how individual actions, laws, and ideologies may either advance or thwart human progress.


Freedom Foundation of Virginia has created a driving tour map of Civil War related sites around Culpeper - a fascinating historical view of the movement of USCT’s during the Civil War

54th MASSACHUSETTS

William Lightfoot

2nd USCT

Army of the Potomac

Army of the Potomac

Douglass Howard

George Smithers

William Booth

Ephraim Brown

Jerry Banks

Farley Thornton

Burr Taylor

Samuel Thompson

Charles Lewis

Frank Allen


Army of the Potomac

Army of the Potomac

Army of the Potomac

4th Division, 9th Corps

30th USCT

Army of the Potomac

30th USCT

Lewis Barber

William Bell

43rd USCT

30th Conn. Vols.

30th USCT

John Luc

19th USCT

30th Conn. Vols.

30th Conn. Vols.

George Washington

30th Conn. Vols.

30th Conn. Vols.

30th Conn. Vols.

Richard Mille

23rd USCT

23rd USCT

23rd USCT

Daniel Broaddus

Henry Brown

Robert Bundy

Joseph Carpenter

Joseph Carter

Elias Coates (Cotes)

William Dodson

Benjamin Eddins

Jefferson Harrison

Willis Hurley

James Wedge

Peter White

62nd USCT - Thomas Scott

Charlie wright

BLACK DISPATCH

When Gen. Joseph Hooker took command of the Army of the Potomac on 27 January 1863, he immediately saw the need for an effective centralized intelligence system. On 11 February, Col. George H. Sharpe, an attorney and an officer of New York state volunteers, accepted the post of head of the Army's intelligence service. Under Sharpe, with direction from Hooker, the Bureau of Military Information (BMI) was created. Its sole focus was collection of intelligence on the enemy; it had no counterintelligence responsibilities. It soon developed into the first "all-source intelligence" organization in US history. Sharpe obtained, collated, analyzed, and provided reports based on scouting, spying behind enemy lines, interrogations, cavalry reconnaissance, balloon observation, Signal Corps observation, flag signal and telegraph intercepts, captured Confederate documents and mail, southern newspapers, and intelligence reporting from subordinate military units. This structured approach, which ended with the Confederate surrender, was not re-institutionalized until 1947, when the CIA was created.

Sharpe's BMI was well established when Charlie Wright, a young black man, arrived at Union lines from Culpeper, Virginia, in June 1863. While being debriefed, his extensive knowledge of units in Lee's army became apparent. He had an excellent memory for details. On 12 June, Capt. John McEntee, an officer from the BMI who had deployed with Union cavalry forces just after the battle of Brandy Station, telegraphed Sharpe the following:

A contraband captured last Tuesday states that he had been living at Culpeper C. H. for some time past. Saw Ewells Corps passing through that place destined for the Valley and Maryland. That Ewells Corps has passed the day previous to the fight and that Longstreet was them coming up.

Shortly thereafter, McEntee also reported that Wright was well acquainted with these two corps and that he believed Wright's information was reliable. Wright identified more than a dozen separate Confederate regiments from both Ewell's Corps and Longstreet's Corps. The key intelligence Wright provided was that these troops had passed through Culpeper bound for Maryland.

Thanks to the Bureau's records and all-source information, Sharpe was able to confirm Wright's descriptions of the various Confederate units. This confirmation convinced General Hooker of Wright's assertion that Lee's army was moving into Maryland. Hooker ordered his army to shadow the Confederate forces' movements while traveling on the eastern side of the Blue Ridge Mountains out of view of Lee's troops.

This movement by the Union Army shielded Washington from Lee's forces and eventually forced the battle at Gettysburg. 

39th USCT

Decatur Dorsey

Service at Brandy Station - 1864

Recipient of the U.S. Military’s highest decoration - The Medal of Honor -  for his bravery at the Battle of the Crater

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