APRIL 3, 1862:
Laura
Lee, a Confederate belle, writes in her diary of the Union occupation of
Winchester, Virginia:
“Nothing new today. Nothing but these dreadful creatures [the Union soldiers occupying Winchester] and the sense of depression and desolation
which we must have while we are in their power. I think I had better stop
writing as the prospect of our cause seems to be fading away. They are
furnishing their hospitals with everything to make them permanent, and say they
are to be the hospitals for [Union General Nathaniel] Bank’s [sic] division during
the summer. How can we live through it?”
Located
at the north end of the lower Shenandoah Valley at a latitude north of the
Federal capital city of Washington, D.C., Winchester's location was the hub of
key roadways linking the Ohio Valley to the eastern United States coastal
plains. Sitting just south of the Potomac River, Winchester lay on the only
route between the east and western United States with direct connections to
Washington, D.C. Passing through or nearby Winchester are major transportation
and communications routes, such as the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, the
Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, the Winchester and Potomac Railroad, the Manassas
Gap Railroad and Manassas Gap, the Valley Pike and Martinsburg Pike, the
Pughtown Pike, the Northwestern Grade and Petticoat Gap to Romney, West
Virginia, the Berryville Pike, Castleman's Ferry and Snickers Gap, the Millwood
Pike, Berry's Ferry and Ashby's Gap, and
the Front Royal Pike and Chester Gap.
It is
claimed that Winchester changed hands as many as 72 times during the course of
the war, and 13 times in one day.
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