The Rappahannock Line

"Winter was stretching its cold hand over the landscape of middle Virginia as the men of the Ogeechee Volunteer Rifles established their camps in the lee of the range of low ridges and hills, whose eastern slopes stretched gently down towards the Rappahannock River. The trees, which had so recently clothed those slopes with lush green, now stretched their bare branches towards surly grey skies and the fields lay stripped or, at best, covered in yellow-brown grass, already scarred earlier in the month by that first blanket of snow. But, as was seemingly typical of central Virginia winters, that initial blast of cold weather had passed. It had been replaced at first by storms of wind and rain, which, together with the snow melt, had turned the ground to expanses of mud, only for this too to be supplanted in its turn by dry cold, carried on the harsh north westerly winds that blew down the river valley. It was time, the newly-arrived troops told each other, for an end to this damned foolishness of winter season campaigning. A halt should be called in the fighting, in order for men to devote their remaining energies to surviving the impending winter. But, regardless of this near universal desire among the soldiers, there was little sign of this happening, or that the generals and their political masters, were in any way sympathetic to the idea."