âRichard III
EDITORâS NOTE: Americaâs COVID-19 death rate has skyrocketed since Thanksgiving, and disease experts say weâre in for a hard winter. But the nation has surmounted tough times before, just as Culpeper County did in the Civil War winter of 1863-64.
In December 1863, three years of what Shakespeare would call a âgrim-visaged warâ had already devastated Culpeper.
But matters were about to get a whole lot worse for the countyâs war-weary residents hunkered down between the Rappahhanock and Rapidan rivers.
Before the Civil War concluded, two dynamics collided head-on in Culpeper County, and one reality triumphed over the other, 157 years past.