Book Review

Seasons of War: The Ordeal of a Confederate Community

By Daniel E. Sutherland

Strategically located between the Rappahannock and Rapidan rivers, Culpeper County Virginia is the focus of Seasons of War: The Ordeal of a Confederate Community. Author Daniel E. Sutherland, chairman of the department of history at the University of Arkansas, transports us through time and space. The reader becomes a resident of Culpeper Court House; the year is 1861 and revolution is in the air.

As residents of Culpeper we first get to know our neighbors as momentous events swirl around and eventually engulf us. As a Culpeper resident the reader stays put in place and time, knowing only what the rest of the community knows as each day, week, month and year unfold.

As a hard working prosperous community, we do not seek war and attempt to avert it. When the attempt fails, most but not all embrace our newly formed Confederacy.

Culpeper's sons march off to war, including A.P. Hill, so polite and genteel that there are some who wonder if he really has the makings of a soldier. The question is answered resoundingly as he rushes to our rescue as A.P. Hill, Confederate General at the head of his fabled "Light Division".
Hill's actions that day are the key to the victory at Cedar Mountain. Culpeper is proud to claim him as a native son and embrace him as their own  home grown warrior-hero.

The flamboyant and fun-loving J.E.B. Stuart dazzles us with his Grand Review, the largest and most splendid cavalry display ever witnessed on the continent, over near Brandy Station. The Unionist John Minor Botts whose fields were trampled by thousands of horses in the Grand Review is neither pleased nor impressed and confronts General Stuart the next day. Many think the outspoken Botts a Yankee spy and more than a few think "something ought to be done about him". Within days, his land truly is laid to waste as it becomes the scene of the greatest cavalry battle ever fought on American soil, taking its name from nearby Brandy Station.

And so it goes, as seasons change so do the fortunes of Culpeper residents, caught up in the whirlwind of war. Some will survive the four year storm, many will not, all will be forever changed by the devastation wrought, however.

As reader-residents we may escape our travel in time and space simply by putting down the book, although I doubt you will want to till the last page is read.

Book review by the Webmaster of
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Seasons of War: The Ordeal of a Confederate Community
By Daniel E. Sutherland