Spirit of ’61 Roundup for July 2026

Welcome to the monthly recap of blog posts for Spirit of ’61, a digital encyclopedia of early Civil War Virginia. We explore the first half of 1861, from the Secession Winter to just before Bull Run. Before the first large battles were fought, Virginia was already living through a political, military, and social crisis that would shape the course of the war. Spirit of ’61 exists to document that story.

I spent much of July on a family trip back to the Midwest, so we had a lighter than usual posting schedule. Since we only published a few articles, I wanted to take the opportunity to explain more about the background and purpose of Spirit of ’61. I created the website back in 2021 to coincide with the 160th anniversaries of events in 1861. Since then, it has expanded into a repository of information about this specific time period, putting these events under a microscope. You would be surprised at how much happened in Virginia in just these critical few months.

The first shots of the American Civil War may have been fired at Fort Sumter in South Carolina, but the war really started in Virginia. An invasion of Virginia was necessary to secure the nation’s capital, and protecting major commercial and transportation corridors like the Ohio, Potomac, and Chesapeake rivers and the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad was essential for the Union war effort.

Understanding what happened in Virginia prior to the battle of Bull Run is essential to understanding the war, yet these events are frequently glossed over or ignored. If you want to know how George B. McClellan rose to such prominence in the Union Army, you have to understand what happened in northwestern Virginia in June and July 1861. Likewise, if you want to understand how Virginia split in two in 1863, you have to understand events in the spring and summer of 1861. What was the origin of the Emancipation Proclamation? It was Benjamin Butler’s actions at Fort Monroe in May 1861. The list goes on.

Virginia’s secession and accession to the Confederacy was not a single event but a complex process that involved not just a vote at the state convention but a referendum approved by the voters over a month later. It then had to integrate politically and militarily with the other Confederate states. During these critical months, Virginia Governor John Letcher and Robert E. Lee, as overall commander of Virginia’s provisional army and navy, made decisions / mistakes that had lasting consequences for the remainder of the war.

As it stands, I’ve identified 39 distinct military actions in Virginia between May 1 and July 20, 1861 over (what I refer to as) three geographic fronts and created pages for each one, listing the key facts, background, and sources. Myself and a handful of volunteers have collected a trove of contemporary newspaper articles, and transcribed hundreds of letters and reports from various sources, including the Official Records, and visited dozens of small battlefields, taking photos to document the terrain and what, if any, markers or memorials and original structures still exist. Each page has links to the relevant letters and reports, making it easy to examine the primary sources.

My goal is to share as much information as possible about this period in Virginia’s history, but do so in an organized way that is helpful to researchers and enthusiasts alike. Spirit of ’61 is designed to be academically sound yet accessible to everyone. With that in mind, I recently incorporated it as a Virginia nonstock corporation and am working towards 501(c)3 status. We are accepting article submissions from the public, as long as they are relevant to this specific period. It’s possible our mission might expand one day to include all of 1861, but so far, the first half of the year has yielded plenty to write about.

We published several interesting articles in July, including:

Virginia Artillery Units Enrolled in May 1861

Continuing our exploration of Virginia volunteers raised in the early months of the American Civil War, we examined artillery batteries enrolled in May 1861. According to the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Paymaster General’s Office tally of all Virginia volunteer companies prior to July 1, 1861, twenty-five artillery companies were enrolled in May.

A Trip through the Kanawha Valley

Throughout 1861, Union and Confederate forces struggled for control of the Kanawha Valley, an important east-west corridor through what was then western Virginia. I recently had the opportunity to visit several Civil War sites in the region, including locations along the Ohio and Guyandotte rivers. Although much has changed in the past 165 years, I still enjoy seeing these places firsthand and visiting the signs and monuments that mark the region’s role in the conflict.

New Photos Added in July

Looking at old black-and-white photos and illustrations, it’s easy to feel disconnected from the places and events they depict. However, standing in those locations and seeing the landscape in full color makes history feel real. While much has changed in the 165 years since the war, seeing these places in person offers a perspective you can’t get from books alone. In July, we added new photos from six battle sites, including Martinsburg, Barboursville, Scary Creek, and more.