3-016-841 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The War in America: winter quarters of the left wing of the Confederate Army on the Rapidan - from a sketch by our special artist, 1864. Military camp made up of a '...log and canvas city...There curled the blue smoke from the tent of Robert E. Lee, whose hand I had just shaken, and whose friendship I am proud to own...every soldier of the army of Northern Virginia was a comrade...around me, on every side as far as the eye could reach, lay spread the battle-fields of Virginia; and in many a distant clump of pine wood slept their last sleep those whom I had known in life...Far away in the background, tipped with snow, towered the mountains of the Blue Ridge...The camp which now looked so calm and peaceful in the clear winter's sunshine, with naught to disturb the quiet but the stroke of the pioneer's axe cutting fuel for the bivouac fire, would in a few short weeks be broken up. Across the Rapidan, which flows beyond the nearer crest of hills, lay the enemy, only waiting probably the first approach of spring to renew the awful drama that has spread desolation over many a once smiling acre of Virginian soil'. From "Illustrated London News", 1864.