Woodville’s location about a day’s march from Culpeper Court House led both Union and Confederate forces to camp there frequently, with many camps established in the surrounding fields and hills and used multiple times by both sides. The town’s longest wartime encampment came in July 1862, when Union Gen. Robert H. Milroy’s Independent Brigade occupied it for a month, with Milroy’s headquarters at Clover Hill, now Eldon Farms, a mile north. On July 31, he took part in a mock battle there with part of the Army of Virginia camped at Sperryville, five miles north. Milroy, a fierce Unionist, staunch abolitionist, and outspoken critic of West Point graduates, rounded up more than 100 white residents and required them to take the oath of allegiance to the United States. He also reported that many slaves fled to freedom at his camp, where he hired many as wagoners, cooks, pioneers, and general laborers to perform work otherwise done by soldiers. A year later, his attitudes toward Southern civilians, slaves, and professional soldiers had intensified, leaving him with few supporters, and his defeat at the Second Battle of Winchester effectively sidelined him for the rest of the war. In an irony, that defeat came at the hands of Confederate Gen. Richard S. Ewell, who had earlier marched his men past this location on the way to the northern Shenandoah Valley.