Bound for Freedom

In the spring of 1862, the Civil War reached the Rappahannock valley as a Federal force occupied Falmouth across the river from Fredericksburg in Stafford County while the main armies campaigned on the Virginia Peninsula east of Richmond. The Union army's arrival on April 18 caused immediate upheaval: many white residents reacted with dismay, while many slaves saw opportunity in the chaos. John Washington, an enslaved man in Fredericksburg, came to this area and at Ficklen’s Mill saw soldiers in Union blue on the opposite shore of the Rappahannock River. He approached the riverbank, Federal pickets rowed over in a boat, and he crossed the river with them to freedom. As the war continued, thousands of other African Americans also left their homes and sought freedom through the Union lines.

Fredericksburg, Virginia · United States