Civil War

Civil War. Urbanna, Virginia. During the Civil War, ships came and went into Urbanna Creek as the town was occupied at different times by Federal and Confederate forces. Just off the mouth of the creek, on November 8, 1861, a Union tug and steamer armed with cannons fired upon the town. A group known as the Middlesex Light Dragoons, later part of the Confederate 55th Virginia Infantry, was using the old County Courthouse building in town as barracks. As the firing began, soldiers and residents ran for safety from homes and buildings down into the Lansdowne ravine behind Virginia Street and the Spouts Cove ravine on Watling Street. The town was shelled for several hours as Union cannon balls fell upon the town. Although homes and the courthouse building were struck, legend has it that the only death from cannon fire that day was a town hare that ran out of its hole during the shelling. When Union vessels came to town, the large local slave population saw the town waterfront and those Union ships as a clear path to freedom. When word spread of Union vessels on Urbanna Creek, slaves seeking freedom ran away into the dark of night and hid in town ravines. At daylight they boldly walked straight down Watling, Virginia, Cross or Prince George streets to Union sailors and freedom. Several of those former slaves enlisted in the Union Army, fought in the 36th U.S. Colored Infantry, and were among Union forces that invaded Middlesex in 1861. Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan proposed to President Abraham Lincoln, the "Urbanna Plan", a military plan to move Union forces behind Confederate flanks and invade Richmond through Urbanna. Just before the invasion of the town in March of 1862, Confederate forces moved from Manassas towards the Rappahannock River, making the plan strategically useless.