Near the beginning of the Civil War, General Robert E. Lee's daughter visited Stratford. The great manor no longer belonged to the Lee family. She wrote to her father who was in the South at that time, and described her visit to his childhood home. He answered her as follows:
"I am much pleased at your description of Stratford and your visit. It is endeared to me by many recollections and it has always been a great desire of my life to be able to purchase it. Now that we have no other home, and the one we so loved (Arlington) has been so foully polluted, the desire is stronger with me than ever. The horse-chestnut you mention in the garden was planted by my mother. I am sorry the vault is so dilapidated. You did not mention the spring, one of the objects of my earliest recollections."
On Christmas Day, 1861, General Lee wrote his wife: "In the absence of a home I wish I could purchase Stratford. That is the only other place that I could go to, now accessible, that would inspire me with feelings of pleasure and local love. You and the girls could remain there in quiet. It is a poor place, but we could make enough bread and bacon for our support and the girls could weave us clothes."
General Robert E. Lee's desire was never fulfilled.
THE BLOCKADE
From time to time various writers have stated that the isolated Northern Neck of Virginia was "out of bounds" or "bypassed" in the Civil War. Despite these statements, which so lightly dismiss the Neck during the war years, natives of that region, did not spend that time in the carefree, unmolested state thus implied.
All able-bodied men of the Neck were away on the battlefields. Anxiety for them, and for the South, hung like a pall over the remaining population. More tangible worries beset them also.
Although the bordering waters of the Potomac, Rappahannock and Chesapeake were rich with food, when the Virginians tried to take the oysters, crabs and fish, a tug from the Federal flotilla which patrolled these waters would come "steaming out to hasten them home, with sometimes a six-pound shot sent after them for emphasis."
The women, girls, old men and boys raised what they could, but many fields, once lush with corn, tobacco, sugar cane and other crops, now lay barren save for sedge and pine seedling. Many of the men had ridden away to war on the horses. The people at home gave as much as they could of what they could raise to the men at the front.
The Federal gunboats shelled homes and landed soldiers who carried off everything they could find. Many are the tales that lingered on in the Neck about the geese that were struck down by swords, the bowls of milk that were lifted to mouths and gulped down, the firkins of butter that were carried away by soldiers who thrust their arms elbow deep in the butter and carried it off that way, the cattle that were slaughtered before the hungry eyes of the natives, the churches that were profaned—the list could go on and on. And there were some instances when the invaders were kind, or fair.