The American Civil War - This Mighty Scourge of War

Portrait of a civilian

Ella Washington and the

Federal Army

George Armstrong Custer became forever
famous when he led more than
250 cavalrymen to annihilation on the
Little Big Horn river in 1876. A dozen years
earlier he had been infamous among
Virginians for destruction of civilian
property and executing prisoners. Before
either of those notable episodes of Custer's
life and death, he had been the gallant
savior of a hard-beset Virginian woman
who lived near Richmond.

Ella Bassett grew up on her father's sizable
plantation 'Clover Lea,' a dozen miles
northeast of Virginia's capital city. She had
been born in September 1834 at another
family estate, 'Eltham,' in New Kent County.

In May 1862, the Civil War came to Eltham,

and the next month it washed up on the

grounds of Clover Lea as well. Two years

later the war, by then a hard-eyed,

unforgiving monster, descended on Clover

Lea in an episode fraught with terror for

Ella. Her descriptions of the ordeal she

experienced in May and June 1864 serve

as an example in microcosm of the suffering

of hundreds of thousands of civilians at

the mercy of invading troops.

By 1864, Ella had been a married woman

for 3 years. Her husband, Colonel Lewis

Ella Bassett Washington. 1834-98. (Courtesy of the

Mount Vernon Ladies' Association)