Rare Historic Photos of Alexandria, Virginia, in the 1860s

Alexandria, Virginia, was founded in 1749, and by the mid-19th century it had lived several distinct lives. It began as a tobacco trading post, grew into one of the busiest ports in the country, was folded into the District of Columbia for a time, and became home to both the largest slave-trading firm in the nation and a sizable free Black community. When the Civil War broke out, the city transformed again — this time into a critical Union supply base, a sprawling hospital town, and a city under military occupation. The photographs taken here during the 1860s document all of it in striking detail.

Virginia seceded from the Union in the spring of 1861. Federal troops moved into Alexandria on May 24, 1861, and the city never returned to Confederate hands. Its port and railroad connections made it the ideal staging ground for the Union army’s operations in northern Virginia. Supplies flooded in by ship and by rail, then fanned out to armies in the field. The Orange & Alexandria Railroad became a critical artery for moving men, equipment, and food toward the front lines.

To protect Washington, D.C., and the supply lines running through Alexandria, the Union army constructed a ring of forts around the city. Battery Rodgers sat along the Potomac River and was armed with some of the largest artillery pieces of the war, including massive 15-inch Rodman guns capable of firing 440-pound projectiles. These guns were not show pieces — they were placed there to stop any Confederate naval vessel that might try to move up the river.

As the war churned out casualties, Alexandria became a city of hospitals. Large hotels, churches, and private buildings were seized by Union authorities and converted into medical facilities. The Mansion House Hotel became Mansion House Hospital. Grace Church, the Downtown Baptist Church, and the Lyceum all took in wounded and sick soldiers. When those buildings filled up, new facilities like Sickel Hospital and Slough Hospital were built on the outskirts of the city. Trains rolled back into Alexandria loaded with men pulled from battlefields at Bull Run, Antietam, and Fredericksburg.

The Marshall House hotel became one of the most talked-about locations in Alexandria at the very start of the occupation. On May 24, 1861 — the same morning Union troops crossed into the city — Col. Elmer Ellsworth of the 11th New York Infantry climbed to the roof of the Marshall House to tear down a large Confederate flag that had been visible from Washington. The hotel’s owner, James Jackson, shot Ellsworth dead on the spot. Pvt. Francis Brownell then shot and killed Jackson. Ellsworth became one of the first Union officer casualties of the war, and his death was used as a rallying cry in the North.

The railroad infrastructure in and around Alexandria was among the most photographed industrial scenes of the Civil War. The U.S. Military Railroads operation based here managed a vast network of locomotives, repair shops, roundhouses, and supply cars. Photographers documented engine barns, machine shops, loaded freight trains, and the workers who kept everything running. The Orange & Alexandria Railroad was especially important — and especially vulnerable. Confederate forces regularly destroyed its bridges and track, and Union engineers rebuilt them just as quickly.

Confederate sabotage of the railroad was constant. Tracks were ripped up, bridges burned, and rolling stock wrecked whenever Rebel forces got close enough to do damage. Union photographers documented the destruction — twisted rails, smashed locomotives, and collapsed trestles — and the repair crews who followed close behind the fighting armies. Col. Herman Haupt oversaw much of this construction and repair work, and locomotives were even named in his honor.

Alexandria’s waterfront was equally busy. The port served as the main entry point for enormous quantities of military supplies — coal, hay, lumber, food, and hardware all arrived by barge and steamship. Government wharves lined the waterfront, and warehouses stretched back from the docks. Laborers, many of them Black men, worked the wharves loading and unloading cargo. The city’s old commercial identity as a port town was fully absorbed into the Union war machine.

While Union generals set up headquarters in commandeered buildings across the city, the military also ran bakeries, corrals, hay barns, and carpenter shops. The government bakery in Alexandria produced bread for troops across the region. The quartermaster’s corral held hundreds of horses and mules needed to haul artillery and supply wagons. These photographs show a city that was less a battlefield and more a factory — a place designed to feed, arm, and move an army of hundreds of thousands.

The Union army established convalescent camps on the outskirts of Alexandria to handle the overflow of sick and wounded soldiers. These camps held thousands of men at a time, housed in rows of tents and wood-frame barracks. When the barracks at Camp Slough were converted into medical wards for Slough Hospital, soldiers were moved back into tents. A Sanitary Commission office operated at the convalescent camp, working to improve conditions and reduce the death rate from disease.

Before the war, Alexandria was not only a commercial port — it was a center of the domestic slave trade. Price, Birch & Co., operating out of 1315 Duke Street, was one of the largest slave-trading firms in the country. The building at that address included holding cells where enslaved people were locked up before being sold and shipped further south. After Union forces occupied Alexandria, photographers documented the facility in detail, capturing the iron-doored cells, the exterior of the compound, and the people connected to it.

Alongside the slave trade, Alexandria had a well-established free Black community before the war. African American residents had built churches, businesses, and fraternal organizations, and many were skilled tradespeople. When the war began and Union forces took control, Alexandria became a destination for thousands of enslaved people escaping Confederate-held territory. These refugees — called contrabands under Union policy — arrived in enormous numbers, many of them sick, starving, and with no resources. The army set up Freedman’s Barracks to shelter them.

The death toll among the refugee population was severe. Disease spread through the crowded barracks, and hundreds of freedpeople died in Alexandria during the war years. A pro-Confederate landowner was compelled to turn over his property for use as a burial ground. The Contrabands and Freedmen’s Cemetery operated for five years, taking in approximately 1,800 burials. After the Freedmen’s Bureau closed in 1868, the property was returned to its original owners. Over time, as grave markers rotted and ownership changed hands, the site was developed for commercial use, and the cemetery was largely forgotten.

Alexandria also served as the seat of the Restored Government of Virginia during the war — a Union-recognized government representing the seven Virginia counties that remained under federal control after secession. This gave the city an unusual dual role: a military base and an official state capital at the same time. Union officers held meetings in commandeered mansions, church buildings housed hospital wards, and seminary campuses were turned into military headquarters and medical facilities.

The Potomac River brought more than just supply ships. In the fall of 1863, a squadron of Russian warships arrived in American waters as a show of diplomatic support for the Union. The Russian frigate Osliaba anchored in the harbor of Alexandria, and photographers took the opportunity to document both the sailors on deck and the vessel itself. Russia’s presence was intended to signal that it would not support any European intervention on behalf of the Confederacy.

The Union Navy maintained a strong presence at Alexandria throughout the war. The USS Pensacola, a screw sloop-of-war, was photographed off the Alexandria waterfront. Guard boats patrolled the port. The river itself became a highway for military logistics — railroad cars loaded at Alexandria could be placed onto barges and floated down to Aquia Creek, then transferred back to rail lines supplying the Army of the Potomac in the field.

Infantry regiments encamped near Alexandria left behind some of the most vivid photographs of military life during the war. The 44th New York Infantry, the 8th New York State Militia, and other units were photographed at their camps — rows of tents, stacked muskets, cook fires, and men in various states of rest and preparation. Drum corps posed for portraits. Officers gathered on hotel steps. These images capture the enormous scale of the Union military presence in and around the city.

Fort Ellsworth, named after the slain colonel, was one of several defensive works constructed around Alexandria. It sat on Shuter’s Hill and provided commanding views of the surrounding terrain. Battery Rodgers guarded the river approach. Together, these fortifications formed part of the broader ring of defenses protecting Washington from Confederate attack throughout the war.

The city’s churches survived the occupation largely intact, though several were repurposed for military use. Christ Church, where both George Washington and Robert E. Lee had worshipped, continued to stand on its original site. The Virginia Theological Seminary and Fairfax Seminary were both converted into military hospitals, their chapels and classrooms filling with cots and medical supplies.

By the end of the war, Alexandria had been physically spared the destruction that leveled much of Richmond and Fredericksburg. Its buildings stood, its streets were intact, and its railroad yards were operational. The photographs taken here across the 1860s form one of the most complete visual records of any American city during the Civil War — documenting its role as a military engine, a refugee haven, a hospital city, and a place where the brutal history of American slavery was still very much visible in brick and iron.