âRichard III EDITORâS NOTE: Americaâs COVID-19 death rate has skyrocketed since Thanksgiving, and disease experts say weâre in for a hard winter. But the nation has surmounted tough times before, just as Culpeper County did in the Civil War winter of 1863-64. In December 1863, three years of what Shakespeare would call a âgrim-visaged warâ had already devastated Culpeper. But matters were about to get a whole lot worse for the countyâs war-weary residents hunkered down between the Rappahhanock and Rapidan rivers. Before the Civil War concluded, two dynamics ...