grading
and marking of these products. See, Lloyd Payne, _The Miller in
Eighteenth Century Virginia_, (Williamsburg: Colonial Williamsburg,
1963) and Charles Kuhlman, _The Development of the Flour-Milling
Industry in the United States_, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1929), pp.
27-33, 47-54.

[Illustration: Fairfax County Courthouse, June 1863. Photo by T. H.
O'Sullivan. Copy from the Library of Congress.]

CHAPTER IV

THE WAR YEARS: 1861-1865

As events in the winter of 1860 and the spring of 1861 carried the
nation into the crisis of civil war, Fairfax County aligned itself
with Richmond rather than Washington. Thus, at the State's convention
on secession in May 1861, the Fairfax County delegation voted to
ratify the secession ordinance.[83] The consequences of this action
were prompt in coming and far-reaching in their effects, for with the
commencement of military operations in Northern Virginia it became
impossible to carry on the normal processes of county government.

Fairfax Court House (the Town of Providence) was outside the ring of
fortifications which were built on the Virginia side of the Potomac to
protect the National Capital. Inside this line, stretching in a great
arc from Alexandria, through the vicinity of The Falls Church, to
Chain Bridge, Union Army commanders exercised military authority and
administered justice through provost courts.[84] Outside this area the
authority of the General Assembly of Virginia nominally remained in
effect, and the justices of the courts and the sheriffs of the county
continued to hold their positions under the laws of the seceded state.

Serious difficulties in the transaction of public business soon
appeared throughout Fairfax County, where patrolling and skirmishing
outside the ring of permanent fortified positions were daily
occurrences. This was recognized in an ordinance adopted by the
Secession Convention providing that when the court of any county
failed to meet for the transaction of business or the public was
prevented from attending the court "by reason of the public enemy",
the court of the adjoining county where such obstructions did not
exist had jurisdiction of all matters referrable to the court or the
clerk of the court where normal business had ceased.[85]

As Virginia armed, troops of the Confederacy placed themselves in
positions to repel invaders, and in May 1861, a company of the
Warrenton Rifles established a camp at Fairfax Co