page_title: Dodon (farm)
section_title: Civil War
hierarchical_section_title: Dodon (farm) / Civil War
caption_attribution_description: English: American physician Richard Sprigg Steuart (1797-1876)
context_page_description: Dodon, is a 550-acre farm and former tobacco plantation in Maryland, located near the South River about 10 miles south west of Annapolis. Purchased in 1747 by the planter and politician Dr George H. Steuart, it remains the home of Steuart's descendants to this day. Steuart grew wealthy during the colonial era thanks to proprietarial patronage, but his family's prosperity and status would be much reduced by the American Revolution and later by the American Civil War.
context_section_description: In November 1838, when his Uncle William Steuart died, Dodon was inherited by the Maryland physician Richard Sprigg Steuart.  At that time the estate comprised around 1,600 acres (6.5 km²) of land and about 150 slaves. The outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861 found the Steuart family sympathetic to the Southern cause, though Maryland did not secede from the Union (pre-war loyalties in Maryland were divided between North and South, but the Northern cause prevailed). Horses were raised and trained at Dodon then smuggled south for Confederate forces, as well as medical supplies such as quinine. As a result, Dodon was often raided by Union troops, regularly forcing Steuart to flee into hiding. As one family member later recalled:
  Dr Steuart was constantly away from home, avoiding the raiding parties from the Northern soldiers who sought to capture him, because of the help he gave the South by secretly sending supplies of quinine, and other necessities...to the Southern hospitals. Wakened...in the dead of night, [his wife Maria] dressed quietly and...admitted the Northern soldiers, and then stealing past the sentries, walked half a mile to the quarters, and sent a trusty messenger to warn his master not to return. Old William Hawkins, when a soldier put a pistol to his head saying 'tell us where your master is', replied 'I'd rather be dead than tell'.
  Steuart's nephew, Brigadier Gen. George H. Steuart (1828–1903) (Known as "Maryland Steuart" to distinguish him from his fellow General J.E.B. Stuart) fought at a number of major battles including Spotsylvania, Gettysburg, Cross Keys and Winchester, before surrendering with General Lee at Appomattox Court House.
caption: Richard Sprigg Steuart, who inherited Dodon in 1838. Steuart was sympathetic to the Confederacy and smuggled horses and quinine south to Confederate forces.
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