All this means a lot of traveling, but Campbell doesn’t mind. “I worked so hard,” he says, “to be this exhausted.”

Campbell was eager to do “Rappahannock County” because of the chance to work with Gordon and the Virginia Arts Festival — not because of the subject matter. “I had no interest in writing about the Civil War,” he says. “I don’t even like history.” He and Gordon were aided by Ed Ayers, president of the University of Richmond, the project’s historical consultant. “I was like, ‘What do you mean, they’ve hired a historian? I can do the work,’ ” Campbell says. But instead of the dry academic stereotype Campbell and Gordon were expecting, Ayers proved to be an inspiration and a major guiding force in the project. Campbell now calls him “my Civil War Sherpa. I wouldn’t have known where to start if it weren’t for him.”

Campbell quickly became hooked. “I’ve never researched anything as much as I have this,” he says. “First, it’s an original work” — many of his other opera librettos have been adaptations of preexisting material (“Silent Night” is based on the film “Joyeux Noel”). “Second, there are so many Civil War freaks out there I don’t want to do something wrong.” He adds, “I read those books; I bought more; I couldn’t get enough. I bought a book about Civil War language. There was a word in there, ‘secesh,’ used for secession. [I thought,] ‘I can rhyme secesh with flesh!’ This is the way a lyricist works.” (In the song “A Fine Solution,” an embalmer sings, “Pro-slavery or anti, Union or Secesh, /All men are created equal, Merely mortal flesh.”)

While Campbell used specific sources for some of the songs — a politician’s speech worked into the song “States’ Rights,” for instance — he had to rely on his imagination for material for the show’s two African American performers. (The other three singers are white.) “There’s not that much,” Campbell says. “White people made sure black people couldn’t read or write. There are very few memoirs and diaries, and some are questionable, written way after the fact.” In the song “Bound to Be,” a man cynical about the prospects afforded by the Emancipation Proclamation sings, “The Northerners will treat us fine /‘You need a job, well, please, take mine!’ /They never let us read or write, /But we’ll learn all that, heck, overnight.”

“Of course, you never would have heard an African American voicing those opinions,” says Campbell, “because he would have been killed. But put yourself in his shoes and it makes sense.”