Sharpsburg, Manassas, and Fredericksburg

Eh, so, sorry this has taken so long to crank out. We had a great vacation this year that left us awestruck at the sacrifices of blood and life that went into the establishment of our country, as well as the destructive power of nature. The former resulted from our dilettantish tour through Sharpsburg, Manassas, and Fredericksburg, three Civil War battlefield sites along our route south to the Outer Banks. The idyllic spot in rural Western Maryland pictured above is part of Antietam National Historic Site, the site of the most deadly battle in American history and a turning point in the Civil War.

We learned a lot meandering around the various battlefield sites, but this NPR story, which I heard a few days after we returned home, tells a better story. In this cornfield, one unknown soldier of many was killed, his remains recently discovered by a hiker. On September 18, the 147th anniversary of the battle, he was buried in New York state. The poor guy was one of 300 missing in action just from New York, and the buttons on his jacket, which had been replaced, suggest that although in his late teens, this was not his first battle.


After we felt sufficiently reverent, hot, and dusty, we headed south into Virginia toward Prince William Forest Park, a beautiful national park near Washington, DC, and, gratefully, with a ridiculously long access road, so that you do actually get a sense of dense forest remoteness despite your proximity to Baltimore, Washington, DC, and the I-95 corridor.

This positioned us to do a walking tour of Manassas Battlefield (known by the rebs as "Bull Run") a bit before sunset. I need to confess here that the strategic importance of specific locations and the directions of attack of various battalions tend to be lost on me, but these battlefields were fascinating nevertheless. Manassas was especially interesting because the visitor center had closed and only a few cars remained in the parking lot, so there was nothing to do but wander around the fields, try to imagine what happened here 150 years ago, and take in the quiet peacefulness of these places. It is remarkable and moving that people had the foresight to preserve them, so that they remain much as they were 150 years ago, allowing dorks like us to learn and pay tribute in our wee ways. A field at Manassas:


Our final Civil War stop was in Fredericksburg, Virginia. At this point, I was getting antsy to get to the barrier-island+seafood part of our trip and had had enough of the decisions of the various generals and the accomplishments of such-and-such cavalry corps. Words were exchanged when we were not allowed to leave right after the 45-minute walking tour (45 minutes!). John very much wanted to see the cemetery and Chatham, a preserved mansion built in 1768 that was visited by Washington, Jefferson, and all of the Civil War biggies. He was right, of course. The cemetery was quite moving. 12,770 unknown soldiers are buried there, marked by stones like this:

The first number is the plot number, and the second is the number of soldiers buried there.

This is the exterior of Chatham. Those trees were there during the Civil War:


Chatham itself was beautiful, and it had a lot of interesting history, including influencing the careers of Walt Whitman and Clara Barton. And we had a picnic lunch in the garden, which always goes a long way toward erasing crankiness.