We spend three days immersed in civil war battlefields and
their connections to local communities.
Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, I learned about the Civil
War through books, movies, and plastic action figures. There just weren’t any
battlefields in Oregon for a ten-year-old to experience first-hand. So, when I
started traveling east, I was drawn to iconic battlefields like Gettysburg and
Antietam. Until I started my quest to visit all the national park units, I had
no idea of the sheer number of battlefields or how integrated into local
communities they were and still are.
Heading south out of Washington, D.C., my girlfriend Craig
and I recently did a sweep through Civil War battlefields in and around the Confederate
capital of Richmond, Virginia. I had heard of Fredericksburg, Petersburg, Richmond,
Spotsylvania, and Chancellorsville, but hadn’t realized these battles were all in
Virginia, were relatively close together, and represented the action on the
southern end of the D.C.-Richmond corridor. Here, Confederate and Union troops see-sawed
back and forth over the course of the war as generals on both sides tried to
take each other's capital.
Basing out of Richmond, we started our three-day Civil War
adventure at the Fredericksburg visitor center to learn all we could about
Fredericksburg’s four local battlefields (Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania, Chancellorsville,
and The Wilderness). Exploring some
parks is possible without a visitor center orientation, but I cannot imagine
trying to understand all that went on at these battlefields without first
seeing the movie, studying the dioramas, reading the exhibit narratives, and securing
the driving tour guides.
There are driving guides to the four Fredericksburg battles
and we spent the best part of a day exploring them all. Be sure and spend some time at the
Chancellorsville visitor center and take the short walk to where General
Stonewall Jackson, in the confusion of the battle, was mortally wounded by his
own soldiers. Take the time to walk some
of the fields where union and confederate soldiers crashed into each
other. Look at the battles from the
artillery perspective. The Park Service
has placed cannons in many places to help us imagine how integral they were to
winning some of these fights. It’s all
there for you to check out, so be sure and give yourself enough time.
Stratton House. NPS photo
And pay close attention to the exhibits in all the visitor
centers, you never know what kind of personal connection you might find. You can imagine my surprise when one of the
Fredericksburg exhibits told the story of the “Stratton House,” a solidly built
brick structure that provided safe haven to wounded Union soldiers because,
unlike the predominately wooden houses in the area, it didn’t get blown to bits
during the battle. It is still being lived in and is on the National Register
of Historic Places. I shared this possible distant relative with my sister who
maps the Stratton family genealogy and she is researching the family
connection. So in addition to new Park Passport stamps, I may have added to
Stratton family history!
What really struck me about the Fredericksburg Battlefield
is its location relative to the local community. The Stratton House, which
served as a battlefield hospital 150 years ago, is now in a neighborhood that
could be Anytown, USA. So, in addition to visiting the park units, we also wanted
to explore the local communities in and around these battlefields … and nothing
beats going local like AirBnB or locally owned Bed and Breakfasts. They can
connect you to the local community in ways you would never expect. For example,
our AirBnB host in Richmond, who rents his place when he travels, requested
that should we run into the actual owner of the apartment where we were
staying, to please say we were friends of his girlfriend’s parents so his
landlord wouldn’t know he was renting out his place. You just don’t get to participate
in that kind of conspiracy at a Holiday Inn!
Meals are another community connection. Our Richmond
apartment was located near Virginia Commonwealth University, in close proximity
to some really fine eating establishments that featured local beers and locally
sourced food, two more windows into the Virginia culture. I can recommend beers
from Starr Hill, Devil’s Backbone, and Blue Mountain breweries. And while
stocking up at the neighborhood grocer, the store’s bulletin board alerted us to
an upcoming Bar-B-Cue competition at the county fairgrounds, which we ate our
way through later in the week.
We spent our second day working through many of the 13 units
that make up the Richmond National Battlefield Park. The Tredegar Visitor Center in Richmond is a
good place to start. It is in a civil
war era building that was one of the confederacy’s most important
ironworks. It is a great old building
that tells the stories of the four major campaigns that were fought in/around
Richmond. There are several driving
tours available to Richmond area battlefields.
The most interesting site for us in Richmond was at
Chimbaroza on the site of one of the Confederacy’s largest hospitals. The medical stories told in the visitor
center/museum, located in an urban setting just south of downtown, were
fascinating. We learned how nurses
washing wounds and changing bandages noticed that patients farther down the row
of beds suffered more infections and higher mortality than those at the
beginning of the row. Through observation, they determined that fresh water for
each patient greatly decreased the rate of infection. Yes, they had been using one bucket of water
to treat dozens of patients. Seems
common sense to us, but it was a revelation in the 1860s.
On our last day we went to Petersburg and learned about the
failed Union effort to utilize a gap blown in the confederate defenses caused
by a tunnel dug under the confederate lines and filled with dynamite. The explosion worked and the huge crater is
still there for you to see, but when union troops moved into the crater rather
than around it as they charged the confederate lines, they became like fish in
a barrel for confederate soldiers. It
took another eight months of siege warfare before Petersburg ultimately fell to
union troops.
As we hiked around the many sites associated with the Fredericksburg,
Richmond, and Petersburg battlefields, we marveled at not only the remnants of military
fortifications (trenches, fox holes and earthen berms) but also structures,
like the Stratton House, the Richmond Ironworks and the location of the
Chimbaroza Hospital, that help you imagine what the battlefield landscape was
like 150 years ago. Homesteads, farms, stores, churches, and villages were
integral players in these battles, by choice or not, providing cover, officer
quarters, and hospitals for nearly every engagement.
Many of these very same communities are still integral to
the battlefields today. So as you explore Civil War battlefields, whether
iconic or lesser known, don’t forget to check in with the locals.
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