Game On!

Memorial for  soldier at Cold Harbor

Lee vs. Grant.  We were off to see the battlefields of the 1864 Overland Campaign in Virginia--the first time that these two central figures of the Civil War actually fought against each other. Lee, the consummate military leader, vs. Grant, whose military career had been sporadic and questionable. So far  Lee had been able to overcome a larger, better equipped foe by using daring tactics and bold maneuvers. Union generals up to now had managed to "snatch defeat from the jaws of victory" time and again by failing to act at crucial moments or by pulling back instead of pursuing. Would Grant be different? With that background in mind, we went to learn more about how the Campaign, which was one of the most punishing of the war, unfolded.

  

Growth like this covered the Wilderness

Our initial stop was at the very first place the armies of Lee and Grant clashed--the Wilderness. The Wilderness was called "poisoned land" because earlier tobacco farming had leached all the nutrients for food crops out of the soil. Lee was familiar with the area and liked his odds since he knew that its tangle of dense underbrush would give his woefully outnumbered troops an advantage. Grant, whose goal was to draw Lee's army out into open battle, had no choice but to engage. The fighting went back and forth, with neither side able to gain a decisive advantage. At the battlefield we saw the  spot where  General Lee moved to lead reinforcing Texas troops directly into the battle. The Texans refused to allow this, stalling in their attack and crying "Lee to the Rear!" until Lee moved aside. At the end, the Battle of the Wilderness was considered to be a tactical draw. 

During our trip we've somewhat morbidly  joked that every battleground claims to have seen the "bloodiest fighting of the War". Each does indeed have its own heartbreaking stories and statistics about the dead and wounded but in my opinion, that title could go to Spotsylvania, the next battlefield in the Overland Campaign.  We were stunned as we stood at the top of a trench where  17,000 men died during the 20 hour fight in a pouring rain at an area known as the Bloody Angle. That ferocity is impossible for me to imagine but the story of the tree stump there helped me to at least get some sense of it. So many bullets struck a 22" diameter oak tree during the battle that it was reduced to a stump, literally shot to pieces. (The stump is on display at the Smithsonian.) Again, there was no clear "winner" of the two week battle but despite the high casualty rates Grant, unlike the generals before him, kept moving forward and pressing Lee as the cat and mouse game continued onto the North Anna River.

The area at the right is a section of the Bloody Angle

This sign was about all there was to photograph

What happened at North Anna? Well, we could read about it but we really couldn't see it or walk through its events. Unlike the other battlefields we've visited, it was mostly on private ground so our visit was only a series of stops by the side of the road. Armed with my iPad we followed directions like "pull over to the right at a blue gate". I didn't really get much insight into the battle but it really made me appreciate even more the value of the National Park Service and other organizations that preserve and maintain historical sites.  At the end it felt like Russ and I had been on a wild goose chase that day, winding along miles of totally unremarkable backroads. On the bright side, we had worked our way  through a whole list of confusing directions without getting lost--an achievement any couple that spends time on the road will appreciate.

Civil War entrenchment below housing addition fence

Our final stop at battlefields from the Overland Campaign was at Cold Harbor--which ironically isn't on the water and was plenty warm while we were there. This battle resulted in a clear victory for Lee's Confederates and a disastrous loss for Grant, who went into his tent and wept for the massive amount of casualties his troops suffered--at one point he lost over 5,000 men in an hour. Grant's  casualty rates for this battle alone were so high that some Northerners started calling him "the Butcher". It's still a jolt for me to see present-day housing additions and development on such historical ground. At Cold Harbor I wondered how it feels to have a trench that was dug by soldiers during that battle running into your back yard. Or to look out your front window on cannons across the street, knowing that your yard was part of a battlefield involving about 170,000 men. 

Houses built on Cold Harbor battlefield ground right outside the park boundaries

 

Grant later called Cold Harbor his greatest mistake of the war but again, he refused to retreat and pushed on, focused on his goal of defeating Lee. And we pushed on too--following Grant's next move as both armies moved south to Petersburg.

The Impact of a Few

The Impact of a Few

The unexpected finds are what make traveling such fun. Almost all the places we've visited have been owned and operated by the National Park Service or various national foundations but for a couple of days we had the opportunity to see just how important the efforts of everyday people can be in keeping history alive.

Personal items left behind by Union soldiers

Somewhere in all my reading about Civil War sites I'd read about a unique museum off the beaten path. A little digging turned up the name: White Oak Museum in Falmouth, Virginia. It turned out that the museum wasn't too far from our campground in Fredericksburg so we thought we'd drive over, spend an hour, and get on with our errands--I wanted to visit a yarn shop, we needed to go to Costco, the kind of mundane chores you have to do even when you're on the road. We were there when the museum opened for the day, expecting to zip through and be on our way.

This display alone has thousands of bullets from the encampment

Several hours later we were still there, talking with D.P. Newton--the man who created the private museum with the help of his family and friends--about how he acquired such an amazing collection of artifacts. It turned out that about 140,000 men in the Union Army camped nearby for the winter months in 1862-1863. The encampment  was in effect a city they built involving all the industries, cabins, and services that the soldiers would need to survive the winter and prepare for spring battles. When the Army moved from the area they left behind a treasure trove of artifacts. Where most museums might have a few Union belt buckles, the White Oak Museum has over 800 of them. Multiple shoes and canteens, mounds of buttons, thousands of bullets--anything you can imagine that soldiers might use in their camp was there. D.P. and local residents have been collecting artifacts in the area for years and have set up wonderful displays of them in the museum.  For D.P., who was inspired by his father to start collecting relics, the museum is clearly a labor of love. It was also a special pleasure for Civil War geeks like us.

Glenn Trimmer gave us a tour of the park

While we were at the museum we struck up a conversation with Glenn Trimmer, who served as Executive Director of Friends of Stafford County Civil War Sites, a local group who had built a new Civil War park where part of the encampment had been. Not only did Glenn explain the history of t he land and the park, he offered to give us a personal tour of it. We gladly turned our "one hour" trip to the museum into a day trip that included the park too. The park land was not a battlefield or part of the National Park system so it's been largely overlooked by Civil War buffs, but it has some pristine examples of the types of fortifications armies used at that time as well as the "corduroy" roads they built from lumber. What was even more fascinating to us was to hear how Glenn and D.P. had managed to get the park built while facing both a lack of funds and a myriad of regulations and requirements. 

Room at the Graffiti House. Letters G and C at the top may have been George Custer.

On another day we drove to Brandy Station Virginia to see the Graffiti House, a building that has wall writings left by the soldiers. Just like the White Oak Museum and the Stafford Civil War Park, the Graffiti House only exists because of some dedicated local people. The building was in disrepair and on the brink of being burned down for the lot when signatures and sketches made by Civil War soldiers were discovered.  Even then it's future wasn't certain but luckily, the Brandy Station Foundation, a small local nonprofit, was able to purchase the house and uncover the soldiers' inscriptions. The walls are covered with names, phrases, and drawings made by soldiers using charcoal from the fireplaces. Apparently soldiers back then were polite--there's no profanity, only a couple of mild put-downs like "The Yanks got it good." Some of the drawings were made by men with obvious artistic talent.     

                                                                                          

Drawing from the Graffiti House walls

The area saw much troop movement during the war, including the Battle of Brandy Station--the largest Cavalry battle (20,000 horses!) of the war--and is believed to have served at various times as headquarters, hospital and train station. One thing that makes Graffiti House special is that there are  writings from soldiers from both the North and the South. They hold fundraisers to raise money to continue the work of uncovering the graffiti using methods to conserve it properly. 

Thanks to the efforts of these three local organizations and the dedicated people in them, we got some truly unique insights into the lives of Civil War soldiers that we hadn't gotten in any other place.

Inscription reading "The United States of America"

Beautiful drawing at the Graffiti House

 

Further Along the Trail

Further Along the Trail

Stone Wall by the Sunken Road in Fredericksburg

To continue on the Russ and Sheri Civil War Trail, we drove north of Richmond to Fredericksburg, which was a battle site in two separate years.  The battle there in December 1862 took place smack in the middle of town. Sections of the stone wall lining Fredericksburg's  Sunken Road in the National Park are the original wall that was built in the late 1700s. Just up the hill from the Sunken Road is Marye's Heights (show you're a Civil War pro by pronouncing it as "Marie's" instead of as "Mary's") where Union forces charging the hill were repulsed 18 times by Confederates holding the high ground. (A woman at the yarn shop in Fredericksburg who owns a house in Marye's Heights told me that during the 150th anniversary of the battle her lawn was full of "dead" reenactors.) The battle was a terrible defeat for the Union and increased Northern impatience with the war. The victory came back later to haunt the Confederates at Gettysburg when Union soldiers holding the high ground at Pickett's Charge cried ""Remember Fredericksburg" as they decimated the approaching Rebels.

Remains of Chancellor house, namesake of Chancellorsville

When we got to the Chancellorsville battlefield, we  discovered that it was actually the start of what could have been the "Stonewall Jackson Tour". When most people think of the Civil War they think of Lincoln, Lee, and Grant. When you're visiting battlegrounds in Virginia though it seems like the name you run into most--no pun intended--is Stonewall Jackson. Jackson must have been one of the most revered figures of the war and was regarded as a legend even in the North. He was there at the beginning at Harpers Ferry as an officer in the US Army, he was at First Manassas where he went from being known as Thomas Jonathan Jackson to being Stonewall Jackson ("Look at Jackson standing like a stone wall!"). But Chancellorsville is the battle most famously  linked to Jackson.  

At Chancellorsville we saw the spot where Jackson was mistakenly wounded at night by his own troops while he was out scouting by moonlight. Our "Jackson Tour" continued in different places nearby as we saw the brick remains of the tavern where the doctor amputated his arm, the actual table where the amputation was done, the ambulance route where they drove him to await a train to Richmond, the stretcher he was carried on, the house now known as the Jackson Shrine where he stayed until his death three days later--not from the amputation but from pneumonia. 

Was Jackson wounded at this spot as the marker indicated? . . .

Or at this place also marked as the spot?

The actual bed where Jackson died

And at Ellwood Manor we saw-- I kid you not--the grave where Jackson's amputated ARM is buried! Ellwood was a working farm that not only served as a field hospital during the battle at Chancellorsville; it was the site of the Union headquarters the next year during the nearby Battle of the Wilderness. Ellwood was interesting for several reasons other than being the resting place of Jackson's arm. It's a great example of a dedicated group of volunteers who work with the Park Department to keep the site maintained and open for visitors. It also has a beautiful Witness Tree (a tree that is proven to have been on the site during the Civil War activity there) and a Battle Log (a log with artillery lodged within the tree). 

Me standing under the Witness Tree at Ellwood Manor

The Chancellorsville battle was crucial in another way beyond the death of Stonewall Jackson. Despite being vastly outnumbered there, Lee's army defeated General Hooker's Union forces. The Confederate win at Chancellorsville is considered by many to be Lee's greatest victory of the war. In fact, Lee was so successful at Chancellorsville, he decided to use the same tactics a few months later at Gettysburg, making Chancellorsville what could be considered Lee's warm up for that fateful battle.

Ellwood Manor

 

Cannon balls in Battle Log

Section showing pre-restoration wall at Ellwood

 

Stretcher and table used to treat Stonewall Jackson after he was wounded

Trains used to stop mid-route at Jackson Shrine at Guinea Station just so passengers could visit it

Tracking Down History

Russ and I have clearly been bitten by the Civil War bug. We get up as early as 6 am, I load my backpack, we grab hats and water and off we go, driving for miles to battlefields--some well known and some obscure. We take all the ranger tours at the parks, grilling them about the details of the battles and the personalities of the combatants. (Luckily the rangers are passionate about history and happy to have people who want to know more.) Hours later we return home--hot, tired, and sunburned--heads full of new information.  Russ has an advantage over me since he's been in the military and understands the weapons they used and the thinking behind the battle strategies. I muddle along, just trying to keep it all straight.

And then there's The Passport. Not the passport you get from the State Department but the National Park Service passport. Every time we enter a Visitors Center at a national park or historic site I stamp my passport. It's become a quest, with my Passport tucked into my backpack or purse no matter where we go. It sounds pretty nerdy but I'm not the only one--there are usually others lined up to stamp their books too. At this point, I've got a pretty impressive set of stamps, at least in the Mid-Atlantic Region. I'm surprised cities don't use the passport concept  which seems like an ideal way to increase tourism since it really gets people into exploring different attractions. 

Russ  by a cannon at the Gaines Mill Battlefield

Gettysburg is at one extreme of  battlefields--sophisticated visitors complex with an extensive and wonderful museum, restaurant, and large bookstore. At the other extreme are the battlefields that are basically unmarked or don't exist at all. As we drive towards a battlefield we're never quite sure what we'll find at our destination.  Two of the smaller battlefield parks we visited near Richmond were Gaines Mill and Malvern Hill, which were part of the Seven Days Campaign.

View of the house at Gaines Mill

At Gaines Mill we learned that like many others, the woman who owned the house  left before the battle and never returned to her home again. Most of the battles took place on farmland and in many instances, by the end of the battle any structures,  including the houses, were destroyed and the land was virtually unusable--pocked by artillery and littered with the most dreadful toll of death, perhaps even makeshift graves. The battle at Gaines Mill was Robert E. Lee's first victory of the Civil War but the number of casualties--15,500 dead, missing, wounded--was among the highest of the war. 

Confederates tried and failed to advance across this field

We had one of those great serendipity experiences when we visited the Malvern Hill battlefield.   It didn't look very promising when we drove up, just an older building in a small national cemetery. However when we went inside (to get my passport stamped!) we met Jason, the park ranger, who was as friendly as he was knowledgeable. As he gave us a history of the battle it was clear how passionate he was about history.  Malvern Hill is another of those battlefields where one side, in this case the Confederates, tried unsuccessfully to traverse a long stretch of open field--two miles in this case--without the benefit of any cover from Union fire.

Me with Jason

We ran into Jason again on the actual battlefield only this time our conversation included a young British guy who was starting a bike ride across the U.S.! Wow, we thought we were doing good to squeeze all our belongings into a 40' motorhome and here he had everything he needed strapped to his bike . It was his first time doing anything like this. He'd never even been to the U.S. before and now he was biking across the country to San Francisco. We had a great time comparing political notes on our two countries and hearing his take on Americans. When I imagine riding across country I think of well-traveled roads but it felt like we were literally in the middle of nowhere so it seemed odd to see him peddle off on a quiet little back road. Later that day a slow, steady rain starting falling causing us to hope that he had found shelter for what was the beginning of his long journey.

Taking off on his first day across America