Living and Reliving History

"I love Sunday morning driving," said Andy, as we set out from Richmond heading north. "People are all still sleeping, and those on the road are usually not in a terrible hurry." But already a pickup truck was pulled over. The cop handed the driver a ticket. "Virginia was always tough on speeders, but it's Maryland that is noted now as the speed trap," he added.
Temperatures at Chickahominy were brisk, but we walked out to the bluff in sweatshirts. Here Robert E. Lee waited for the arrival of Stonewall Jackson. Then with 45,000 troops he initiated his Seven Days' Battle, an offensive against the Union under McClellan, begun on June 26, 1862. McClellan retreated 25 miles from Richmond, the Confederate capital that was fortified with some of the best defended earthen forts in the world. The whole city was encircled with earthwork protection. The interpretive sign said if McClellan had won here, the Union would have been preserved without the abolition of slavery and the war would have been short. No telling how long it would have lasted, but U.S. history class would tell a very different story.

Through Richmond and Westmorland counties, farms stretched, gently rolling. "This is lumber area too," said Andy, as we passed a huge yard, "but their two-by-fours are warping." A bank thermometer in Warsaw read 42 degrees. "I didn't realize it was so rural this close to the coast and so near Washington, D.C.," he added. Route #3, a two lane country road, followed the terrain, gently rolling up and down and lined on both sides by fields of green clover, pine woods, beige corn stubble and brown grass.

Ranger Phillip at the George Washing-ton Birthplace said, "This is what they thought he would have lived in his first three years and where he was born on February 22, 1732. It is an authentic unauthentic replica." Footings were mistaken for the house location in 1931, when the replica was started." The real house burned to the ground on Christmas Day in 1779, and the real foundation was not discovered until 1936. Even then no one identified those footings as Washington's actual birthplace until recently.

"So what building was on the footings of the replica?" I asked him.

"We don't really know," he explained, "but the best guess is a warehouse for all the tobacco before it was shipped out. Washington's parents had a thriving tobacco plantation. It could also have housed some slaves."
Today the replica unauthentic house, colonial kitchen, formal gardens and outbuildings serve as a working farm from the mid-1700's.
Tobacco provided the cash crop for the family in earlier days of the 1700's. Plantation farms, self-sustaining in nature, grew products with the service of enslaved workers, loaded raw materials directly onto ships in the Potomac River, and imported finished goods from England. The tobacco required constant attention and such a labor-intensive operation in a sparsely populated colony depended on slaves--20 to 25 at Popes Creek--and meant only about 15 acres were devoted to the cash crop.

We watched the blacksmith forging a bar of steel and the sheep wandering freely. Otherwise, the plantation was quiet on this chilly February morning. 

Washington, a farmer at heart, absorbed the ideals and values of the Virginia tidewater culture--closeness to the natural world and lifelong attachment to the land; as well as ruling class superiority, that perpetuated itself through intermarriage and inheritance; and an emphasis on public service through positions of authority. A modest inheritance from his father, experience as a surveyor when his mother forbade a career in the British Navy, and marriage to Martha Custis, widow of a wealthy planter, carried Washington into tidewater aristocracy social status.

"He had no children," said Ranger Phillip. "Some say that smallpox, contracted the only time he ever left the country on a trip to Barbados, rendered him sterile. It's possible, even probable, since Custis had children from her first marriage. Here the father of our country couldn't be a father."

"But his solid judgment, imposing stature, dedication to country and high ideals were anything but myth," according to the pamphlet.

Victorious Confederates celebrated after the Battle of Fredericksburg, December 11-13, 1862. With the town devastated, the Union army retreated in humiliation.
"We recommend that you don't do more than one or two battlefields a day," said the guide at the Fredericksburg Visitor Center. "It's just too confusing and overwhelming to do more than that."

Parked at the Visitor Center lot, we walked the Sunken Road, past the Innis House to Marye's Heights. Although owners had re-sided the clapboards, the house inside still showed all the bullet holes on dividing walls. We peaked through windows and stood in Sunken Road beside the stone wall. We looked out over Fredericksburg as Confederate soldiers had done, awaiting futile Union charges over fields below. What a terrible waste! Union dead numbered 7,500, and soldiers were expendable. After the three-day battle, Lee said "It is well that war is so terrible--we should grow too fond of it."
The Battlefield Tour led us by car to Lee's Hill, where Lee conferred with General James Longstreet about battle plans. Here Lee nearly died twice, once when a 32-pound parrott cannon exploded, sending debris flying, and once when a Union shell from Stratford Heights landed next to him in the embankment and failed to explode.

Union forces under McClellan shelled Howison Hill from their vantage point on Stratford Heights. Confederates responded with their one remaining 30-pound gun. Shells reached two miles with a round about every five minutes. It kept both sides busy while a couple miles away Union General George C. Meade's forces crossed Slaughter Penn Farm and broke through Jackson's line. Union cannon fire from the distance had killed at least 100 horses here. "...bloated, on their backs, legs straight up in the air," said the sign. The spot is sometimes called Dead Horse Hill.
Nearby, the Hamilton Crossing became a huge Confederate rail depot when the line through Fredericksburg was cut. At war's end, the rail business returned to Fredericksburg. As we stood nearby, a long train lumbered by. It seemed fitting, but Hamilton Crossing is barely a gap in the trees.

Not far from Prospect Hill, we saw the spot where Colonel Maxcy Gregg mistook Union soldiers for Confederate pickets. The lawyer and ardent secessionist, shot in the spine by the Union soldiers, died two days later.

Fredericksburg proved Lee's good use of frontal and crossfire defense. His forces had two days notice to prepare where attacks were most likely to occur based on terrain. With time on their side, they cut trees for angling the big guns and calculated correct settings for maximum damage. Chalk one up for Lee.
By late afternoon when we headed to Chancellorsville, I already felt tired. In several places signs told of soldier fatigue, sick of marching back and forth and of all the bloodshed. That's so alien to today's peaceful landscape of wide brown fields and mature woodlands of oak and hornbeam. In the spring of 1863, Chancellorsville was actually an inn at a crossroads, not a town, but it became the site of Lee's greatest victory and at the same time his greatest loss.
Andy and I walked around the ruins of the Chancellor house site after watching the 22-minute film at the Visitor Center. Only brick foundation remains. Ironically, the mother and five daughters, owners of the inn, entertained rebel soldiers prior to the battle and turned a cold shoulder on Union soldiers a short time later. When Confederate artillery set the property on fire, it was those same Union troops who saved the family. Slaves had escaped earlier, leaving one little girl. Her fate was never recorded, but historians assume Union soldiers, not the Chancellors, saved her life. Here, 17,500 died on May 3, 1863, one every second for five hours.

The driving tour took us past open fields where Lafayette McLaws' Confederates kept Union forces busy while Jackson marched around Hooker to attack the flank. The drive also marked the spot where Lee and Jackson bivouacked to plan the battle. As Jackson marched his forces around the end of Hooker's line to attack from the rear, he passed the Catharine Furnace Iron Foundry. What remains today, the base of the furnace stack, created desolation by polluting the air and land. Today forest surrounds the rim. Only the damaged chimney remains. At Hazel Grove Confederate artillery blasted Union artillery at Fairview in a futile power duel for five hours.

Little did Lee know that while Jackson circled Hooker, his own men mistook him for enemy. Shot in his hand and arm, Jackson contracted pneumonia and died five days later.

Lee's greatest victory proved an incalculable loss. He couldn't replace Stonewall Jackson. By the time we finished the walk, it was nearly dark, but Little Red waited patiently. I can't begin to imagine the horror of being a Civil War soldier with limited food, no shelter and shells exploding day and night.

"I know war is hell," said Andy, "but what bothers me the most is how little life is valued. People are expendable, and it hasn't changed all that much."