Thursday, October 21, 2010

"They came forward with a rush, and how our men did yell, 'Come on, Johnny, come on!'" -Lt. Col. Rufus R. Dawes, 6th Wisconson, The Iron Brigade

After following the campaigns of the Civil War throughout Virginia and Maryland, we have finally arrived at what some consider a turning point in the war: Gettysburg. We spent the day examining the field over which the first day’s battle took place. We met our guide, John Archer, on East Cemetery Hill and began the day.

The tour began at a rarely visited marker that holds greater significance than its small size would suggest. West of town on the Chambersburg Pike stands a marker to Marcellus Jones who fired the first shot of the Battle of Gettysburg on the morning of July 1, 1863. John pointed out that the marker is probably accurate in its positioning, and we looked down the road, trying to imagine the feelings of Union soldiers as they saw Confederates marching down the Chambersburg Pike toward Gettysburg.

Throughout the morning, we investigated the positions held by Buford’s, and later, Reynolds’ men on July 1st. John took us through the woods to trace the movements of the famed Iron Brigade as they fought near Willoughby Run where Confederate Brigadier General James Archer was captured by Union troops. Incidentally, John Archer is related to this Confederate prisoner, providing us with a closer connection to the battle.

The death that occurred on the field that day provided a central theme to the tour. Near the railroad cut, John reminded us that not all of the bodies buried after the battle were found in the years immediately after the war. From time to time in the past century, bodies of Civil War soldiers have been discovered on the field due to heavy rains or construction efforts. Only a few years ago, in the late 1990’s a skeleton was found in the dirt walls alongside the railroad cut. After close study, it was determined that the skeleton belonged to a Confederate soldier who could only be identified as such only by the few buttons still on his person.

Another instance of the horrors of war awaited us after lunch near Oak Hill. Brigadier General Alfred Iverson watched in despair as his North Carolinians were mowed down by a surprise Union attack on their unsuspecting left. The men fell in heaps, the wounded unable to escape for fear of being shot. After the battle, the dead were buried in a mass grave where they had fallen. In the years following the war, a grape vineyard was grown over the ground, and its owners insisted that the grapes there grew larger than those elsewhere in the area due to the morbid fertility of the land.

Before ending our day at the Union held Cemetery Hill, John took us into town. He reminded us that the battle was also fought on the streets of Gettysburg itself. He pointed out the difficulties of such street fighting, and the challenges that Ewell faced on the evening of July 1. Although many criticize Ewell for not pressing his attack on the evening of the 1st, Archer argued that such an attack would not only have been impracticable, but also devastating to his forces. With that in mind, we ended our tour of the first day with the Union soldiers on East Cemetery Hill warily watching the campfires of the Confederates appearing across the ridges they had held earlier that morning.

Next time, we’ll begin once more on East Cemetery Hill to join the armies in their second day of hard fighting at Gettysburg.

Monday, October 18, 2010

"Death, wounds, and appalling destruction everywhere." -Lt. Frederick L. Hitchcock, 132nd PA Infantry

Our day began at dawn. Well, maybe not dawn, but 7:00 am felt pretty early on Friday. The drive to Fredericksburg, Virginia was probably one of the quietest we’ve had so far. But as we unloaded the bus, we were all excitement as we were honored to meet our guide for Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, staff historian Donald Pfanz.

We began our tour at the breathtakingly picturesque Chatham, the headquarters of Edwin Sumner and a hospital for the wounded during the Battle of Fredericksburg. The front of the house overlooks the scenic Rappahannock, the river dividing the Union and Confederate armies in November and December 1862. As Donald explained Burnside’s struggles throughout the campaign and his attempts to cross the river, we studied the difficult nature of the terrain encountered by the Union troops. The troubles faced by Union soldiers seemed almost insurmountable, adding to the drama of the battle. It was difficult to imagine the amount of suffering that took place on the beautiful grounds of Chatham as it was covered with the wounded and dying during the battle.

Throughout the course of the morning, we traveled across both sides of the Confederate line. We started on the Confederate right, where Jackson and his men held the line against the assaults of Meade’s men. However, at the famous Marye’s Heights on the Confederate left the futility of the battle made itself known. Standing behind the stonewall defended by Confederate troops, it was difficult to imagine a better defensive position. On Marye’s Heights, we also saw the memorial to young Confederate Sergeant Richard Kirkland, better known as the Angel of Marye’s Heights. After the intense fighting of the Heights had slightly died off, Kirkland requested permission to take water to the wounded Union soldiers who cried out in pain and fear across the wall. After he was refused permission on account of the danger involved, Kirkland took it upon himself to cross the wall. Once the Union soldiers saw what he was doing, the intermittent firing stopped and a cheer went up among the Union soldiers. Sergeant Kirkland lost his life at Chickamauga the next year.

The second half of our day was spent on the Chancellorsville battlefield, the site of what some call Lee’s greatest victory. The battlefield terrain here also proved difficult to maneuver. The overgrown Wilderness area, where another campaign would take place in 1864, posed serious problems to soldiers fighting there, and seeing the ground first hand made these difficulties evident.

Through the afternoon, we followed General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson’s final days. We stopped at the clearing where Jackson and Lee had their famed final meeting, and the wooded area where Jackson was shot by his own men in the confusion of twilight. Here, we found ourselves once more face to face with the memorialization of Jackson. In 1880, a group of men placed an unmarked boulder to honor Jackson’s memory near the site of his injury. Later, another more formal memorial was placed to honor Jackson. Both monuments indicate the level of ardor reserved for Jackson within the Southern mythology.

We spent a beautiful day on the battlefields of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville thanks to the interpretive skills of our guide Donald Pfanz. Before heading back to the Appleford we stopped to eat at Perkins, complete with a full discussion of the sights of the day. After a long bus ride home, we arrived back in Gettysburg at 10:30pm, ready for some rest and relaxation. The rest was greatly needed to get us ready for a battle near and dear to each of us: Gettysburg.