Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!

Last weekend we drove a short ways down into Virginia to see - you guessed it - more battlefields! Fredericksburg sits at about the half-way point between Richmond and Washington, so it was the site of numerous conflicts during the Civil War. Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, the Wilderness, and a couple of other smaller battles took place within about a twenty mile radius, so it was easy to see several sites in one day.


We stopped in the town first and saw what remained of the battlefield. Unlike Gettysburg, which has been mostly preserved, this one was mostly covered up by houses built after the war. What was left was Marye’s Heights, where the Confederates controlled the high ground that won the battle, and the Sunken Road, where they lined up and massacred the Union soldiers that tried to cross the open field. Eight thousand died in the field in a few hours time, and only a few got within thirty yards of making it to the wall. So in other words, it was not a good day to be fighting for the North. It’s hard to imagine it now, because when you walk along the wall all you see are trees and houses, rather than an open field, but it was definitely worth checking out.

The Sunken Road.

Paul wishing he was a cavalry officer!

Even Thomas the Train came along... actually, he comes with us to most places.

There was less to see at Chancellorsville, but it was the site where General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson was fatally wounded by his own men firing through the trees in the dark. They had all the spots marked out. He was shot here, his horse ran here, they pulled him off here, he fell on his broken arm here, and then they took him to a house over there, where they cut his arm off a few days before he died of pneumonia. Sounds like an otherwise lousy way to go. I remember writing a book report on Stonewall Jackson in fifth grade, so it was pretty cool to me. They made it clear that he was as important to the South as General Lee was, and may have made better decisions in Gettysburg where Lee ultimately lost the war. So it’s interesting to think what may have happened had he not been killed here. Cool stuff, well… for me anyway.