Posted on 07/21/2014 5:41:54 AM PDT by Master Zinja
On July 21, 1861, the First Battle of Bull Run (or First Manassas, as the Confederates referred to it) was fought outside of Washington D.C. in Virginia. Expecting the war to be a brief conflict to put down the rebellion, the Union Army instead was defeated at Bull Run and retreated in shambles to Washington. After the battle, both sides realized the Civil War would be a longer, bloodier conflict than most had previously expected.
In 1961 my father took me to the reenactment. It was hot, dusty and loud.
As I heard it related from an old guy in VA, you could still find the equipment of the soldiers scattered around the old battlefields, mostly in woods, in the 50’s and 60’s.
When I was a kid there, I found wagon wheel rims, spokes and other such debris in the N. VA woods.
Not far from where I grew up (inside the then building beltway) was, in the woods, the brick ruins of an old mill that had been destroyed during war. We played there a bunch.
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