Top Civil War Battlefields

Town Hall ^ | June 23, 2005 | Marvin Olasky [Creators Syndicate]

[quidnunc]

Now that it's officially summer, here's my advice to parents who want to continue teaching their kids during the next two months and learn something themselves: visit Civil War battlefields. I probably overdid it with my own children, visiting about 35 in all, but here are my top five:

1. Gettysburg (July 1863)

Much as I'd like to make a surprise choice, there's no avoiding Gettysburg's primacy and sadness, with over 50,000 soldiers becoming casualties over three days.

Driving and walking this Pennsylvania battlefield explains much: the big rocks of Devil's Den were indeed devilish, and the awesome difficulty of "Pickett's Charge" — across a vast expanse, sloping slightly uphill — makes it seem that Robert E. Lee's hope that day was for God to intervene. (That's what Michael Shaara suggested in his fine novel, "The Killer Angels"; it's well worth reading before a Gettysburg visit.)

2. Antietam (September 1862)

The 30-acre Maryland cornfield through which soldiers charged and countercharged is still a cornfield; the farm road worn down by erosion and called Sunken Road until it gained a new name at the battle, Bloody Lane, is also a good place to meditate on 23,000 casualties incurred in one day.

-snip-

[safisoft]

2. Antietam (September 1862)

In the South, we named battles for the closest town. The Federals named them for the closest body of water, except they weren't too consistent. (The battle of Gettysburg is named for the town).

Instead of naming a battle for a creek that no one out of the area knows about, we call the battle of "Antietam" the battle of Sharpsburg.

Finding Antietam or Bull Run on a 19th Century map takes some time - finding Sharpsburg and Manassas is easy.

[Non-Sequitur]

Was it really a civil war, I thought the south was just trying to Secede and not try to overthrow Washington DC?

It might more properly be called a rebellion, since that is defined as "an open, armed, and usually unsuccessful defiance of or resistance to an established government."

[stainlessbanner]

Thanks for the ping, NewRomeTacitus.

Battlefield preservation is important for our History!

[justshutupandtakeit]

The only "right" the South was fighting for was the right to use the whip and lash. Slavery was the ONLY reason it seceded.

[Non-Sequitur]

As big a Civil War buff as I am I'm ashamed to admit how few battlefields I've been to. I'll have to do something about that.

[w_over_w]

Thanks for the ping. We just returned from a vacation in Virginia; both Gettysburg and Antietam were very powerful. We also managed to see Fredericksburg/Chancellorsville, Manassas, Appomattox and the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond (not to mention getting my daughter all set up at VCU).

Traffic can sometimes be a challenge so it's good to have excellent maps. But the people are very respectful. I've gotten so use to rude Californians, I'd forgotten how polite the Southern hospitality is. A most memorable experience.

[Tax-chick]

BO-ring.

[archy]

Franklin battlefield is largely built over, but evocative nonetheless.

It's particularly convenient for tourists to visit the spot on the Pizza Hut parking lot where General Pat Cleburne fell, thence to pop inside for a tasty deep-dish pepperoni with extra cheese.

[archy]

Gettysburg is haunted.

Concur.

So is Shiloh.

[Tax-chick]

Chortle. It requires some imaginative vision, to be sure.

[archy]

I never heard it referred to as the "Civil War" until I left the South...

We had always called it the "War of Northern Aggression"...

More precisely, the War of Northern Domination. Though it worked out to be pretty much the same thing.

[Gone GF]

"What I found was that no 150-year-old field tells the story of that era. The truth of what happened can only be found in the writings of those who lived at that time."

Combining the two is the best.

About 22 years ago I went with a high school buddy and a few others to Gettysburg. One of the guys on that original trip was an instructor at the War College. We spent two days walking the battlefield with the leaders (including my friend) reading from letters, books and battle reports written by participants. We stayed at a crummy motel (since torn down) on the edge of Pickett's Charge and my friend and I trespassed on the charge field at midnight to drink a toast to the ghosts.

Since then we've done a battlefield every year with groups ranging from 12 to 45. Among the battlefields we've visited are Sharpsburg, First Manassas, Second Manassas, Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg, Spottsylvania, Wilderness, First and Second Winchester, Petersburg, Appomattox Courthouse, Sayler's Creek, Harper's Ferry, all of the Valley Campaign stops, all of the Seven Day's stops that haven't been paved over, starting with Fort Monroe (I agree with an earlier poster that some of these are simply haunting; even ones with houses encroaching), Cold Harbor, North Anna, Mine Run, Brandy Station, and others I can't remember.

The folks who lead this thing scout out locations the summer before we go and we spend three days now. We used to go wherever we felt like going but now have started following the natural progression of Lee's army. Sharpsburg again this year.

We often get to see things other don't, such as touring the house where Jeb Staurt was nearly captured after the Battle of Cedar Mountain. I found the approximate spot where my great-great grandfather (2nd Rockbridge Artillery) fought during Spotsylvania and the approximate spot where he was captured when the Union broke through the Petersburg lines. The great-great grandfather of another regular with the group was wounded on Little Round Top and then laid there basically paralyzed for two days. He survbived and later learned that the terrible thunderstorm he thought he heard was Pickett's Charge.

[stand watie]

are you REALLY that ignorant & ILL-EDUCATED?????

even the MOST radical of statist/leftist/hate-filled/arrogant REVISIONISTS don't go that far in their HERESY against the DOCUMENTED TRUTH!

go do some reading from ORIGIONAL SOURCES & you'll see how FOOLISH you post is.

[stand watie]

i think i once stayed at that DUMP. the rats were big enough to SADDLE!

i,too, was on a school-trip LONG AGO.

free dixie,sw

[stand watie]

remind me to tell you sometime about a member of 10th LA IN, who "was standing as a picket" at G'burg & had a conversation & a companionable smoke, "with a dead fellow". (HIS WORDS!)

the re-enactor SUDDENLY had a desperate "need to go to town for a beer & a pizza" & "visit friends" until morning.

i HAD to LOL.

free dixie,sw

[archy]

Some historians say that Franklin had the single bloodiest hour of the Civil War and the whole war should have ended after that rather than drag on another 5 months. My great-grandfather's brother was killed in that battle.
It was a bloody one.

The fight at Franklin was particularly brutal since it was a night battle, one of few during the Civil War, beginning just a bit before dusk. The main battle began around 4:00 pm and wound down around 9:00 pm. That left little chance for any of the wounded to be recovered in the darkness. It was also one of the smallest battlefields of the war, about 2 miles long by a mile-and-a-half wide.

There were more fatalities in the five bloody hours of Franklin than in two days of fighting at Shiloh or the three days of Battle of Stone's River. The Federal forces suffered 2,500 casualties, with Major General David Stanley, the 23rd Corps commander being wounded.

The Confederates lost 7,000 men, with nearly 2000 killed outright or dying of mortal wounds through the night, and 702 captured- not including cavalry casualties. Fifteen out of 28 Confederate Generals were casualties; at one point the bodies of six dead Confederate generals were laid out on the front porch of the Carter House at thecenter of the battlefield. And 65 field grade officers- majors and colonels- were lost.

William J. Hardee: "When his Division defended, no odds could break its lines; When it attacked, no numbers resisted it's onslaught, save only once; and there is the grave of Cleburne and his heroic division."

"If this cause, that is dear to my heart, is doomed to fail, I pray heaven may let me fall with it, while my face is toward the enemy and my arm battling for that which I know is right"

-Major General Patrick Cleburne prior to receiving his fatal wound at the battle of Franklin, Tennessee, 30 November 1864.

[Quiller]

I know there are other, more significant battlefields, but for me, Lexington, MO is evocative (maybe because it was one of my first). It's been a long time since I've been there, but I still relate things back to that site.
The trenches were still there, although little more than shallow depressions fronted by rounded humps. Anderson House, which was used as a field hospital by both sides, still had marks on an upstairs railing where, according to the park ranger, rebel prisoners were hung (okay, ALLEGEDLY hung), and there were stains in the floor from blood that dripped from the tables. The scope of the battle wasn't all that much, compared to places like Gettysburg, Antietam, or Shiloh, but its preservation was excellent, and the artifacts were (when there weren't a lot of tourists, and the ranger was feeling magnanimous) still touchable with close supervision. It's something big to a kid to put on a kepi that's got a hole and a huge brownish stain on one side of the cap and to know where it came from.

[GVnana]

What a bloody war it was.

[PeaRidge]

"Was it really a civil war, I thought the south was just trying to Secede and not try to overthrow Washington DC?"

That's right.

Actually a civil war is a state of hostility or conflict between elements within an organization. Since the Confederacy was established as a separate organization from the Union, the term "Civil War" is not accurate from the viewpoint of the South.

However, northern-apologist oriented historians, educators, media, even those that publish dictionaries use the term Civil War. This enables the war to be characterized as a military action to stop a rebellion against one common government.

Since the people of the South had voluntarilly and peacefully established their own institution to govern themselves, there was no rebellion against any authority.

In reality the war was conducted by the Republican controlled government to stop the emergence of a forth nation in North America in 1861, with the focus on consolidating power in federal government rather than at the state level (the authority of the people) which was the original intent of the Founders.

Without the framing of the war as a rebellion, the war is seen as a War of Subjugation of the South, and the great carnage becomes more apparent as the cost of having the power in the hands of Lincoln instead of the people.

[stand watie]

Franklin was a HORROR STORY for both sides.<P.free dixie,sw