Question of the Week: 5/1-5/7/17
With battle anniversaries for Chancellorsville, Second Fredericksburg, Wilderness, and Spotsylvania Court House here or just around the calendar corner, we’re wondering if you have a favorite battlefield to visit from that list?
If so, why?
As one who lives here and has provided private tours I have to say Fredericksburg when discussing the memory of the battle and Chancellorsville when acknowledging the superb tactics and the results. I also love Spotsy but more for the pleasant walks. I am also beyond honored to have my books (and sometimes DVD) carried in the NPS stores.
– Michael Aubrecht
Spotsylvania Court House is my favorite. The town has not been victimized by suburban sprawl as much as Fredricksburg (although its downtown is semi-well preserved) and the center of of the town provides the small town feeling that has been well preserved. I did the 150th reenactment there and have very fond memories of the welcome we got from the locals. Even the Rebel reenactors were friendly during combat.
Spotsylvania for the evolution in offensive and defensive warfare.
Spotsyvania, because it represents the true turning point of our Civil War (Grant’s southward turn at the Brock Road-Plank Road intersection after the conflagration in the Wilderness); because Hancock’s II Corps attack on the apex of the Mule Shoe at 4:30 am on May 12 was a greater charge (Barlow’s, Birney’s and Mott’s approximately 15,000, with Gibbon’s 5,000 in reserve) than even Pickett’s and Pettigrew’s more famous charge at Gettysburg some 10 months earlier; because the 22 consecutive hour slugfest at the bloody angle saw the most savage fighting of the entire war; because the battle resulted in the death of one of only three Union corps commanders in the war (Sedgwick, with Reynolds and McPherson); and because Grant had fulfilled his promise to Halleck and Lincoln that he would fight it out on that line if it took all summer and that there would be no turning back, as all the mediocrities before him had done.
Second Battle of Fredericksburg- On Friday May 3, 2013 at about 10:30 AM I walked up William St. from old town Fredericksburg retracing the route the 82nd PA and my 2nd great grandfather took 150 years earlier. It really was thought provoking, humbling and a thrill to cover the same ground your ancestor ran over 150 years ago.