Showing results for "Wilderness"
Making Sense of Chickamauga
I’ve heard the phrase “hot mess” before, but Chickamauga National Battlefield gave it a whole new meaning. The first time I visited, about seven years ago, temperatures soared into the upper nineties with a humidity of about 700%. Because few interpretive markers dot the landscape, I had no idea what I was looking at beyond […]
Read more...Herdegen’s Rock-Solid Study of the Iron Brigade
I first met the Iron Brigade, like so many Americans, as they marched onto the field on the first day of Gettysburg, their black hats announcing their appearance at the nick of time. Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels (and the subsequent film Gettysburg) makes much of the Iron Brigade’s timely appearance, in part to add […]
Read more...On the 149th Anniversary of the Bloody Angle
In the midst of the Chancellorsville sesquicentennial, the 149th anniversary of the battle of the Wilderness slipped by unnoticed, and the anniversary of the battle of Spotsylvania Court House arrived without fanfare. But I’ve taken it upon myself as my personal mission to remember this particular place so, although still recovering from Chancellorsville, I took […]
Read more...The Smoothbore Volley and the Calamity at Chancellorsville
Physician Matthew Lively says historian Bob Krick is wrong about the wounding of Stonewall Jackson. In the mid-nineties, historian Robert K. Krick redefined the story of Jackson’s wounding with his groundbreaking essay “The Smoothbore Volley that Doomed the Confederacy.” In 2002, he updated and improved upon his study with a revised edition published in a […]
Read more...Where Did Joe Hooker Lose the Battle of Chancellorsville?
One hundred and fifty years ago today, the Army of the Potomac sat safely on the north side of the Rappahannock River after being manhandled by the Army of Northern Virginia during the battle of Chancellorsville. As my colleague Kris White likes to say, the Chihuahua smacked around the Rottweiler, and the Rottweiler—“Fightin’ Joe” Rottweiler, […]
Read more...“Never was there a more beautiful sunrise…” The Battles for Fairview and Hazel Grove, Conclusion
The fourth in a four-part miniseries. The following is the text from Elizabeth “Beth” Parnicza’s 150th Anniversary of the Battle of Chancellorsville tour covering the action of May 3rd, 1863, in the area between Hazel Grove and Fairview. Adding to the horror of the battlefield that day: Fires. Captain James F. Huntington, who commanded Battery […]
Read more...A Day on the Day One Battlefield at Chancellorsville
Spring 2006 My daughter and and I arrive at the Day One battlefield—called the “Lick Run Battlefield”—at 8:45 a.m. Several other volunteers have arrived before us. They stand in front of a small building that had once been a farmer’s cinderblock utility shed but has recently been fancied up with deep red vinyl siding and […]
Read more...The High Tide of the Confederacy: Chancellorsville
While popular history tells us that Gettysburg marked the turning point of the American Civil War—“The High Tide of the Confederacy”—most people don’t realize that story evolved as a shrewd marketing ploy to promote the town of Gettysburg as a tourist destination. Located near many of the major population centers of the eastern U.S. (Washington, Baltimore, […]
Read more...Shaping Chancellorsville: The first reenactment and ‘The Last Meeting’
part five in a series In 1933, administration of the Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park was turned over to the National Park Service, and shortly thereafter, the NPS invited the Civilian Conservation Corps to come in to the park to do restoration and preservation work. Among their projects at Chancellorsville, they installed a visitor […]
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