Silly Little Country

A Battlefield Walk

On a business trip last week, I found myself in a hotel within walking distance of the Manassas National Battlefield Park, and with a little time on my hands. The park is the site of the first and second battles of Bull Run in the US Civil War. I am no Civil War buff, but certainly knew a little about the first battle of Bull Run, as it was the first major encounter between Union and Confederate armies, so it shows up early in any documentary on the Civil War. It was the first actual experience of real battle for most of the participants. An example of the naivete this led to is that many civilians took an outing from their homes around Washington DC to go and watch the event.
The park had a very informative interpretive hike around the major points of interest of the first battle, and it made it clear that the onlookers would not have had a pretty sight to see.
I was almost the youngest person visiting the site, which may say something about Civil War buffs; on the other hand, it was a workday afternoon.
A major feature of the battle was the use of cannon, and the educational materials documented very nicely to an ignoramus like me how intricate setting up cannon, and moving it around, and maintaining fire, were. The skills involved needed to be quite impressive. The cannon shown above sits on the location that was the middle of Thomas Jackson's "stone wall", that may have been key to keeping the battle from being an overwhelming victory for the Union. What is daunting is to imagine his line of 13 similar cannon, and a line of Union cannon three hundred yards in the distance, exchanging mutual destruction.
Perhaps the most interesting observations along the way concerned some collateral damage. There were two houses along the trail I walked. The first was owned by an 85-year-old woman, who was too ill to get up during the battle, but wound up perishing as snipers used the upper floor of the house and provoked artillery strikes on it. The other was one owned by a freed slave; apparently it survived this battle (amazingly as the Confederate front line retreated en masse around it), but was sacked in the second battle by the Union soldiers. (He did receive compensation from Congress after the war.)
War is not a pretty thing. In the end, the Confederacy 'won' this battle, with around 800 dead on both sides combined, all in one day. These numbers are particularly shocking, when you look at in light of what is controversial to us today. Even worse, of course, many more years of similar costly battles ensued.
Next trip, I guess I will do the interpretive tour of the second battle.

Labels: bull run manassas civil war

posted by Alan Adamson @ 5:33 PM