Fredicksburg, Wilderness, Chancellorsville

 One of the longest drives of the holiday today. And it would prove to be another very warm day as well. 

We had no problems driving to Fredricksburg and parking at the visitors centre. This is a small one with really no more than a small shop attached. From here you are right at the edge of Longstreet's lines. It is such a pity that the fields in front of the earth works are full of houses. It does not give you an idea of how difficult it must have been for the Union troops to cover that ground. I do find it a little surprising as well. Like imagine if there was a whole section of houses on the fields of Pickett's charge. And honestly I don't think I would ever buy a house on ground that so many people died on. Call me superstitious but it would not sit well with me. It is still nice to walk around and to see the statue of St. Kirkland which signifies that even in battle there can be kindness.

Next we drove to Chatham manor. It is worth a visit if only for the views. This actually gives you a better idea of the ground that needed to be covered.

First getting over the river under fire. Because the houses on the other side of the Rappahannock river were there during the time of the battle. Also it is a pretty wide river. Then there would be the fields to cross over coming under fire of the confederate cannon. it is there that Porter Alexander assured Longstreet that a chicken could not live on that field. And he was right. It was one of the biggest unnecessary slaughters of the war. It should have been called off after the first assault failed.

We drove back to the other side and went on to tour Jackson's lines by car. After lunch in a nice diner in town we drove on to Chancellorsville. This has bigger visitor centre than Fredricksburg has and it is combined for Chancellorsville and the Wilderness. They cover almost the same ground anyway.

Chancellorsville is probably the battle in this theatre that I know the least about. And as a result I missed not having the audio tour most. I did try to find the sections of the app that matched with the tour stops but found that harder to do. Yet we made the best of it and managed to go to all the stops.

The Wilderness was next. There are some very busy roads running through these battlefields which makes it sometimes hard to get to the stops. For example the highlight of the day is very hard to reach. The spot of Longstreet's wounding. There is a small parking space and a sign on the opposite of the very busy road. I crossed over to the other side but there is just nothing there. No monument or marker at all on that spot. The last time I had been here was in 1994 and I don't remember all from that visit. But yet I did feel a great deal of dissapointment of there still being so little on that site. While the visitor centre is next to the site of Jackson's wounding with several monuments sitting there.

The story itself is almost to surreal to be true. Jackson was wounded on May 2nd 1863 after his corps started a very succesful attack on the Union army. Longstreet was wounded May 6th 1864 after launching a very succesfull attack with his corps. There were but a few miles in between these two spots. Both were shot by their own men in the confusion of the wilderness. The only difference is that Longstreet survived his wound, although it would plague him for the rest of his life.

I was a little grumpy when we returned to the visitor centre and I asked the ranger on duty if there was any marker to Longstreet's wounding that I might have missed. He told me that I had not missed anything and that Longstreet still was not very popular in these parts of Virginia. Which leads me to believe even more that it is just around Gettysburg that he is completely rehabilitated. And not in all parts of Virginia. Isn't it time for a small monument in the Wilderness?

We ended with walking around the visitor centre to the site of Jackson's wounding where I took several photo's of that monument.