Manassas + Blackburn's Ford [and a little rant]

Thursday was another lovely sunny day and another day we would do a lot of miles. Going all the way to the outskirts of Washington D.C. to Manassas. One of the battlefields I have visited more than once in the past. I usually flew in to Dulles and Manassas is right on the doorstep so this was usually our last stop for half a day.

First Manassas [or first Bull run] is one of the smaller battefields. One of the few that you can actually walk. We started with the ranger talk outside which consists of Henry Hill and the Henry house with some general information about the start of the war and this battle.

In those early days they thought that this would be the battle to end the war from both sides spectators had come to watch the ultimate battle. That day in July 1861 would change expectations on the war forever.

It is always good to walk the actual ground of a battle. The many hills mentioned in books give it away, it is not flat. But neither are this high hills. The terrain kind of meanders dipping and rising. Which can make it even more tricky for soldiers. If you don't expect that much of a difference in terrain and then suddenly you will come upon a row of cannon that you never expected.

This is one of my favorite battlefields to take my camera and take photos of the cannon. Koen brought along a much better camera and he loves to combine the monuments with nature shots. So we spent some time in the heat getting the best shots.

After lunch [at cracker barrel] we went on to do the auto tour of Second Manassas. That battlefield is much harder to understand as it is very stretched out. Second Manassas took place just over a year after the first in the summer of 1862. First are the sections of Jackson's wing. Who were hidden in an unfinished railroad. Very hard to get a feel for it as the vegetation is so much different as it was in 1862. It makes you appreciate what they are trying to do in Gettysburg even more where they try to bring the vegetation back to what it was during the time of the war.

Of course what interested me even more was to tour Longstreet's lines. Here as well the view is different from 161 years ago. Yet there must have been a fair amount of cover even then as the attack came as a complete surprise to most of the Union commanders. It is one of the most impressive victories, trapping the Union army between the two wings.

For me we had saved the best for last. It proved to be half an hour of joy and frustration. I find it surprising that very little mention is made of the battle of Blackburn's ford which took place on July 18th 1861 just a few days before the battle of first Manassas. For me it is part of the story of Manassas. We asked at the ranger station how to get there. [I had researched but hoped they knew of a better way to get there] They kind of discouraged us to even try saying nothing had been preserved there was nothing to see. And it was basically located in the carpark of a CVS they thought. That has me thinking, if this had been Jackson or maybe any other Virginian brigade commander, would the rangers have to look it up and be not even sure where it was? I think not.

It's a good thing that we decided to follow the directions that I had looked up on google maps and not follow the rangers direction or we would have never got there. As it is located off a very very busy road we needed to take a little detour so we would have the parking lot on our right hand side. And we got there in one go!

To my very pleasant surprise there were two signs there after all detailing the battle. It would have been even nicer if they got their facts straight. Longstreet was never a colonel in field command as the panel states. He went straight to being a brigade commander. It is so ironic that during this first battle he already faced a dear old friend from army days, Israel Richardson. There were no hard feeling on the Union commanders side as he invited Longstreet to a party a few months later, which was politely denied by the latter.

And it was indeed possible to walk the few metres to the exact spot of that short battle and have a look at the terrrain. It shows that the banks of the river are pretty steep here and that the several river crossings the troops made in a few days time were not as easy as they seem when you read about it on paper.

There are no monuments here to mark this important historic site. Just the two interpretative markers. I find it sad that even the rangers at the battlefield have no idea where this place is exactly. And that they discourage you from even trying to reach it. It was the highlight of my day and one of the highlights of the entry trip for me. So I went home in a very happy mood