Spotsylvania

Okay.  I've had my R&R.  I can go back to the Civil War and this last battleground we visited.  I really am thankful that these fields have been set aside for posterity.  One, it honors those who fought; Two, it gives all of us an opportunity to try to understand, reflect on, and come to grips with war.  Is war necessary?  Well, microscopically, if you have a neighborhood bully that beats up on his family and has no regard for neighbors or authority, somebody will have to stand up to him sooner or later or you all become victims of the brutality.  MACROscopically, it becomes nation against nation, and that's called war.

So, to Spotslyvania, where the worst of the hand-to-hand combat of the entire Civil War took place.

Remember the timeline and that all of these locations are within just a very few miles of each other:

December, 1862 was the first Battle of Fredericksburg and the Sunken Road with Lee vs. Burnside.
April into May, 1863 was the second Battle of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville with Lee vs. Hooker
Then up to Gettysburg, and back down to
May 5-6, 1864 for the Wilderness Campaign with Lee vs. Grant for the first time.

It is now May 8 - 21, 1864 in Spotsylvania.  From here on out it will be Lee vs. Grant in a series of battles leading to the battle at Richmond and nine month seige of Petersburg, and finally to the surrender at Appomattox Court House.  (If you're just finding us and want to know more, scroll down the list of blog postings to those battle posts.)  Realize how many of Lincoln's generals Lee has gone up against and defeated.  Lee really was an amazing military genius.  Grant was pretty smart himself, but he was also tenacious.

So, to the battle.  As you can see by the map, the "Bloody Angle" as it became forever known, would have been a real bummer to defend.  Grant surprised Lee, but the southerners were up to the challenge.  Grant's forces broke through the Confederate line at one point, the rebels beat them back and held them while others built a new line of defense a mile back - one that wouldn't be sticking out there and able to be attacked from all sides.

Can you imagine, looking at that picture, how bullets would be coming from every direction, from friend and foe alike?!  And there were a LOT of bullets.  So many that they CUT DOWN a 22" oak tree!

That wasn't blown up by a cannon, it was gunshots, small arms fire, that chewed in down.  An OAK !  What chance did a man have?

This is not a natural contour of the land.  This is the breastwork the rebs built by hand.  Over the years erosion and people walking on it have brought in down (which is why they have signs all over the place asking you to keep off of it.)  During the battle this would have been at least as tall as a man - and therefore a really good place to hide from all of those bullets.  Above, you're looking down the line; below, you're looking across the breastwork into the Bloody Angle.  I used to tell our sons, "use your vast and vivid imagination."  Now, imagine the ground in front of you covered in blue and grey uniforms in hand-to-hand combat, kill or be killed, no where to run...

That's about a 22" oak tree on the left.  Imagine bullets cutting it down...


If you've never been to a battlefield, the National Park Service has allowed states to erect monuments in positions where their battalions took a stand.  I am continually surprised by whose boys fought where and by the fact of how many of them were there, all in one in a group.  When someone enlists now, one at a time or ten from the same town, they are scattered across the military branch they chose to serve to lots of different places.  At least that prevents a whole region from losing a lot of its men in a single battle/engagement.

From here Grant pursued Lee to the North Anna River, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, and finally to surrender at Appomattox.

All of that fighting at the Bloody Angle, "all for nothing more substantial than ticks on the clock and a few inches of ravaged landscape."  True, but the bigger picture was a fight for states rights: the right to continue slavery in order to uphold the economic survival of the south.  When you think about it, isn't that what we are still doing today?  Not on the battlefield, but in politics, in our courts.  I used to think that it was alright for California to become a welfare state, to tax their citizens and businesses to the bone.  Now they're talking about filing for bankruptcy, and want MY tax dollars to bail them out, AND raise my taxes to do it.  Unintended consequences of total freedom ...  oops.  I swerved into politics.  But, "all for nothing more substantial than ticks on the clock and a few inches of ravaged landscape" set me off.  That statement is microscopically correct - but macroscopically incorrect.

We're running out of contract time in Virginia and will be moving on after the first of the year.  Still don't know where to yet, or whether we will be able to go back to Tyler for even a few days.  But trust me, I'll keep you "posted."   :-)