....... you haven't? Well....
....I am hurt.
Had a two-day conference in D.C. Okay, enough about that.
Spent the rest of the week down in Virginia, in Jamestown, Williamsburg, Yorktown, and Fredericksburg. From our first settlement, to colonial days, to Revolutionary War, and finally Civil War. The best way to learn and understand history is to visit the places where it took place.
What I learned:
That Jamestown was anything but a failed attempt at colonization. This was a viable, productive town, with industry, expanded settlement and a true working relationship with most of the native Indian population. It was finally destroyed and reduced to insignificance 80 years after its founding by one of its own, a guy named Bacon, notorious for his Bacon Rebellion, who burned the town down in disagreement with the governors policy of negotiating with the Indians, instead of what Bacon wanted done, which was to kill them all. It was never the same after that, so the capitol of Virginia was moved to nearby.....
Williamsburg. While some find the Disneyland hokeyness of Williamsburg a bit off-putting, my wife and I enjoyed the hell out of it. Mainly because we went to an old time tavern and had a blast. We actually did not see much of the town itself, as we really spent too much time at Jamestown and Yorktown, but the quality beer time we did spend there, playing card games and dice games and eating peanuts out of the shell and singing colonial era rock tunes, was fun.
Yorktown. I advise anyone who has ever disagreed about our relationship with France visit the Yorktown battlefield. It became popular after 9/11 to bash the French over how best to deal with Iraq, for one. (Appears the French may have been right about that one, but no one in America really cares). For those who do not know or remember their Revolutionary War history, the Battle of Yorktown ended with the surrender of Cornwallis to Washington, and though the war went on for another two years until a treaty was signed, this battle ended hostilities for the most part, as the British were defeated once and for all. We won only because the French sent a fleet up from the Carribean and blockaded the British fleet and sank a good part of it till it went back up to New York and left Cornwallis without any support of reinforcement. They also played a huge part in the land war there. If Cornwallis had won that battle instead, we would have been hardpressed to continue the fight and who knows what would have happened. The French essentially GAVE us the United States we now know and love.
Maybe a french fry is still a french fry, you know?
And then it was the war that made this country the
UNITED states, instead of Virginia, South Caralina, Georgia, or just the Northern United States and the Confederate States of America. Fredericksburg saw the most one-sided battle of the Civil War, which was fought right in what is now Old Town Fredericksburg and up the slope of Maryes Heights just behind it. General Ambrose Burnside, who's biggest claim in history is that he gave us the term commonly used today for side-whiskers (Union General Hooker gave us the common term for a streetwalker - love that Civil War trivia) also can be credited with being the biggest idiot to ever be put in charge of an army. Okay, maybe that is harsh, as he was just a guy who followed the traditional war tactics of his day, based on Napoleonic techniques as taught in the war colleges of the day.
But on top of that, he was a lousy communicator, who gave vague instructions to his left wing and then ran his diversionary march straight into Confederate artillery and well-placed shooters positioned on high ground along the well-named (and still there) Sunken Road that ran along the base of Maryes Heights. Not once, not twice, not even just three times. but
SIXTEEN times. With 8,000 dead or wounded lying just in front of them(calling them 'wounded' was a way to soften the headlines during that war - most wounded died later from infection, starvation, or disease directly caused by their wounds), the confederates were so taken by the carnage, one of them voluteered to take water out to the wounded during a cease fire, which earned him the title of "The Angel of Maryes Heights" and he has a statue dedicated to him next to the Sunken Road in his honor. His name was Richard Rowland Kirkland and he was 19; he was killed less then a year later at the Battle of Chickamauga.
Anyway, his left was supposed to be the real attack, against Stonewall Jackson. His vague instructions delayed his the attack for two hours, so it failed, all the while Burnside kept killing his own men by sending them against what Lee called his most defensible position he ever had in the whole Civil War. On top of that, and probably his absolute worse decision, was to delay his taking of Fredericksbury by ten days as he waited for his pontoon bridge to arrive so he could cross the Rappahannock River. This allowed Lee to move to the high ground on the city's side of the river and place his artillery in the best locations possible and even give his artillery commander time to calibrate his guns to maximize the later carnage so the shells would land exactly in the ranks of union soldiers, then Burnside sent his men straight into those spots. If Burnside has simple sent a small portion of his 115.000 army over the river immediately - say 10,000 men - just to hold the high ground, it would have easily diverted the battle.
By the way, the Union army camped partly right on the Ferry Farm. What is the Ferry Farm? George Washington's home, where he grew up after he was six years old. The Ferry Farm was where the Union army began to construct the pontoon bridge, once it arrived. Of course, confederate snipers in town peppered the engineers on the river and killed many of them until a unit from NY crossed the river (apparently this COULD be done without benefit of a bridge) and cleared the town of them.
Turned out, Lee WANTED the union army to cross over. Nasty business, war.
I also visited the Battle of Spotsylvania, but that is enough for now.
