Honestly, the show was disappointing, but not every show is going to be like the Doobie Brothers’ Live At Wolf Trap. If you go, be sure to book your tickets months in advance to get seats to the most popular shows. Lots of folks arrived early to sit on the lawn in ‘general admission’ up above the seats, watching on big screens. I’d prefer just to hike the 2.5 mile trail through the Virginia woods, but I braved the crowds for the experience. And it was fun, so I shouldn’t complain that the artists were a bit out of tune and didn’t have much of importance to say. At least the expensive beer and crab cake sandwich tasted pretty good, so, except for my hearing loss, it was a good night.
This Virginia park spans the history of Colonial America, from the first settlement and seat of English government to Yorktown which marked the end of British military control. While in theory the park can be visited in a day, take two. The pretty town of Yorktown is nice with a little beach. Jamestown has several areas to see, and the park road connecting them runs through Colonial Williamsburg, which alone is worth time. This is my favorite colonial era park.
Yorktown has a very good visitor center, film and two auto tours. Even I was able to follow what happened, and long story short, the victory was as much or more French than American. Alexander Hamilton led the successful joint French & American assault on the last two key British defensive positions, one of which is eroding into the bay. The Rhode Island Light Infantry Regiment—largely African American—were critical in the assault, which employed bayonets on unloaded muskets to ensure both silence and an aggressive attack. Washington maneuvered his armies & Lafayette executed the siege in their most successful and determinative battle of the war with the assistance of the French fleet blocking the large mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. There are also remnants of the Confederate defense of Richmond on the same battlefield, although that is not the main focus of the park.
Jamestown needs explanation. Simply, there are three parts: 1) the park service Loop Road which is a swampy wooded drive or bike ride through the eastern end of the island, 2) the state’s very well funded living history settlement, and 3) the oldest Jamestowne part that has been run by a private group which predates the park service and is now an affiliated National Historic Site. All three are amazing. I saw a bald eagle, baby turtles, deer and more. At the settlement you can climb aboard recreations of all three ships, visit a Native American village, a reconstruction of the fort and an impressive museum, and there are many helpful staff throughout, some clothed in period garb, making the history extremely accessible. But don’t miss the third part, Olde Jamestowne.
This is the original remote outpost of the Elizabethan era that excited imaginations at the time, including Shakespeare whose Tempest is based on a shipwreck here. The most exciting work today is happening above in the oldest section of the park: an active archaeological dig with many world class discoveries. The fort there is built on the original fort site, and one of the archaeologists who began the dig in the 1990s gave a guided tour. There’s also a museum showcasing their discoveries.
Pocahontas married her husband John Rolfe in the church to her right, her husband witnessed the arrival of the first Africans at Fort Comfort (now Monroe), and the most recent excavation of a well is happening over her left shoulder. One of the gruesome discoveries was evidence of cannibalism among the settlers, but other discoveries speak to the diversity of the colony and its early peace with the natives, thanks mainly to the young woman above.
Please understand this is not Madam CJ Walker, the hair care entrepreneur and millionaire, but a contemporary, Maggie Lena Walker, who helped lay the foundations of the Civil Rights movement through her civic efforts. Maggie’s mother was a slave in the house of Elizabeth Van Lew, a wealthy Richmond lady and top Union spy. Evidently, Maggie’s mother conveyed some of that rebellious spirit to her daughter, who helped organize a school strike when denied the benefits given to white students. Throughout her life, Maggie Walker worked to advance her community, becoming the first African American woman to found and run her own bank, to run an insurance company, a newspaper, a department store and many other civic leadership roles, especially those designed to educate and employ African Americans. Her solidarity with like minded friends including Mary McLeod Bethune and Nannie Burroughs, helped combat Jim Crow, advance women’s suffrage and promote Civil Rights. Even in the old Confederate capital, she helped build a prosperous African American community that avoided both physical destruction like Tulsa and also financial destruction during the Great Depression. The Jackson Ward of Richmond is famous for beautiful old homes, delicious restaurants (try Mama J’s catfish!), businesses and sites where Jazz greats performed. The tour of her home is fascinating and covers history which is so important for all Americans to understand today.
Booker Taliaferro Washington slept outside with the farm animals on the tobacco farm above or crowded in with many other slaves and enslaved children on rag-covered dirt floors. His price was recorded, but no birthday. When Lincoln freed all slaves forever, Booker went to work mining salt for his stepfather. Realizing that this was not much of a life for a boy, he sought education, first trying to teach himself from a spelling book, and then walking 500 miles across Virginia to an African American school near Fort Monroe on the coast. He trained to be a teacher and eventually was asked to start what became Tuskegee Institute, where he hired another teacher born into slavery, George Washington Carver.
Booker T. became the most influential educator in America, in terms of building institutions, guiding policy, and teaching teachers of illiterate freed slaves and under-educated African Americans. WEB DuBois criticized him for being too accommodating with segregation, but Booker T. quietly supported the same anti-segregation campaigns, while working to improve the lives of as many African Americans as possible. Many celebrated his accomplishments, including Teddy Roosevelt, Andrew Carnegie, Harvard (first African American honorary degree), and Eisenhower, who designated this monument. Others resisted, including those in Congress who refused to support or fully fund a park and those in the community who were hostile to his student building a memorial here.
“The happiest people are those who do the most for others. The most miserable are those who do the least.”
Lincoln wanted “malice toward none” and for the Confederates to return their allegiance to the Union, so he let them all go home, with passes, with their horses and even with Union provisions, as long as they gave up their guns. After his son reported to his father about Lee’s surrender at Appomattox in Virginia, Lincoln went to the theater, believing that his charity would prevent further bloodshed, and that night, only five days after the scene above took place, the President was assassinated.
Contrary to the explanation given here, the Confederacy did not rise in response to “northern aggression”. Fort Sumter was not an act of northern aggression. Secession was not northern aggression. The south insisted that the Fugitive Slave Act apply nationally; so much for states’ rights. Even the pamphlet that attempts to give reasons other than slavery for why the Confederates fought, reveals that it was still about slavery: “submit to Abolitionists”, “lose property”, and “our negroes”. And after the insurrection was defeated and federal troops left, the Klan arose and African Americans have been systematically denied their rights for more than 150 years. No honor in that.
The site is beautifully restored to its 1865 appearance, and there are talented living history actors who bemoan how difficult it will be now that they have to plant and harvest their own crops. Not sure how they can get every fence post to look as it did, but somehow still find it difficult to present the main cause of the war plainly. The film is excellent and explains all the details of the surrender, such as that the signing did not occur in the courthouse but in a nearby house also open to the public. Visiting such a superbly preserved and restored place is a wonderful way to appreciate the scene of such an important historic moment.
“You see, in this world there’s two kinds of people, my friend: Those with loaded guns, and those who dig. You dig.”
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Grant recognized that although he might not be able to take Richmond with frontal assaults, he could cut it off by taking the rail junction city of Petersburg on the Appomattox River to the south. Lee had more forces in North Carolina, so Grant needed to keep them separated. Grant poured troops, mortars and supplies into the area to besiege both cities. And most importantly, Grant ordered his men to dig: new defenses and longer trenches, to close the gap with the enemy. Over the winter, the captured Fort Harrison near Richmond was reinforced, clearly in sight of Confederate defenses, and it became part of a line of forts beginning to surround Richmond.
The photo above shows examples of siege fortifications—including the cannon aimed right at you—near Battery 9, captured by African American troops. Lee desperately counterattacked inflicting the worst single regimental loss of the war, on the First Maine Heavy Artillery, but at the next fort, the Union held. By now, Grant had far more troops here than Lee and was proceeding to cut off both cities and attack them simultaneously. To avoid being surrounded and running out of moves, Lee withdrew from both cities and fled west. Richmond had fallen. Grant pursued to block Lee before he could move south. Now the race is on, and Union cavalry victories at the Five Forks Battlefield to the west mark the beginning of the end. No longer behind defensive walls, Lee heads west across country towards a town called Appomattox.
Like the Union capital, the Confederate capital was surrounded by a series of forts and fortified trenches, with one complete ring around the city and another outer line of defenses about 2/3 of the way around Richmond. The Confederate earthworks above are massive, up to 15 feet added to the tops of hills, running for miles with deep trenches. In many previous battles, the federal troops staged bloody frontal assaults on similar high-ground, well-defended positions, often losing thousands of men. Going back to the age of castles in Europe, this has proven to be a waste of human lives with little prospect for success. In the Revolutionary War, Lafayette knew that siege warfare against cannon required carefully building successive trenches at night to approach under cover. General Washington listened to him and took Yorktown using that technique.
In 1862, General McClellan tried to take Richmond, leading troops up the York River. Despite fighting at the exact same defenses around Yorktown 75 years after Washington, McClellan still relied primarily on mass frontal assaults without trench cover, revealing a dumbfounding lack of literacy. Robert E. Lee replaced the Confederate commander and executed seven days of battles that forced the Union to retreat from Virginia.
In 1864, after Spotsylvania, Grant tried again at Cold Harbor, again wasting most of 6,000 troops in an hour. Lee was prepared to defend Richmond again from another expected northeast attack, but here at Fort Harrison, Grant managed to swing his troops around to attack from the southeast in a surprise attack on 29 September 1864. General Burnham was killed, but the fort was taken. African American regiments were critical in these Union battles.
This victory gave the Union a chance to control the James River which runs through Richmond, exposing southern rail lines to Union forces, and it forced Lee to redeploy his defensive troops. If Grant could just gain one more victory at Petersburg, he could lay siege to Richmond, which was Lee’s great fear. Richmond was critical to the Confederate war effort.
Even today, Richmond is the hub of Virginia’s road and rail network. The Tredegar Iron Works—now gone—was a massive operation supplying artillery, ammunition, and armor plating for ironclad ships. The large plateau in the city housed its Chimborazo Hospital—now the site of a large park and a small medical museum—and was full of troops in various stages of recovery or not. Disease likely killed more soldiers than battle, as troops who had never been far from home suddenly congregated in close quarters. If Richmond was cut off from the south, then their ships couldn’t sail downriver, and the only safe access would be from the east without rivers, good roads or rail.
The war, blockades, lost slave labor and plantation burnings devastated the Confederate economy, and their currency was nearly worthless. If Richmond became surrounded, the Confederacy might collapse entirely. With one more victory, the war might end.
While this is the longest park name, they could have gone with “Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, The Wilderness and Spotsylvania Court House Battlefields Memorial National Military Park”. This is the largest military park covering 70 miles and three years of battles. Outside historic Fredericksburg, there are few buildings to see, including the Old Salem Church (another battle site), Ellwood (where Jackson’s left arm is buried) and the Stonewall Jackson Shrine. There are miles of fields, forests, trenches, historic trails, foundations, key military positions, markers, and memorials, with well over 40 tour stops, and there were visitors at every battlefield even until dusk.
Fredericksburg is roughly halfway between DC and Richmond, the Confederate Capital, which explains the numerous, bloody battles fought in the area. Spotsylvania is the name of the county. Fredericksburg was a Union disaster, under General Burnside, who ordered repeated attacks up the steep hills held by entrenched Confederates, but unlike Antietam all attacks failed and ended in retreat. At Chancellorsville—a one house village— the next year, General Hooker had executed an end run around Lee’s forces in the hills above Fredericksburg, but Stonewall Jackson executed an end run around Hooker’s forces. Jackson was killed, but the Union retreated in another defeat. Lee, confident after many victories, went north to Gettysburg. Another year later, General Grant returned to the Wilderness and Court House of Spotsylvania, finally making progress towards Richmond.
Chatham House, the Union HQ where both Clara Barton and Walt Whitman worked in the hospital, has a commanding view of Fredericksburg above, where Union artillery supported the failed assault. Washington, Jefferson and Madison were among the visitors to the wealthy plantation home that predates the country. Lincoln met with some of his generals here during the war. In the 1920’s the owners built a magnificent formal garden, which makes a nice break from the gruesome battlefields. Fredericksburg also has a historic walking tour, with some buildings that predate the Revolution, monuments to founding fathers and a slave auction block.
There is a common factual error in too many park films on the Civil War: that slavery only became an issue when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. This conceit defies all plain fact. Lincoln was anti-slavery from childhood and argued against it his entire life, including all his campaigns and in every office he held. The primary political division in the country pre Civil War was about slavery. Most northern states were not only anti-slavery but had worked on ending slavery since the Revolution. The Abolitionist movement began in Europe in the 1770s and was active openly in the north and in secret in the south before the Civil War. Every southern state that seceded, cited preservation of slavery as the reason. Lincoln’s hesitancy in making it official policy at the outset was due to the few northern border states that were still in the gradual process of ending slavery. Lincoln might have accepted a negotiated settlement early in the war, but the Confederates rejected it, being willing to fight to the death to keep their fellow humans in eternal bondage.
General Lee is quoted at the visitor center in Fredericksburg as expressing his sympathy for the white refugees fleeing south, but he apparently had zero regard for the far greater number of black refugees fleeing north. The Fredericksburg park film expresses much anguish for the destruction of pianos and other household goods, but only briefly mentions that 1/4 of the town were slaves when the Union troops arrived to liberate them. Tens of thousands of slaves fled Virginia through here during the war, crossing the Rappahannock River in Fredericksburg and getting passes to travel to refugee camps at Fort Monroe and near DC, seeking the safety of the Union. The lost property that the Confederate newspapers bewailed was largely human property.
Those who hold these Confederate generals in high esteem need to ask themselves why their heroes cared so much about the white residents and not at all about the black residents? It’s possible to admire Von Manstein for his strategies and Rommel for his tactics, but it’s not possible to ignore the 6 million Jews their government killed in the Holocaust. The Civil War ended 158 years ago. Moral judgements must be made about the cause of the war and the motives of the participants. The Confederate cause was evil, and we must not make heroes of those who served the cause of slavery. Stonewall Jackson was not a saint, so he does not deserve a shrine on national park land.
The park service Belle Grove site is near the north entrance to Shenandoah National Park, near the West Virginia border. Cedar Creek feeds into the Shenandoah River nearby, and this large agricultural valley in Virginia was home to James Madison’s brother in law, who had up to 100 slaves or so working his grain fields at any given time. Nelly Madison Hite named the plantation house Belle Grove Manor after her birthplace Belle Grove Plantation which is on the Rappahannock River near Fredericksburg, also in Virginia, and that’s now a historic B&B. James Madison was also born there and died at his Montpelier estate, which is near Charlottesville Virginia.
In 1864 Confederate troops routed Union soldiers in a surprise foggy morning attack. In the afternoon, General Sheridan arrived with more troops and won the day. The fighting approached the front porch above and left a couple bullet holes still visible. General Grant ordered many such farms in the valley burned to break the rebellion, causing hardship and starvation. Of course, the crops had all been grown by slave labor, so in the long run the owners’ hardship was finally needing to pay their workers.
The ‘struggle of southern women to be able to feed their families’ was due to a combination of factors: blockaded ports, burned plantations and escaped slave labor—the last factor perhaps the largest and longest lasting. Even poor whites benefited from cheap food, clothing & tobacco grown by slaves, which needs to be remembered when reading arguments that ‘most white southerners did not own slaves and were fighting to preserve a way of life’. Even poor whites knew that they would lose social status and have to start doing hard labor themselves if slavery ended. The end of slavery meant the end of that morally reprehensible way of life for all whites in the south, and the men who enlisted all knew it and chose to fight to preserve slavery.
There are reenactments, trenches and fields to explore, some monuments, a partner tour of Belle Grove Manor above, and a small partner museum with Civil War memorabilia across the street. The park is within the broader Shenandoah Valley Battlefields historic district, so there’s plenty to see in the area too. The basement of the manor has an interesting exhibit reconstructing the kitchen and showing artifacts of life in the time of slavery. If you’re interested in the defeated, there’s a picture of a dying Confederate general being comforted by G. A. Custer and also Coronation Tea in the gift shop.
The English sited a fort here in their Virginia colony at the mouth of the James River to protect Jamestown and the deep water entrance to the Chesapeake known as Hampton Roads, and now the Norfolk Navy Base sits across the river. The current fort is the largest masonry fort in the US, and although it was not directly involved in any battles, the Monitor v Merrimack battle was witnessed from its lighthouse, the oldest on the Chesapeake. Lincoln planned the capture of Norfolk here. Confederate leader Jefferson Davis was imprisoned here, decades after Lt Davis had been involved in sending captured Chief Black Hawk to prison here. Robert E. Lee improved the moat system above. Edgar Allan Poe served here (and later returned to recite his poetry).
But the most important history here began in 1619, when the first Africans were brought here by British privateers who stole them from the Spanish, and they were immediately put to work by the English colonists beginning the abomination of slavery in the American colonies. The first African American child, William Tucker, was born here in 1624. (First, unless you include Spanish St Augustine Florida, where there were 16th century slaves, as well as slaves in the Coronado and DeSoto expeditions).
The day Virginia seceded, three slaves, Baker, Townsend & Mallory, escaped and sought refuge here. Their owner sent a Confederate officer to claim his property. Without any official policy, the Union General Butler decided that the three men were illegal property or ‘contraband’ and refused to return them. Butler supported educating, training and enlisting them. This ‘contraband decision’ was widely published in newspapers and became Union policy until Emancipation. Many other escaped slaves similarly sought protection at this and other Union forts and camps, and communities with contraband schools began. Nearby Hampton University began as one of those schools, attended by 16 year old Booker T. Washington in 1872, fully 253 years after slavery started here in this country.
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