dalliances in virginia

greetings from the (old) state of virginia! i have now been here about three days, and have loved every minute of it. chris and his parents have been very gracious hosts, letting me do my thing and feeding me in between excursions.

kids on a fieldtrip at the appomattox park

i started out from raleigh tuesday morning, and stopped at the appomattox court house national historic park, which is west of richmond. the park itself is kind of underwhelming, but maybe that's just because the last civil war site i visited was vicksburg. it was neat to see where lee and grant signed the treaty that ended the civil war--the park service has more or less rebuilt old appomattox as it was in 1865, and the old highway that lee rode down is still there; in fact, until the 1930s that was the highway people drove down. probably the most interesting part was the history of the mclean house, where the treaty was signed. it was taken apart in the 1890s to be put on exhibition at the 1893 chicago world's fair, but the parts never left virginia. people driving by would take bricks from the deconstructed house until the park service rebuilt it in the 1940s, leaving the building that is there today.

from there i headed to purcellville, where chris and his family live, stopping for coffee along the way at the james river at the restaurant to the right. i have decided that all of virginia is populated by cute little villages, albeit with varying cuteness factors. and they are all historic! chris and his family took me to the historic town of waterford, founded in 1733. they have preserved the town almost exactly as it was--pictured below. in addition, there is documentation that a skirmish in a waterford church during the civil war featured regiments from loudoun county on both sides. among the soldiers were a pair of brothers--one fighting for north, one for south. so it's true: brothers did actually fight each other in the civil war. and i've seen where.

historic waterford

wednesday chris and i drove down to the manassas battlefield (also called bull run). for those of you who need a history refresher course, this is the first land battle of the civil war. in july 1861, almost a year after southerners fired on fort sumter in south carolina, union troops marched from washington dc towards richmond. they met confederate forces at manassas, a small town in virginia. contrary to popular belief, while some civilians did come down from washington following the troops, they were about five miles away from the actual battle in centreville, so they didn't see anything. pictures, such as this one, lie. anyway, the confederates successfully outduped the unionists, and the south won the day, much as they did in the second battle of manassas a little over a year later. there really are two parts to this park--the first and second battles were really quite different. before the first battle, everyone thought the war would be quick: both north and south only requested three month volunteers. those fighting in the second battle were one or two year volunteers, and many were already veterans of combat.

the battlefield, particularly of the first battle, was really interesting. they have preserved it as it was in 1865, so there are trees where there were trees, and fields where there were fields. this allows you to really get a feel for what it was like for these soldiers, how far apart things were, how the confederates came out of the trees, why the union was unsuccessful. (basically the union commanders had a tendency to ignore the facts in front of them, leading to disaster every time, at least until grant became the general in change. general pope at second manassas: no! longstreet and 34000 confederate troops are not two miles away! they will not intervene when i go to attack jackson's men! no!). we were able to go on a short tour of the first manassas battleground, along with a bunch of families and retired folk. it was a beautiful day as you can see in the pictures, but very hot--by the middle of the afternoon we were ready for some lemonade.