’72
Visits More Civil War Battlefields in Virginia
April
29 – May 3, 2015
From the four
points of the compass – Washington and Oregon, Mill Valley and Palo
Alto, Nevada, Phoenix, Idaho, Denver, Houston, St. Louis, Madison WI,
Peoria, Ohio, Georgia, the Carolinas, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, State
College PA, upstate New York, the NYC and Washington DC metro areas,
New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Cape Cod, and Vermont – a
record number of ’72 classmates spouses and guests, 108 strong,
mustered at the Boar’s Head Inn, just outside Charlottesville,
Virginia, on April 29 for our seventh Civil War battlefield discovery
tour with Princeton Prof. Emeritus Jim McPherson and his wife Pat,
both honorary classmates of 1972.
After we enjoyed a welcoming
reception and kickoff dinner, we rallied at 8 the next morning and
boarded our two buses. Our destination that first day was the
fortifications around Petersburg, due south of the Confederate
capital Richmond, where the entrenched armies of Grant and Lee
confronted each other for nearly ten months, from mid-June 1864 to
early April 1865, the longest siege in the Civil War (or any
American war). Petersburg was a key rail junction, and as long as it
held out Richmond could be provisioned sufficiently to repulse any
Yankee attackers and continue waging the War of Secession. At
numerous points along the line of formidable entrenchments, one side
or the other repeatedly attempted to achieve breakthroughs during
those months of siege. Most dramatic and infamous was the Battle of
the Crater, July 30, 1864, where Pennsylvania coalminers in the Union
Army tunneled right underneath the entrenched enemy’s front lines,
undetected, and literally blew the Confederates sky-high, but then
failed to exploit the shock and awe that 8,000 pounds of exploding
gunpowder delivered. The confused and ineptly led Federal
infantrymen poured into the Crater but couldn’t fight their way
out, resulting in one of the worst military disasters of any war. As
he has in all the battlefields we’ve visited, Prof. McPherson gave
us a brilliant, insightful commentary about the opposing leaders, the
decisions they made, and the horrendous losses that resulted. (And
on this trip, we finally succeeded in transmitting the Professor’s
commentary from one bus to the other, by walkie-talkie!)
That evening, after
a quick change of clothes at the Boar’s Head, we bused north and
east to Montpelier, the home of our country’s fourth President,
James Madison (Princeton 1771), where he and wife Dolley lived for
almost twenty years after his two-term presidency (1809-1817). The
house belonged to the duPont family for most of the last century and
is now being meticulously and thoughtfully restored to how it looked
when the Madisons lived there. We enjoyed an elegant dinner in the
handsome dining room in which the duPonts had entertained, adjacent
to the main house.
Friday morning, May
1st, we repeated our timely muster and rode north to the Manassas
battlefield, a.k.a. Bull Run, scene of two key battles thirteen
months apart. We started at the Stone Bridge and proceeded to key
landmarks of First Manassas (July 21, 1861, the war’s first battle)
– Matthews Hill and Henry Hill, where Stonewall Jackson earned his
nickname – then shifted attention to the bigger and even bloodier,
but less well-known, Second Manassas (August 28-29-30, 1862). We
surveyed the battle starting from Brawner’s Farm, then to the
Unfinished Railroad Cut, then to the spot where two New York
regiments made their valiant stand against an onrushing Confederate
tide, at great cost. Both battles were victories for the secessionist
South, driving Union forces from the field. We were impressed by how
well the battlefield, and much of the land around it, has been
preserved from encroaching suburban sprawl, so close to Washington
DC. That evening we dined festively at Swift Run Farm, property of
Steve and Caroline McLean’s family in Stanardsville, with a
delicious pig-roast and ample libations, to the accompaniment of
Gallatin Canyon, an excellent Charlottesville bluegrass band.
Saturday we drove to a sparkling new branch of the Museum of the
Confederacy, full of fascinating historical artifacts, just outside
Appomattox, then visited that peaceful village itself and saw where
Ulysses S. Grant received Robert E. Lee’s surrender, on April 9,
1865, bringing the war in Virginia to a close. We were all moved by
the tranquil atmosphere and spirit of reconciliation so palpable
there. We learned about one of the war’s very last engagements,
vestiges of which are even now being discovered, excavated, and
preserved, just outside town, 150 years after it occurred. We then
returned to the Boar’s Head Inn and a gala celebratory and
valedictory dinner, just across the street, at the elegant Farmington
Country Club, again thanks to Steve McLean. We presented Jim and Pat
McPherson a custom-made, coffee-table book chronicling, in words and
photos, all the Civil War trips on which he and Pat had led us, going
back to Gettysburg in October 2004, enlightening us all. These
journeys have brought many classmates and spouses into active
engagement, friendship, and fellowship with ’72 and each other.
Sunday we departed in every direction, savoring the manifold happy
memories which we will all continue to cherish.
Photos of the trip are collected here.