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.