Bloody Angle 1938 – by the numbers

Taken seventy-two years ago, this photograph demonstrates how time marches on, and how even subtle differences can add up. Visitors to the scene of the “Bloody Angle” at Spotsylvania will recognize some of the numbered items as they survive today. In their absence, the items that are no longer there have helped to restore the area to its wartime appearance.

Reading left to right, number 1 points out two oak trees, one that still thrives, and the other which today appears to be in declining health. Today, they flank the path leading to a wooden bridge that brings visitors to the Federal side of the earthworks.

Number 2 is a Ranger Contact Station that was built in the early days of the park to shelter an on-site member of interpretive staff during open hours. As of this writing it is not certain when this and similar shelters around the park were dismantled, but it was most likely just prior to the Civil War Centennial’s start in 1961.

Number 3 is the postwar incarnation of the “Landram” house, built to replace the war-time residence that stood approximately 870 yards northeast at 52 degrees from the structure shown. The antebellum home was destroyed by fire around 1897. I am not certain, at this writing, when the postwar home was removed by the Park Service, but again I’d estimate just prior to the Centennial observance. It stood in the middle of the field, about 281 degree northwest of the northern side of the current bridge, near the tip of the Union leg of the angle, close to 57 yards out.

Item number 4, seen right above the number as a white square, is a long gone, stone marker that indicated the point of the “Bloody Angle” where Union and Confederate earthworks formed the obtuse angle itself. That spot is immediately to the left of the center of the bridge when facing number 5 on the Union held side of the trench.

Number 5 is the monument dedicated to the 49th New York Infantry in 1902 by veterans of that unit. It is still one of the dominant features placed on the landscape to this day.

Number 6, at the extreme right edge of the photograph, is a tree that is no longer standing but was just west of an orientation compass, currently in place. Other images of this tree show it to have had a large, gnarled trunk.

As a footnote, the orientation compass mentioned, and similar ones at other stops in the park, are destined for removal in the near future, as the National Park Service endeavors to modernize and improve the visitor’s experience.

Faux “Fredericksburg” Battle – July 1979, held at Spotsy Courthouse

Rounding off what was designed to be the largest 4th of July celebration held in the region; The Fredericksburg Heritage Festival of July 4-8, 1979 staged a re-enactment of the Battle of Fredericksburg in the field behind the American Legion Building at Spotsylvania Courthouse. Initially planned to present “several hundred” east coast re-enactors the numbers were diminished due to the gas shortage that gripped the country that year. “Union” participants from Ohio and Pennsylvania opted not to attend when the prospects of not finding enough gasoline for the return trip stood as a distinct possibility. Thus the “Confederates” would enjoy a 3-1 advantage of numbers as the opposing forces had dwindled considerably before the first shot was fired. Some of the southern troops kicked in to wear a blue coat and help even out the sides.
The Sunday, July 8 “battle” was oddly planned to depict the December 13, 1862 breakthrough by Union forces commanded by General Meade during the Battle of Fredericksburg. How portraying a moment in the actions of May 1864 was not considered more appropriate is anyone’s guess, especially since the very ground the event was being held on had contained a section of the Confederate right wing during the two weeks of fighting at Spotsylvania.
The pictures included with this post were taken by my good friend James Anderson from the spectator line during the “conflagration”. Local newspapers covered the event to great fanfare, undoubtedly inspiring some of those reading about it to get involved in the “hobby” of re-enacting. In 1986, the 125th anniversary of the Civil War began and saw an influx of participants far greater than had been realized even during the Centennial observances from 1961-1965. Currently, there has developed a decline in both participant numbers and quality at reenactment events. Hopefully the Sesquicentennial observances, 2011-2015, will see a rejuvenation that will properly and respectfully honor those who fought and died during the tragic years of 1861-1865. We shall see.

Rebuilding The Salient - 2004. Looking back six years.

     One of my most rewarding personal experiences was designing and directing the construction of a quarter mile section of reproduction trench for the 140th anniversary re-enactment of the battle of Spotsylvania in 2004. At the time I was serving on the fledgling Spotsylvania Courthouse Tourism and Special Events Commission. Up till that time Spotsylvania County had not been host to a large commemoration of the battle near the Courthouse, and the Board of Supervisors was eager to see it done right on home soil.
     In 1994 I had worked with Hanover County to put on a similar event, replete with a reconstructed section of Lee’s inverted “V” trench line on the North Anna River, also of my design.
     For Spotsylvania we had the good fortune of holding our event in connection with the fine folks of Belvedere Plantation, near the Caroline County line on Route 17, south/east of Fredericksburg.
In late February, with a drawing in hand I made during a pedestrian survey of the actual “Muleshoe Salient”, I paced out and marked the guideline the County backhoe would follow to prepare the rough ditch that would become our “Muleshoe”. Every so often along the length we would add a “traverse” trench.
     The top image in this posting was taken at 8:30 AM on February 23, 2004 as the first scoops of earth were turned. The view is looking west. The work was done by the Spotsylvania County Department of Public works, under the veteran supervision of Mr. Ed Carneal.
     Later in the day, noted re-enactor/preservation spokesman, Robert Lee Hodge arrived and posed on the earth moving equipment in full Confederate uniform, as seen below. Wide Awake Films, (of which until recently Hodge was a partner) had been hired on by the County in part to create three promotional videos the County could use for the future promotion of tourism. To this day, unfortunately, Spotsylvania County has yet to utilize to any appreciable degree, the wealth of raw footage created, nor the three video deliverables expertly produced by the Wide Awake crew.

     Over the next two months (March/April 2004), the Public Works Department labored many long days to install log revetments to provide a finished touch to the trench. Again, Ed Carneal and his men did a fantastic job.

     The picture at bottom shows a completed section, as well as a traverse. This labor of love provided an extra touch of realism for the May 7-9 event, that prior to then, had been rarely attempted. My personal experience at previous events during the 125th Anniversary cycle and beyond, provided little more than “ditch witch” channels cut across the event landscapes. In closing this posting, I must once again commend the Public Works Department and Mr. Ed Carneal for going the extra length that made the 140th Spotsylvania a special event for those who “fought” over our salient.

Winter Landscape, Spotsylvania 2010

The early morning light begins to filter through the trees near Dole’s Salient by Anderson Drive, on the Spotsylvania Battlefield. The two cannon seen here are representative of the kind that was in use here in May 1864. The closest to the camera was made at Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond, Virginia. It is 2.9” Parrot rifle which was designed to emulate the piece next to it which is a 3” Army Parrott rifle, Model 1863. Both could fire 10 pound projectiles up to 2,000 yards. The tree line seen in the distance here is just 188 yards off. At this relatively short distance these Parrots could fire closer range rounds called “canister” which were not much more than tin cans filled with lead balls. They would scatter like a shotgun blast upon exiting the barrel.
This image was taken February 18, 2010 at 7:15 AM, looking north/west.

Chancellorsville NPS Living History Camp – 1975

The above images were taken in July of 1975 while my family visited a living history presentation of the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park.
Situated in the woods near the Chancellorsville Visitor Center, the “camp” was designed to portray pickets of Company C of the 2nd North Carolina Infantry. The park sponsored this display for several years and it had been featured in an article in National Geographic Magazine’s November 1974 issue, Vol. 146, No. 5.
A sign at the head of the trail leading to this display explained that after the Confederate victory at Chancellorsville in May 1863, small detached picket posts like this were placed strategically across the vicinity to monitor Federal activity along the Rappahannock River.
My family arrived around lunchtime and watched the soldiers cook and consume their rations which included a recently “foraged” chicken.
Volunteers for these camps consisted of seasonal park employees, some of which ended up making a career with the National Park Service.
Demonstrations like this were inspirational to many kids like myself. I was fourteen at the time and would have enjoyed nothing better than to have been able to hang out in the camp all day and soak up the history.
I would enjoy hearing from former participants in these NPS sponsored camps at Chancellorsville.

Snow On The Field - Seventy-four Years Ago

From the National Park files, here is a photograph dated February 1936, showing the exterior slope of a restored section of Confederate trench near present day Burnside Drive. Note the inclusion of slashings in front, and a heavy log revetment to the exterior wall. The park had built this section of restoration the previous summer. It is no longer maintained in a restored condition and has not been for quite some time.
It is interesting to note that on February 7, 1936, the Northern Virginia area received fourteen inches of snow which would caused a great deal of flooding in March, when rains and warmer temperatures attacking the snowpack further west in the Skyline Drive area.
The snow seen here does not look very deep since grass is poking through. As of this posting I have not found more detailed information on the Fredericksburg area snow accumulation that year.

Pepsi:Cola, Sixty Years On

An "artifact" on the battlefield. Here lies a carelessly tossed 8 oz Pepsi bottle, near the Bloody Angle. In the early days of the battlefield park, visitors could drive a full circle around the "Mule Shoe" Salient and pull off on the south side of the road, across from the Union monuments and a now long gone "ranger shack".
Sometime in the late 1940's a visitor took pause to refresh his thirst and then pitched his empty soda bottle into the woods. The specimen happens to be what bottle collectors would call a "DD, ACL" which in layman speak means a double dot, applied color label. A "double dot" refers to the doubled dash or colon between the words Pepsi and Cola. The two color label (perhaps hard to distinguish in the photo) is considered a second style for the era, simply red and white, while blue had been included in its predecessor. Along the base of the bottle, just below the label, it indicates in white lettering the product had originated from the Richmond, Virginia plant.
It is interesting, I think, that somewhere around eighty-five years after the fierce engagement that was fought here, someone thought so little of the human sacrifices that once covered the grounds around them that they left their "modern" litter behind. Now, perhaps sixty plus years after that act of carelessness, that discarded "empty" had assumed a place as "artifact". The Pepsi bottle is not alone. A simple pedestrian survey will reveal a small assortment of beer cans and bottles. One hundred and forty-six years have come and gone since the days that the debris of war dominated the landscape.

One Out of Thirty Thousand

By the opening campaign in the spring of 1864, twenty-one year old Benjamin A. Merrill was a veteran soldier and had reenlisted in one of Massachusetts’ four Veteran Infantry Regiments, the 59th. Merrill had previously served nine months with the 50th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, but saw relatively little action while on assignment in Louisiana.
After a six month rest, Merrill’s reenlistment fated he would be more heavily engaged in combat. The eastern theater was heating up as spring blossomed in the Virginia Wilderness, and after less than two weeks since leaving Massachusetts, the 59th was fighting in the thick of it on May 6.
Attached to the 1st Brigade of the 1st Division of Burnside’s “Independent” IX Corps, the regiment reached the Spotsylvania Courthouse area on May 9th, but was initially not heavily engaged. Three days later, while the Army of the Potomac boldly attempted to penetrate and cripple the Confederate forces within the “Muleshoe Salient”, the IX Corps was tasked with a diversionary thrust at the Confederate right, north of the Courthouse Road.
Merrill did not emerge from that action on the 12th, and was reported killed, but the nature and region of his wound was not stated in the official army Certificate of Death. His body was either never recovered or he was buried as an unknown.
His photograph, from my private collection, was taken by the Lane studio in Haverhill, Massachusetts, seven miles northwest of Merrill’s hometown of Georgetown, both in Essex County. Sadly, the existing census and military records tell us very little of Benjamin A. Merrill’s life other than he was a shoe maker and had been living with his parents and siblings before entering the service. According to the Company Muster-in and Descriptive Roll, we learn that Benjamin stood five feet, eleven inches tall, had black eyes, dark hair and was of dark complexion. Even his photographer remains a mystery as of this writing. The photograph itself had been acquired, like so many others, from an internet auction, a small remnant of what was in all probability someone’s family album. Whether it was from Merrill’s immediate family or perhaps that of a friend, it bares his signature in period ink on the reverse. Annotated in pencil beneath the signature is the note, “Killed on battle field in Civil War”. Judging by the lack of a printed border around the pasted image, it could be surmised that this was taken in the summer of 1862 prior to Benjamin’s first term of service with the 50th Regiment, when he would have been around nineteen.

Play for a Kingdom - Hardly

September 13, 2009 brought Old Rules (1864) Baseball to the Spotsylvania Courthouse area. Two deserving teams, the Maryland State Champion Elkton Eclipse vs. the newly formed Williamsburg Pastimes, met on the diamondless field as the closing event for Spotsylvania County's poorly promoted "1859-era County Fair". The overall event was the first in a proposed series of commemorative special programs to promote the observance of the Civil War Sesquicentennial through 2015.
Hopefully things will improve for future events but this sparsely attended premier left plenty to be desired. The ball clubs played valiantly, final score 22-2, with the champs still champs. The crowd generated by the well hidden final event of the Fair reached a shameful half dozen by the final pitch and this figure of course does not include those who came as friends of the teams or the ice cream vendor.
The absolute lack of banners, signage, anything, to indicate there was something interesting happening in the remote location, doomed the public attendance. But the real problem with the "Fair" was the complete nonchalance of the county organizer who assembled the participants, which included a medicine show, political debates and a concert/lecture pertaining to spiritual songs of field slaves. These elements which, properly promoted, would have carried the event, were left dangling in a sparse presentation amidst construction debris and earth moving apparatus. The donated use of the land was in itself commendable, but the scattered placement of the participants left those who did happen upon the "festivities" feeling like they were wandering the plains of Nazca.
Additionally, for this "1859" fair, there were some displays that made one forget what the whole thing was about, primarily the inclusion of antique fire engines (gasoline powered, yes) and a petting zoo of three alpacas. All "period" vendors were absent due to the lack of advance notice given by the organizer. Once again, (yes, a process with a history) the county staff failed to realize that events of this magnitude really do require at least a solid year of advance notice. It is obvious to the writer, that despite constant suggestions to the contrary, there prevails the belief that "re-enactors" and these "sutlers" along with period craftsmen and women, sit around by the phone just waiting to be called at a moments notice. No, they do not hit the road like a carnival.
But, bottom line, if you're going to put on an event, at least promote the thing. And for God's sake, put some sort of banner or signage at the entrance so the passing public has a clue that there is an event they are welcome to attend.

The attached image shows the winners of the baseball game posing for wet plate photographer Terry Thomann of the Civil War Life Foundation. Some of the best features of the "Fair" had been brought to the table by Mr. Thomann, a volunteer, who's knowledge and experience should have been heeded by County staff from the days of inception. It was not to be this time.
Acknowledgment should also be given to Debbie Aylor of the County Visitor Center, who has a genuine appreciation for and knowledge of her community's history. She is very capable, if allowed some latitude.
It is hoped that things will improve. Someone needs to get a clue.

Ellwood - the deal currently

It has been a while, but I can now reveal that there is a dispute with Orange County as to the exact placement of the northern line dividing them and Spotsylvania County. As I have said previously, the long, well established history of Ellwood places it in Spotsylvania County, but Orange is not just concerned with Ellwood, they are looking at all properties along the disputed border.
Presently, Orange County has some other issues they are dealing with and this discussion with Spotsylvania is taking a backseat, for a while.
When they can refocus, we will be on top of it.