Fredericksburg Battlefield, VA
Since we’re already in Virginia, don’t run away just yet! Back when President Lincoln learned that the Union was defeated at Fredericksburg, he stated, “If there is a place worse than hell, I am in it!”
Battled over a few days in December 1862 at Slaughter Pen Farm and Marye’s Heights, the fight was a crushing loss for the Union but one of the most decisive victories for Robert E. Lee.
Taking nearly 200,000 soldiers, the largest concentration of troops in any American Civil War battle, resulted in Major General Ambrose Burnside being relieved of his command, and Lincoln was criticized for not ending the war faster.
In March 2006, the Civil War Trust launched a $12 million fundraising campaign to buy the 208-acre Slaughter Pen Farm on the south end of the Fredericksburg Battlefield.
Nowadays, depicted as the “heart and soul of Fredericksburg,” the sacred ground at Slaughter Pen Farm, where Union soldiers advanced with little to no cover against firmly positioned Confederates, has a 1.75-mile walking trail with interpretive signs.
Other historic sites are revealed at the 8,400-acre Fredericksburg Spotsylvania National Military Park, including Salem Church, Chatham Manor, and Ellwood Farm, where Stonewall Jackson’s amputated left arm is buried in its own marked grave.
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Thank you so much for this informative article. We will be travelling through these areas in the next few months. Will bring this list with us for sure.
Surely, Appomattox is a must visit and would bump Palmito from your list of “to seven”. Anyone reading Lincoln’s words that guided General Grant’s terms of surrender will think long and hard on the struggle this nation faced during Reconstruction and the bitter cost of this war.
Mom was born in Keedysville, just a few miles from Antietam. We went there often when visiting uncles, cousins, and other family. Uncle lived in Boonsboro, just a mile or so from the gates of Antietam. One friend’s house is the backdoor to the battlefield and burial site. Across the street from the cemetery is where most of them are buried now.
You can feel and sometimes see the spirits at all the battlefield sites.