US Civil War
Battlefields
A bit modern for me, perhaps, but what the heck, I was in the neighborhood…
(click on the photos below to see more of each battlefield)
Manassas (Bull Run)
The US Civil War began in earnest when the combined Confederate Armies of the Potomac and Shenandoah first met the Union Army of Northeastern Virginia at Manassas, Virginia, near the Bull Run Creek in on 21 July 1861. This rolling farmland would be revisited by war 28-30 August 1862 when the combined Union Armies of Virginia and the Potomac clashed with the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia just west of the previous year’s battlefield.
Antietam (Sharpsburg)
The battle fought here on 17 September 1862 remains the bloodiest day in the history of the United States, with some 22,726 casualties incurred. Here, the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia met the Union Army of the Potomac, with both sides throwing everything they had at the opponent along a sprawling line of contact. The immediate military result of this battle was the withdrawal of Confederate forces from Union territory. The more lasting effect was President Lincoln’s issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation on 22 September 1862, declaring the freedom all slaves held in Confederate territory.
fredericksburg
The battle fought here 11-15 December 1862 featured the Union Army of the Potomac crossing the Rappahannock River under fire to attack the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, dug-in on the heights above the river. With long artillery fields of fire and veteran entrenched infantry firing mercilessly from above, the struggle to even reach, much less take, the Confederate lines helped created some of the war’s most iconic imagery, at the same time making clear to anyone yet to grasp its significance, that modern firearm technology had forever rendered Napoleonic-style frontal assaults by massed infantry obsolete.
chancellorsville
The battle which took place here 30 April - 6 May 1863 restored maneuver to a war that seemed to have settled into one of unassailable fortified positions. Chancellorsville featured a Union attempt to maneuver the Confederates out of their defensive lines at Fredericksburg with an audacious turning movement by five of the Army of the Potomac’s seven infantry corps. The Union attempt was met and defeated by an equally audacious night march by Confederate General Stonewall Jackson’s elite corps. Jackson would not survive the encounter, but his forces shattered the Union attack and Lee forced Hooker back across the Rappahannock.
gettysburg
Perhaps the most famous of US Civil War battles, Gettysburg featured a bit of a role reversal as the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia sought to dislodge the Union Army of the Potomac from defensive lines hastily constructed near the Pennsylvanian town of Gettysburg, 1-3 July 1863. Fierce fighting at now legendary sites such as the Peach Orchard, Devil’s Den, Missionary Ridge, and Little Round Top brought the battle to a crescendo with the failure of Pickett’s Charge to break the Union center, leading to a retreat back into Confederate territory. The Gettysburg campaign represented the last Confederate invasion of the North.