My favorite battlefields.

Tidewater

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Today was a beautiful autumn day (60 degrees and sunny) in Virginia, and I had to drive from the Valley to the Tidewater, so, when I drove past Richmond, I decided to visit the Richmond National Battlefield Park 1864 battlefields north of the James: Forts Gilmer, Gregg, Johnson, Harrison, and Hoke.
The Union forces (US Colored Troops) took Fort Harrison on September 29, 1864, on what was arguably the best day of service of the USCT in the war (New Market Heights and Fort Harrison)
The earthworks are huge. They were huge in the day, but they have aged well. The other earthworks from 1864 are usually field fortifications and they are now small mounds that cover the Virginia countryside from Wilderness to Five Forks.
Anyway, a nice day in the park.

I'll post my reviews of other battlefields here, if interested. Help me gauge interest by commenting. If there is not interest, I will stop.
 
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selmaborntidefan

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Go right ahead.

I went to Little Big Horn last year on my Yellowstone trip and loved it, although we had to kinda rush through because it was near closing time. I just finished Middlekauff's book on the American Revolution ("The Glorious Cause") and found out how little I ever actually learned in history class.

Also - went to Bennington twice while I've been up here, which I'd never heard of before (then learned it was the northern flank of the Saratoga campaign).

And took my son to Concord just so he could see where it all began; I don't think he cares.
 
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catsbane

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Have never been to Little Bighorn but would love to go. Lot of debate about what happened there or why. I like a good puzzle.
For pure scenery it would be hard to beat Harper's Ferry. Beautiful area.
Have been to Antietam a couple of times. Such a vicious, frenzied fight.
Would like to say Fredericksburg but the area is so built over that it's hard to envision the fight there. Go to the cemetery though. The gravestones have odd designations, something like 1/4, 2/2, 3/3, 4/6. Learned that the second number was the number of men buried there... kind of hits home then.
Gettysburg. Have been there several times. No place where the ghosts are thicker.

bills photos 094.jpg
 

catsbane

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Have also been to the Bull Runs and Saratoga. Enjoyed those. Tried to find Marathon on a long ago trip but it wasn't well marked. Drove through Thermopylae pass.
Keep meaning to get to Shiloh and Cowpens. Maybe one day.
 

Tidewater

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Go right ahead.

I went to Little Big Horn last year on my Yellowstone trip and loved it, although we had to kinda rush through because it was near closing time. I just finished Middlekauff's book on the American Revolution ("The Glorious Cause") and found out how little I ever actually learned in history class.

Also - went to Bennington twice while I've been up here, which I'd never heard of before (then learned it was the northern flank of the Saratoga campaign).

And took my son to Concord just so he could see where it all began; I don't think he cares.
I loved my visit to Little Big Horn. By pure coincidence, it was the 120th anniversary of the Battle. The reps from the Indian tribes were there, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, speeches, the slaughtered a buffalo and gave away buffalo burgers to those in attendance.

The battlefield is mostly pristine., just the way it was in 1876. What struck me the most was the headstones dotting the countryside. After the battle, burial details buried the soldiers where they lay. Later, headstones were added. Later still, most were consolidated, but they left the original headstones so you can see the progress of the battle by where soldiers died. Haunting.
LBH Headstones.jpeg
 
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Tidewater

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Mine would be Culloden Muir in Scotland . went seen it on a holiday found it quite interesting being originally from scotland (ive lived in australia most my life since i was 5 so i consider myself aussie)
I went to Culloden when I was in Scotland. A bit off the beaten path, but worth the visit. The last land battle in the British Isles.
Sad thinking of Scottish Highlanders with cutlasses and shields charging British soldiers armed with muskets. The old vs. the new, I suppose.
 

Tidewater

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What criteria I use for judging whether a battlefield is worth visiting are fairly straightforward.
1. To what extent is the battlefield appear as it did when the battle happened?
2. How significant was the battle itself.
3. How successful are the interpretive aids in telling what happened where and when?
4. Is the setting beautiful in its own right?

Some time in the 1990s, the National Park Service directed battlefield park directors to, to the extent possible, return the battlefield to its appearance at the time of the battle. This has meant pushing back some tree lines (e.g. Malvern Hill), or (at Chickamauga) trimming the scrub growth (pigs and cows ranged freely in 1863, so the animals did this). The forests had normal trees up high, but the forest floors between the big trees were very open.

Gettysburg knocked down the original battelfield visitors' center (built on the field of Pickett's Charge) and built a new one out of the way. The NPS then planted grass where the old one had been. This give a better picture of the terrain in 1863.

The most remarkable on this score is Appomattox. in 1892, the county of Appomattox moved the county seat four miles away (to be closer to the railroad). They abandoned the 1865 courthouse building. Thus, Appomattox Courthouse National Park does not suffer from modern encroachment the way that, say, Gettysburg does. ("Pickett's men charged past the Burger King, but when they got to the KFC, the 8th Ohio Infantry hit them in the flank.") Appomattox today looks pretty much the same way it did in 1865. A courthouse building, a dry goods shop, an ordinary, and Wilmer McLean's house. This is one of my favorites. Very pristine.
 
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Swanny

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Battle of Chattanooga on Lookout Mountain this past May. Thanks Tidewater for starting this thread. I look forward to reading everyone's experiences. 20230521_123427.jpg
 
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Tidewater

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For those interested. There are five national military parks (vice battlefield parks): Chickamauga and Chattanooga authorized in 1890, Shiloh in 1894, Gettysburg in 1895, and Vicksburg in 1899, and eventually, Antietam.
The military parks were actually used by the army for training.
 

Tidewater

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My favorite of the big battlefields is Antietam (Sharpsburg).
It is very significant (bloodiest day in American history until 9/11/2001; Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation after this battle).
The battlefield is mostly untouched. (The federal government bought 3,229 acres of this land in 1890.)
The interpretive aids are outstanding. The visitor's center has a relatively new film, well done. Good exhibits. The battlefield is very well marked. The driving tour is excellent.
You can do the entire thing in 3-4 hours.

Two of my favorite anecdotes from the war happened on this occasion. Major General Israel B. "Fighting Dick" Richardson commanded a Union division of the northern portion of the battle. One of his brigades was seriously engaged and getting the crap shot out of it. Another of his brigades (Caldwell's) was standing by at "in place rest" a few hundred yards away, watching the carnage, but not helping. The brigade adjutant, Lt. Livermore, was standing where the Brigade Commander should have been. Fighting Dick rode up to Livermore demanding to know where Colonel Caldwell was.
"He's off in the rear, hiding behind a haystack," Livermore explained.
Richardson face became as dark as a thundercloud and he roared, "G__ d___ the field officers!" and sent Caldwell's brigade in at the double quick.

On the Confederate side, the fight at the Sunken Road was a hard fight. Daniel Harvey Hill's division bore the brunt of that fight. As the fight went on, men started to leave the battle line singly. Hill started gathering the stragglers up, forming them into an impromptu battalion. Then Hill grabbed a musket from one of the men running past him. Hill turned to his battalion and gave the shortest motivational speech in American military history: "Attention. Charge!" Hill then led the charge to restore the line.

22,717 men were killed, wounded, or captured that day.
 

Tidewater

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In the western theater, one of my favorites is Chickamauga. 9,523 acres (but part of this acreage is Chattanooga, Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain, different battle, and essentially different park). This is a big hunk of land.

1. The battlefield appears almost exactly like it did in 1863. The War Department got to this way before suburban sprawl did. The Park Service has done a lot of work to return it to its 1863 appearance.
2. The battle was very significant. Rosecrans' defeat caused Grant to move his army from Mississippi (where, honestly he was at a loss as to what to do next after Vicksburg). Grant's victory at Chattanooga brought Lincoln to name Grant General-in-Chief of Union Armies.
3. The battlefield is replete with markers. Every state whose troops fought there has erected a monument. Markers down to brigade level are all over the battlefield showing when that brigade was there. The visitor's center is is good nick and they have one of America's best nineteenth century gun collections on display. The driving tour makes understanding the battle fairly easy. (It was a complex battle, with the same ground being fought over in different directions at different times.)
4. The setting is beautiful in its own right. The eastern portion along Chickamauga Creek is generally flat, rising as you move west, and the very western edge (Snodgrass Hill) is quite hilly.

Rosecrans' campaign to get there from Tullahoma was brilliant, but once there, Rosie seemed to lose his self-confidence.
Tough battle with lots of drama, courage, and mistakes on both sides.
 

Go Bama

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I ride past Fort Donelson regularly on the way to Clarksville, TN. We've taken the tour several times, and I've read a book about the battle. One interesting fact I remember is that the Union soldiers, coming from Missouri by way of Kentucky, were hot so many of them discarded their overcoats. The thinking was it doesn't get cold in the South. During the battle, it got extremely cold.

I'm also not far from Shiloh. We used to ride bikes there when I was in dental school. I haven't been in several years, but it is a sobering experience.

We went to Little Big Horn two years ago for the third time. They used metal detectors to find the spent shell casings. Each firing pin leaves a "finger print" in the casing so it made it possible to track the soldiers movement during the battle. Bottom line, the soldiers panicked, became disorganized and were slaughtered.
I bought an Indian flute at the souvenir shop. It's a beautiful instrument with a haunting sound. I like to play it in my backyard on warm summer nights.
 

Tidewater

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I ride past Fort Donelson regularly on the way to Clarksville, TN. We've taken the tour several times, and I've read a book about the battle. One interesting fact I remember is that the Union soldiers, coming from Missouri by way of Kentucky, were hot so many of them discarded their overcoats. The thinking was it doesn't get cold in the South. During the battle, it got extremely cold.

I'm also not far from Shiloh. We used to ride bikes there when I was in dental school. I haven't been in several years, but it is a sobering experience.

We went to Little Big Horn two years ago for the third time. They used metal detectors to find the spent shell casings. Each firing pin leaves a "finger print" in the casing so it made it possible to track the soldiers movement during the battle. Bottom line, the soldiers panicked, became disorganized and were slaughtered.
I bought an Indian flute at the souvenir shop. It's a beautiful instrument with a haunting sound. I like to play it in my backyard on warm summer nights.
When I was in the 101st Airborne at Ft. Campbell, I went to Donelson numerous times. That is a very good park as well. The river is a bit higher than it was in 1862, but visitors still get the feel of the fort. Donelson's counterpart on the Tennessee, Fort Henry, is now underwater because of dams on the Tennessee, although, truth be told, the Union party that came to accept the surrender of Henry took a rowboat through the main gate because Henry was built in the flood plain of the Tennessee and, well, in February 1862, it flooded.
 

4Q Basket Case

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I have three. In chronological order of the battle:

Gettysburg. Especially if you're familiar with the battle, it's incredibly moving to walk the grounds. For an Alabama guy, walking from the far right flank of the Confederate lines up to the peak of Little Round Top, and thinking about what happened there is humbling.

Also, the National Park Service guides are incredibly knowledgeable. Not cheap to hire, but well worth the money. Was $80 last time I was there in 2005.

If you do that, do some research and have some specific sites you want to see and specific well-thought-out questions. You don't want to waste access to this kind of expertise.

I took this picture of the North Carolina Monument. It was shot on B&W film, and the original won a prize from the Civil War Preservation Trust. This is a digital scan and some of the details aren't as prominent as in the wet-darkroom print.

1701906002249.png

The Somme. This is a WW1 battle that took place in France about 100 miles NE of Paris, before the US got involved. Fought on the Allied side mainly by the Brits, Aussies, New Zealanders and Canadians. French as well. Lasted for just under 5 months along a long front (20 - 25 miles? I'm not sure). For the Commonwealth visitors, it's kind of a pilgrimage.

Mind-numbing casualties: Allied including French were over 600,000, of which about 140,000 were killed. German casualties totaled somewhere between 500,000 and 600,000, of which about 164,000 were killed.

In total, between 1,100,000 and 1,200,000, with over 300,000 killed. In 140 days.

That's an average of over 8,000 total casualties, of which over 2,000 were killed every day for 140 days.

As with a lot of WW1 battles, it's hard to say who won. The battleground is still relatively rural, and over 100 years later the ground is still throwing up what the local farmers call, "the iron harvest." We were on a day-trip tour out of Paris and drove by farmhouses with spent shells and other battlefield detritus piled up like cordwood.

Even today, every so often someone gets hurt or killed accidentally triggering previously unexploded ordnance. Parts of the trench lines are still off limits to tourists.

Here's a picture of the monument at Theipval, which was part of the larger Somme battle.

1701904499074.png

The thing is huge. I chose this picture because it conveys the scale....those small dots you see just above the first horizontal white concrete line are people.

It was significant to me because there are almost 80,000 names inscribed (therefore the size). They are the names of the missing from the Battle of the Somme. Just the missing.

No wounded. No identified dead. No captured. Just. The. Missing. In all likelihood virtually all of them were blown to bits so small that they couldn't be identified as even a body.

Normandy. That one's over 50 miles from Utah Beach on the western end to Sword Beach and Pegasus Bridge on the far eastern flank. Every American should see the cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach. One underpublicized part of that cemetery is a Wall of the Missing that is sobering.

I would highly recommend a guided tour. We used Battlebus and were quite satisfied. I don't know if they're still in operation, but there are several similar outfits and I'm sure they're good as well.

The organization and expertise of a professional helps to sew together all the sites you already know by name. Pointe du Hoc, St. Mere Eglise, Omaha Beach. And you don't truly understand the hedgerow country (a/k/a "the Bocage") until you see it.

If you go, try to be sure a little church in a village called Angoville au Plain is on the itinerary. The story of two American medics and the service they rendered there is absolutely inspiring. If you don't shed a tear, you don't have a heart.
 
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