The Civil War

The Civil War, which took place in the 1860's, was fought in many battlefields up and down the eastern half of the US - we may have read that there were 400 sites! We restricted our "study" of this terrible conflict to the state of Virginia (where "more blood was spilt" than anywhere else). The battlefields themselves are interesting, fascinating indeed, but we were particularly interested in the background to and the reasons for the war.

The numerous battlefield exhibits and visitors centres deal with how the war went in that locality, but our more strategic question was answered perfectly at the American Civil War Museum in Richmond. Richmond is the state capital and, we learned, it was also the capital of the Confederated States of America, a country which had seceeded from the "Union" in 1861 and had its own President, Jefferson Davis. The USA must have viewed his behaviour as treacherous, but he is nevertheless honoured in modern day America, with the main coastal north-south road, US1, being named after him for much of its length.

The Civil War Museum is a new facility, and it structures its displays ingeniously by clearly dividing itself into the points of view of the three major stakeholders, the North (defending the "Union"), the South (defending state rights, which the museum called "Home") and the negro population ("Freedom" from slavery). The displays emphasise that while the seeds for the war were being sown effectively from the War of Independence about 80-90 years previously, and the causes were complex, they basically got down to slavery. The South was determined to defend its source of cheap labour which allowed them the accumulation of great wealth. The North was concerned about the morality of slavery, certainly, but they were just as opposed to the burgeoning economic strength of the South as slave populations grew. The South's political strength grew with this population too, because despite slaves being traded as property, a rule of "three fifths" was applied to their numbers. The geographic expansion of the USA (the acquisition of the "middle" by the Louisiana purchase from France in 1803; and Calfornia, New Mexico and Texas from the Mexican war in 1848) aggravated the balance between north and south achieved by the Union's consitution. When the southern states seceeded, the North's argument became more philosophical (the defence of the Constitution) and tactical (refusal to allow important ports and resources to be taken over by a foreign power). With the election of Abraham Lincoln as President, he called for armed retaliation to the secession, and seeking freedom for slaves was obviously not the major part of the motivation. We found this museum to be most interesting and informative, and it dealt with what we wanted to know perfectly.

Next door to the Museum is the Civil War Visitor Centre, run by the National Park Service. We were puzzled that the National Parks are the custodians of many Civil War sites and battlefields, but they take on this task with great effectiveness. Just as we commented when touring the Rocky Mountains two years ago, US National Parks are fanastically well organised and managed, and any natural or historical features under their care are in very good hands indeed. The Civil War sites are excellent and indeed awesome examples of this.

The main Richmond visitor centre has particular interest because of its location in the Tredegar Iron Works which manufactured cannons and other war machines for the Confederate army. Today, the works are partly ruins, but they have been stabilised and modified into a magnificent venue for the centre [photo].

At all the visitor centres we visited, there is a movie or some form of audio-visual presentation to describe the progress of the war in that particular locality. These are always very professional, very interesting and highly informative. The battlefields themselves (or at least those which survived and a now under National Park care) are laid out with walking trails, driving tours and numerous exhibits to described exactly what happened at this particular spot. In some places there are open fields or forests with few remnants of the war, but in others there are stunning artifacts and reminders, sometimes by reconstruction [photo], of how the war was conducted at that spot. To visit these places is very moving, and we were appalled at the horrendous loss of life which took place under our feet. It is notable that the use of metal detectors is specifically prohibited at all these sites.

At the Cold Harbour battlefield, near Richmond, we learned the extent to which this war involved "earthworks", the creation of protective barriers and trenches. No doubt these tactics and techniques were studied and adopted by European generals in the first world war, 50 years later.

At Petersburg, not that far south of Richmond, we were able to understand the battles which turned the war in favour of the North, and led to Confederate General Robert E Lee's surrender to General Ulysses S Grant only a week later. At this battlefield took place the "Battle of the Crater" where the two front lines were amazingly close together, and coal miner Union soldiers from Pennsylvania dug a tunnel 500ft from behind their lines to under a Confederate fort and blew it up with explosives. The Union troops were so amazed at the crater thus created, they actually lost the fight there, despite the damage and carnage suffered by the other side in the explosion.

At Fredericksburg, north of Richmond, we learned and saw how Union troops were repeatedly unable to capture a hill just out of town, and suffered horrendous losses, because the hill overlooked an open plain (now a suburb) and was easily protected by a rock wall, a "sunken road" and elevated gun emplacements. The Union army eventually won the hill by coming in from behind. The photo shows a portion of the rock wall, and a house, still riddled with bullets, that was in the way of the fighting. There is a huge cemetery here, full of mostly unidentified Union soldiers, buried on the very hill they died trying to capture [photo].

The towns we saw on these battlefield visits are worth a mention. Richmond is a large and modern city with a beautiful skyline as you drive in. It is undergoing great renewal in the CBD. We saw a huge modern edifice with Philip Morris emblazoned on it. Possibly it is the global headquarters of this company whose products must have killed more people than it is possible to imagine.

We didn't see much of Petersburg town, but Fredericksburg, just away from its battlefield, has a delightful and quaint historical district, full of life (University of Margaret Washington very close) and cafes, buildings in the English style (and one French, that we saw, right at the battlefield), and street names like Princess Anne, Prince Edward, George, Charles and William. A guide at the battlefield visitor centre told us of the Hyperion Cafe for cappucino, and we went there twice in two days (a record for us), so good was the coffee (ceramic cups!) and so cosy was the ambience [photo].

Thanks to excellent displays and short movies at visitor centres, informative exhibits at the actual war sites, and very clever reconstructions, we feel we know a lot more about the Civil War than we did before. We don't know that this sort of on-site historical representation of war battlefields is available in such volume anywhere else in the world - maybe the American treatment of its Civil War memory is quite unique?

As a final word, no matter what the war, no matter what the cause, the politicians are always to blame, and the tragic waste is always a deplorable testament to their failure!