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An interesting article.
On May 4, 1864 James Larue McCown noted as the 5th Va. Co K. moved out, " We are on the march. The morning is bright and pleasant: all nature seems smiling on this spring morn." He fiddled nervously checking and rechecking his cartridge and cap box to make sure he was ready.
The march continued on the next morning. toward the Germanna Plank Road. After about one and half miles the column filed to the left of the turnpike and formed into a line of battle. The band was sent to the rear. Captain Kurtz the Company commander of Co K approached McCown and his three companions, all of whom were about to experience battle for the first time.
Captain Kurtz tells his men, " In a short time we will be engaged in battle and as none of you have been under fire before I want you to stand up like men and do your duty."
General Walker orders skirmishers out and shortly after noon they encounter the enemy. They had run into Sedgwick's 6th Corps.
The 5th Va. is driven back into the 27th Va. and at this moment General Walker is heard to say over the rattle of musketry, " Remember your name." These units comprised the Old Stonewall Brigade and they rally and advance behind the colors.
Almost on top of the very ground where my ancestor " first saw the elephant " Wal- Mart plans a new 144,000 ft. super store. I am not an objective viewer of these proceedings obviously, and I know that we can't save every square inch of battle field land or every historical building. So how do we place a value on our history? How do we decide what is to be saved?
I recently became involved in an effort to save, what to me is a very historically significant building, the 1730 Squire Smith House in Mercersburg, Pa. For those movie buff's a 1938, John Wayne movie called Allegheny Uprising was about events that were planned in this house. In 1765 the Smith Brothers rebellion was one of the first instances of armed Resistance to British Colonial rule a full ten years before the American Revolution.
On October 10, 1862 it is quite possible that some of Jeb Stuarts men rested on it's porch because of its proximity to the Steiger House where Stuart made his headquarters on the porch while they took horses, food and shoes from the townspeople. This was part of Stuarts second ride around General McClellan.
I feel a tremendous sense of sadness every time I venture down Route 3 in Virginia heading into Fredericksburg. At least the Salem Church itself was saved but much of the battle field is now highway 3 or a Pizza Hut parking lot. I vividly remember the picture of the pink Cadillac in the old Gettysburg visitors center parking lot with the caption near this car six hundred men lay dead after Pickets Charge.
As a teacher I am quite often appalled at the lack of knowledge of our history even by other teachers let alone the students they teach. The Constitutional ignorance passing for wisdom of some people who profess that this is what our founding fathers meant expressed often in complete ignorance of the events in our past that forged these founding ideas, is no less appalling.
One of the reasons that some people were so willing to bull doze over the 1730 house to make way for a parking lot was because someone professed the idea that saving it might cost $300,000.00 dollars. For some this national piece of our past wasn't worth this paltry sum. It seems everything from our politics to the worth of each of us as individuals is only validly expressed today in dollars and cents.
I have often stood many times at the Virginia or North Carolina monuments and looked out across the field to the High Water Mark where the Federal 2and Corps of Gen. Hancock was waiting for his friend 9th Va. commander Gen Armistead and know without a doubt that you couldn't find 12,000 men who believed in something so much that today they would make this charge. Sadly too many of us don't mind if they put a historical marker in the Wal-mart parking lot that says just a few feet from here the 5th Virginia met the Federal 6th corps at the Battle of the Wilderness. By sundown the next day almost 30,000 Americans had been killed and wounded under these parking lots and buildings.
Maybe that is part and parcel of why we can be in the midst of a collapsing economy with 15 million unemployed and counting, we can tolerate 44,000 Americans dying every year because they don't have health care with another 1 million every year going into bankruptcy because of medical bills and we go from the greatest industrial power in the world to where we make nothing and look for all the world like an economic Third World country and instead of talking about this we are seriously debating if our President deserved his Nobel prize.
At the end of the First Manassas video made by Rob Hodge Civil War authentic campaigner and film maker, he closes by showing us all the construction and road widening in the middle of the park. He implores all of us to take our history seriously and to save it religiously because once it is gone it is gone forever.
Mr. Hodge asks us a simple question of responsibility, " If not you who?" Call the Civil War Preservation Trust today or other organizations dedicated to saving our heritage because our history is priceless no matter what some people might think or say.
On May 4, 1864 James Larue McCown noted as the 5th Va. Co K. moved out, " We are on the march. The morning is bright and pleasant: all nature seems smiling on this spring morn." He fiddled nervously checking and rechecking his cartridge and cap box to make sure he was ready.
The march continued on the next morning. toward the Germanna Plank Road. After about one and half miles the column filed to the left of the turnpike and formed into a line of battle. The band was sent to the rear. Captain Kurtz the Company commander of Co K approached McCown and his three companions, all of whom were about to experience battle for the first time.
Captain Kurtz tells his men, " In a short time we will be engaged in battle and as none of you have been under fire before I want you to stand up like men and do your duty."
General Walker orders skirmishers out and shortly after noon they encounter the enemy. They had run into Sedgwick's 6th Corps.
The 5th Va. is driven back into the 27th Va. and at this moment General Walker is heard to say over the rattle of musketry, " Remember your name." These units comprised the Old Stonewall Brigade and they rally and advance behind the colors.
Almost on top of the very ground where my ancestor " first saw the elephant " Wal- Mart plans a new 144,000 ft. super store. I am not an objective viewer of these proceedings obviously, and I know that we can't save every square inch of battle field land or every historical building. So how do we place a value on our history? How do we decide what is to be saved?
I recently became involved in an effort to save, what to me is a very historically significant building, the 1730 Squire Smith House in Mercersburg, Pa. For those movie buff's a 1938, John Wayne movie called Allegheny Uprising was about events that were planned in this house. In 1765 the Smith Brothers rebellion was one of the first instances of armed Resistance to British Colonial rule a full ten years before the American Revolution.
On October 10, 1862 it is quite possible that some of Jeb Stuarts men rested on it's porch because of its proximity to the Steiger House where Stuart made his headquarters on the porch while they took horses, food and shoes from the townspeople. This was part of Stuarts second ride around General McClellan.
I feel a tremendous sense of sadness every time I venture down Route 3 in Virginia heading into Fredericksburg. At least the Salem Church itself was saved but much of the battle field is now highway 3 or a Pizza Hut parking lot. I vividly remember the picture of the pink Cadillac in the old Gettysburg visitors center parking lot with the caption near this car six hundred men lay dead after Pickets Charge.
As a teacher I am quite often appalled at the lack of knowledge of our history even by other teachers let alone the students they teach. The Constitutional ignorance passing for wisdom of some people who profess that this is what our founding fathers meant expressed often in complete ignorance of the events in our past that forged these founding ideas, is no less appalling.
One of the reasons that some people were so willing to bull doze over the 1730 house to make way for a parking lot was because someone professed the idea that saving it might cost $300,000.00 dollars. For some this national piece of our past wasn't worth this paltry sum. It seems everything from our politics to the worth of each of us as individuals is only validly expressed today in dollars and cents.
I have often stood many times at the Virginia or North Carolina monuments and looked out across the field to the High Water Mark where the Federal 2and Corps of Gen. Hancock was waiting for his friend 9th Va. commander Gen Armistead and know without a doubt that you couldn't find 12,000 men who believed in something so much that today they would make this charge. Sadly too many of us don't mind if they put a historical marker in the Wal-mart parking lot that says just a few feet from here the 5th Virginia met the Federal 6th corps at the Battle of the Wilderness. By sundown the next day almost 30,000 Americans had been killed and wounded under these parking lots and buildings.
Maybe that is part and parcel of why we can be in the midst of a collapsing economy with 15 million unemployed and counting, we can tolerate 44,000 Americans dying every year because they don't have health care with another 1 million every year going into bankruptcy because of medical bills and we go from the greatest industrial power in the world to where we make nothing and look for all the world like an economic Third World country and instead of talking about this we are seriously debating if our President deserved his Nobel prize.
At the end of the First Manassas video made by Rob Hodge Civil War authentic campaigner and film maker, he closes by showing us all the construction and road widening in the middle of the park. He implores all of us to take our history seriously and to save it religiously because once it is gone it is gone forever.
Mr. Hodge asks us a simple question of responsibility, " If not you who?" Call the Civil War Preservation Trust today or other organizations dedicated to saving our heritage because our history is priceless no matter what some people might think or say.