![]() Some of the Union soldiers who survived were brought to a Stone House near the battleground, a former tavern a short distance away from the battle. English, Corporal Company D, Second Rhode Island Volunteers, to his mother. “”I saw a bomb shell strike a man in the breast and literally tear him to pieces…the bodies of the dead and dying were actually three and four deep…while in the woods the trees were splattered with blood and the ground strewn with dead bodies.” Excerpt from a letter written by Samuel J. These remain some of the most graphic and expressive letters ever written about the Civil War, probably because the accounts were as raw as the young recruits who wrote them. Many of the rookie soldiers who weren’t killed described their first experiences on the battlefield in diaries and letters they sent to their loved ones. ![]() The Battle of Bull Run was a chaotic bloodbath Our guide also described the confusion, human error and psychological aftermath experienced by the soldiers. We joined the First Manassas walking tour and the Park guide who led it did more than just describe the mechanics and strategies of the actual battle, or how Confederate General “Stonewall” Jackson got his nickname (he stood ‘like a stone wall’ against the Union soldiers, inspiring his soldiers to victory). The National Park Service offers interpretive guided tours several times daily that I would highly recommend taking, particularly because the guides really know their material and help bring context to what you are seeing. Now run by the National Parks organization and known as Manassas National Battlefield Park, this civil war site in Virginia is a historic site and memorial where visitors can learn about the battle that was fought here and its significance in American history, and respectfully acknowledge the thousands who died here. Henry Hill is the site of the first battle of the American Civil WarĪlthough the first battle of the American Civil War is known as the Battle of Bull Run (named for a nearby river), the confrontation actually took place atop Henry Hill, a grassy plateau in Prince William County, about an hour’s drive from Washington DC. But after visiting Manassas National Battlefield Park and Ben Lomond Historic Site in Prince William County in Northern Virginia, I can better appreciate the real cost of the war that would divide this country. And yet, for all its historic significance, I knew nothing about any of this until a recent trip that Henk and I took to visit two moving civil war sites in Virginia.Īs a Canadian, my knowledge of the American Civil War is rudimentary at best, and sadly what I do know I probably owe to Hollywood movies like Gone With the Wind. This was the Battle of Bull Run, where on a windy field in Northern Virginia in the early hours of July 21, 1861, the first major battle of the American Civil War took place. It was a battle that everyone thought would be over before it began, yet it would mark the beginning of a 4-year-long bloody conflict that would rip a country apart before stitching it back together, and destroy once and for all any naively romantic notion of the glories of war.
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