Preview – Gottfried, “The Maps of Fredericksburg”

The latest in Savas Beatie’s fine atlas series is The Maps of Fredericksburg: An Atlas of the Fredericksburg Campaign, Including all Cavalry Operations, September 18, 1862 – January 22, 1863, by Bradley Gottfried. I’ve previewed a all of these here before, and worked closely with the author and publisher on their First Bull Run volume.

This volume starts off as the Union and Confederate armies recover and maneuver after the Battle of Antietam, and carries all the way through the failure of Burnside’s Mud March. The layout is the same: text on the left hand page, map on the facing, right hand page – 124 maps in all. Also included are orders of battle, end notes, a full bibliography, and an index.

Fredericksburg – 9/28/2016

Last week, after stopping in to visit with John Hennessy at Chatham, I set out for Williamsburg. My original intent was to visit the battlefield at Malvern Hill along the way, but the weather was bad and I was burning daylight. So I decided to do a quick turn at the Fredericksburg battlefield’s visitor center and the Sunken Road at Marye’s Heights. I hadn’t been there in quite a few years. Here are some photos I snapped as my phone battery died. Click on them for larger images.

Chatham – 9/28/2016

Last week, I took a little trip down to Williamsburg, Va, for three days of golf with my brother Jerry. Friend John Hennessy invited me to stop on the way to chat and lunch, so I took him up on his offer. We yakked in his office upstairs at Chatham for a while (said hi to Frank O’Reilly, whom I had not seen in years, and later on the lawn reader Barry Larkin), then had lunch at Foode, which is located in the 1820 National Bank of Fredericksburg building. In fact, we ate in the vault! Abraham Lincoln visited this building in the spring of 1862. All in all I spent about 3 hours talking to Mr. Hennessy – the good news for us is that he was receptive to another Bull Runnings tour, perhaps in the Fall of 2017. I then headed off on my way to Williamsburg. Below are some photos of Chatham and the bank building. Click on the thumbs for larger versions.

Repro pontoon section

The notes of “Home Sweet Home”

 

These catalpas may have been described by Walt Whitman after the Battle of Fredericksburg

 

 

Great Aerial Photo of Fredericksburg

Previews: “Divided Loyalties” and “Simply Murder”

Two recent releases from Savas Beatie are Divided Loyalties: Kentucky’s Struggle for Armed Neutrality in the Civil War by James W. Finck, and Simply Murder: The Battle of Fredericksburg, December 13, 1862 by Chris Mackowski and Kristopher D. White.

Divided Loyalties takes a look at the period from November 1860 to November 1861, during which Kentucky struggled to maintain a neutral position in the war. The author argues that this was motivated not by pervasive Unionist feelings but rather by deeply divided loyalties. Finck provides insight into the dilemma of the state, of which Lincoln said: “I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game.”

Simply Murder is the first entry in Savas Beatie’s Emerging Civil War Series. Both a compact history of the campaign and battle and a tour guide, the reader is also treated to appendices covering the National Cemetery, slavery in Fredericksburg, the civilian experience, and the history of the battlefield park. Lots of illustrations and maps, and full orders of battle are included.

 

Fredericksburg Remembered

The good folks at Mysteries and Conundrums have started a new blog, Fredericksburg Remembered.  From the About page:

This blog, Fredericksburg Remembered, focuses on stories, ideas, memory, and the challenges of bringing them before the public.

Fredericksburg Remembered is a collective effort to illuminate and discuss in a public way the challenges, adventures, and occasional triumphs involved in bringing the story of the Fredericksburg region’s vivid history to both a local and national audience. We’ll offer something of a behind-the-scenes look at exhibits and programs in development and some of the issues we wrestle with as we take them from idea to reality.  (We’re focusing here on the really interesting part of our jobs; we’ll spare you the mundane.)  We want to engage you the public in something of a conversation about what we do and how we do it, stimulating along the way from you what we hope will be some useful, illuminating commentary and feedback.

Fredericksburg is blessed with an uncommon abundance of historic resources and sites–from battlefields to the boyhood home of Washington to the plasterwork of Kenmore to the newly expanded Fredericksburg Area Museum to no fewer than four sites owned by Preservation Virginia. Some call it “the most historic city in America” (sounds like a good topic for a blog post and discussion). Bringing that story and these sites to the public is an intensely interesting and challenging undertaking–one that compels some of us to long hours of toil punctuated by triumph when we touch a chord or change the world just a little bit.

We, like the society around us, struggle with distinguishing memory from history, and we constantly hunt for the right balance between narrative and interpretation, objects or sites and ideas, and “good history” and the expectations of the “heritage tourism” industry. Little does the public realize how powerful they are in shaping what we do; if you don’t show up at a program, then you can be sure you’ll never see that program repeated again. The public historian who talks only to himself is doomed to a very short career.

Like our sister site, Mysteries and Conundrums, our purpose here is to share the best and most interesting of what we do. The blog is the domain of no single organization, nor will it be confined solely to the Civil War.  Rather staff at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania NMP, the Fredericksburg Area Museum, and hopefully the George Washington Foundation and others to help lead the conversation.  And if you have a thought, reaction, or insight, we hope you will share it.  As is the case with all we do, our hope is to use local examples and case studies to illuminate larger ideas of memory and public history.

The NPS staff who contribute to Mysteries and Conundrums have been cranking out consistently top-notch stuff, some of the best the Civil War blogosphere has to offer.  I’m confident that Fredericksburg Remembered will be of similar quality, if the first series of posts on Fredericksburg’s Disputed Auction Block is any indication.