Safe in Richmond

I thought that many of you might be interested in how we are traveling. Mike and Eric rented a car when they arrived in Savannah, a six passenger mini van, without rear video I might add. Mom and Dad, known to you as Mike Reed and Mike Parsons, always sit in the front because Mike Reed is the only one who the rental car company will allow to drive and Mike Parsons is performing the vital task of keeping Reed pointed in the right direction, no easy task at times. As Parsons pours over maps up front, the rest of us trade places in the back, looking out the windows at the passing scenery, counting license plates, playing twenty questions, and passing the time. I have been reading out loud from the various books that we brought along describing the next stop on our journey so that when we get there we’ll have some idea of where we are.

I mention this traveling arrangement so that blame can be assigned for the incident which started our day today. As you can imagine, each day we try to put twenty pounds in a ten pound bag, cramming as much as we can into our time. So we don’t have a lot of time for “incidents” Well, as we loaded up with Mom and Dad in front, the rest of us in back, the engine stalled. One quick check if the instrument panel showed an arrow pointed firmly at the “E” of the gas gauge. Reed had run us out of gas the night before! Actually, in defense of Mike, we were parked nose down on a slight hill so that what little gas remained in the car was not where the fuel pick up tube was. That said, who do you think has to bail us out of the situation. That’s right, kids and mom to the front of the car, all together now, PUSH! Up hill! A little more now! Feel the Burn!! Once we got it to flat ground the motor started, we all scrambled into the car and made fast to the nearest station to refuel and we were on our way.

Today was a return to the Civil War. Lexington, the town in which we were staying, is the Home to VMI, Virginia Military Academy, the home of Thomas Stonewall Jackson, and final resting place of Robert E Lee. It is also the home of Washington and Lee University to where Washington gave a large amount of money in the 1780’s and where Lee spent his last days as University president. Some pictures of the campus are posted, very pretty place. When Lee arrived at the school after the war there was no meeting hall so he had constructed a chapel in which he could meet with all the students as a group. He also threw out all the rules in the rulebook and kept just one; all students must act like a gentleman. To this day they are require to greet each other when they pass with a good morning in honor of Lee.

The Chapel has a very valuable painting of George Washington, one that you have all seen, the only image we have of him as a younger man in military dress (about age forty) painted by Peale in 1770. It had belonged to RL Lee since he idolized Washington. There is also the portrait of Lee himself that all of you have also seen positioned near by. Both are magnificent paintings. Most of the Lee’s are buried here even Traveler his horse.

We spent a small amount of time at VMI visiting their museum and got on the road to Appomattox. We traveled there on the old Lexington turnpike through the Blue Ridge Mountains following the same route that travelers used in those days. The Blue Ridge is a series on low mountains not much higher than the Santa Monica range back home but heavily forested and giving striking views of Virginia to the east. In the rolling fields of Appomattox Court House, a stagecoach stop on the old road to Lexington, Grant finally caught up with Lee, surrounded him on three sides with north his only escape and without rations and ammunition, Lee sued for peace and laid down the arms of the Army of Northern Virginia. The site has been well preserved since form the beginning, people recognized the events as worth preserving. The Courthouse is here along with nine of the original buildings that made up the settlement. Of course there is the McLean home where the document was signed surrendering the Army and where Grant started the healing process with his generous terms of surrender. We were here on a beautiful spring day almost 142 years to the day of the surrender.
A little sidelight…. McLean as many of you know moved to this house in 1862 after his original home became the site of the first battle of the war at Bull Run. He had wanted to escape the war and moved to this hamlet thinking that the armies would never think to come there. As it turned out the war ended in his parlor. After the war, like many southerners he fell on hard times and was desperate enough to want to go and work in Washington in a government job. Government jobs in those days were given out to petitioners directly from the president and when Grant became president in 1868 McLean reminded the new president of the minor role he had played in ending the war. Grant remembered and gave him a job in the patent office.

We traveled to our next stop the Battle site of Petersburg 22 miles from Richmond the then capital of the Confederacy. Grant tried in 1864 to capture Richmond but was defeated by Lee at Cold Harbor. Instead of a frontal attack on Richmond again, Grant decided to go for the rail center of Petersburg where 5 rail lines fed into the Richmond area. He reckoned that He would be able to cut off the supplies to the capital and force its surrender. Hesitation by his field commanders led to a partial victory by the Union and when Lee reinforced both sides settled into another first for the Civil war, Trench warfare. Both sides threw up earth works and dug trenches so that it was very difficult for the other side to attack.

The Battlefield is not the same as it was in those days. Forests blanket the area that once was denuded of anything green. Where trees stand were open fields that were covered by crossing fields of fire. All the new weapons were in the field, accurate muskets, mortars (one named the Dictator) breech loading rifled cannons with a range of 6 miles. All these combined to make it impossible to live in the area between the forts. This is the battle where the union dug a tunnel beneath the rebel lines packed it full of black powder and blew it up. Known as the battle of the crater you might think that the union was able to use this to its advantage. Not to be so. Grant had originally assigned a group of African American Solders to lead the attack through the gap created by the explosion. And they had trained well for the task. But because he was afraid that casualties would be heavy and he did not want to be seen as a butcher of freed slaves, he assigned another white division to the job. Instead of charging around the hole created by the explosion they charged into it and became sitting ducks for the rebels on either side. Thousands were killed or wounded as they struggled in the crater their bodies nearly filling it by the end of the battle. The hole is still there in a green field bordered by a beautiful stand of forest.

VMI –The Courthouse at Appomattox – The Battle of Petersburg– CLICK 4 SHOW