"Life is a Battlefield," part II

I'd like to take a break from my post-election euphoria to share another little adventure Matt and I had last weekend. Ever since I visited Antitam with my parents, I've wanted to visit other historical sites near us. So Matt and I took a drive down to Fredericksburg, Virginia, home of the Civil War's Battle of Fredericksburg.

We started our trip with the beautiful drive down to Virginia. We couldn't have picked a better weekend; the colors were at their absolute peak:
(Full disclosure: this photo was taken in our back yard. But I swear the colors along I-95 were equally beautiful. All the photos I took had nose smudges in the way.)

We started our day of history with lunch along the Rappahannock River, a key to the success of the Confederacy during this battle. The Union soldiers were slow in their attempts to maneuver across the river, giving General Lee ample time to anticipate their actions and prepare his soldiers accordingly. One big stumbling block for the Union was the laborious construction of pontoon bridges such as the one below.
Unlike the Battle of Antitam, which was fought in an open cornfield, the Battle of Fredericksburg was fought in and around a town that was dangerously close to Washington, D.C., as shown by the marker below. After the battle, residents returned to their houses, such as the one below, to find bodies strewn about and bullet holes in the walls. During breaks in the battle, families of soldiers would come out to the battlefield to visit, as would "Hooker's girls" (and, yes, that is where that euphemism comes from).
Because the Battle of Fredericksburg was fought in such relatively close quarters, Lincoln and Lee could actually see each other from the opposite blufs rising up from each side of the Rappahannock. Lincoln was stationed in the house below, which was a thriving plantation until Union soldiers took it over shortly before the war.
This house also doubled as one of the strangest museums I've ever visited. As soon as we opened the front door, we were greeted by a Wednesday-Addams-looking girl who offered to show us around. Fearing her to be the ghost of a Confederate soldier's daughter, we opted to meander around alone. One of the featured items on display in the house was this "chamber chair," complete with a convenient hole in the bottom that's reflected in the mirror on the floor. "I wish we had something like that," Matt said. "Gives new meaning to a 'padded toilet seat,'" I replied.
Elsewhere in the house, curators had preserved some of the graffiti left behind by Union soldiers. Apparently, whatever paneling they didn't use for firewood, they defamed, much to the pleasure of historians everywhere:
Across the bluff, we hiked up a hill that lead to where Lee's Confederate Army was headquartered. I didn't realize it at the time, but this was the same hill that we climbed as a family during our vacation to Washington, D.C. when I was in fourth grade. (I wanted to go to Disneyworld, but that's a moot point now. I'm not bitter anymore. Honest.)

When hiking up that hill, my dad, always the teacher, decided to avoid the paved blacktop path and hike straight up the hill with his camcorder, "Into the clutches of General Lee himself," he narrated. Of course, his students would have had to ignore the fact that Union soldiers never actually marched up said hill. But, again, that's a moot point. As my dad stopped to pan around "to show the Union soldiers' view" (i.e. to catch his breath), he panned right, then slowly panned left. When he panned left, he caught my mom, sister and me, walking easily up the paved path. He quickly panned away, muttered something about "lazy Confederates" and journeyed back up the hill. Amazingly, this cinematic masterpiece was never shown to his students.

Matt and I, lazy Confederates that we apparently still are, opted once again for the paved path:
Still, the Union army did penetrate one part of Stonewall Jackson's line of Confederates. The berms that the Confederate soldiers built to protect themselves are still there, as is a marker for the point at which the Union broke through (really, that was the one highlight for them of the entire battle, and it was short-lived at best).
What trip to a Civil War battlefield would be complete without a few pictures of some cannons and the obligatory "sunken road"? After all, the Civil War was the first battle in which such weaponry was used, and it was the first battle using "modern warfare": less marching in formation, more lying in wait for the enemy. In the photos below, Matt is firing one of the cannons (obviously ignoring the very helpful sign), and the house pictured above with all the bullet holes is shown at the end of Fredericksburg's "sunken road." That part of the stone wall was constructed before the war, and it's still littered with bullet holes.
I'm sure that Matt and I wouldn't have made this trip if it wasn't for my American-history-teaching, Civil-War-loving father, Fred Berg. After all, the only reason we chose to visit "Fredericksburg" on that family vacation years ago was because of the name. It was only fitting, therefore, that we saw this license plate as we finished our day at the battlefield: