Tomorrow is the 150th anniversary of the Confederate capture of Union wounded at Sherwood Forest in southern Stafford County. The moment prompts a post on this compelling place. 

In the last ten years, as the threats that would consume it intensify, Sherwood Forest has assumed a majestic aura wrapped in melancholy. Atop a rounded hill a mile from the Rappahannock (near what we know as Fitzhugh’s Crossing), the former home of Henry Fitzhugh and his wife Jane Downman Fitzhugh peers out between massive trees over a landscape that was for two centuries formed and managed by slaves. Today, the “big house” is boarded and mouldering. The adjacent kitchen quarters (an impressive building) is likewise sinking, while a nearby slave cabin (which we have written about here) is near collapse. The prospects for Sherwood Forest are not bright. A development company owns the house and surrounding acres. No plan is in place to preserve it. No one has stepped forward offering to do so. Thus the melancholy aspect of Sherwood Forest.

The kitchen quarters at Sherwood Forest

Though the house is commonly dated to 1810, it’s more likely the Fitzhughs built Sherwood Forest just after their marriage in 1837. In the years before the war, Henry Fitzhugh established himself as one of the best farmers in the region. He also developed a reputation for hard drinking and  hard dealing, especially as his slaves saw it (we have written about that here).  During the war, two sons entered the Confederate army and the elder Fitzhugh left for more southern environs, leaving the house to the care of his wife and daughter.

The entire Union bridgehead, from Fitzhugh’s Crossing to Franklin’s Crossing

The Union army always gravitated to houses that projected power and influence, because usually those houses sat atop high ground (Chatham, Belmont, Clearview, and Brompton are all examples). Sherwood assumed an especial role during the Chancellorsville campaign when, in mid-April, the balloon corps took over the place and began ascensions from the yard of the house. Two weeks later part of the Union First Corps crossed at what we now know as “Fitzhugh’s Crossing,” at the mouth of Pollock’s Run. When the Confederates discovered this crossing, they punished the Union troops with artillery (click here for a post on the crossing of the First Corps in late April and early May 1863). The casualties from that artillery action ended up back at Sherwood Forest. 

Sherwood Forest is visible in this sketch of the First Corps at Fitzhugh’s Crossing in May 1863.

A young soldier by the name of John Fay, 13th Massachusetts, suffered a wound noted by many near Sherwood Forest. As he lay on the ground on May 2, perched on his left elbow, his right hand resting atop his right knee, an artillery shell struck him, severely wounding his hand and nearly severing his leg at the same time. 

Soon after I was wounded I was packed up by Andrew J. Mann and by him, with the assistance of another man, was carried to a house about a mile in the rear that had been taken for a hospital. When they was carrying me to the hospital, I was satisfied that my leg and arm would have to be amputated, after they got me there and the doctors told me so I requested that Dr. A.W. Whitney of my Regiment should perform the operation. After waiting a few minutes for him to get through with another patient that he was at work upon when they carried me in.  They gave me chloroform and that was the last  that I knew until about half past  eight when I came out of the effects of it and found my rand hand and right leg amputated. [For more on  the 13th Massachusetts, see Brad Forbush’s truly outstanding website on the regiment–it’s one of the best of its kind anywhere).

Fay was among nearly 100 men taken to Sherwood Forest. Surgeons had four tents erected in the yard, while the remaining wounded filled the house itself. Most of the wounded were sent north by early June, but on June 13, thirty-four men still remained, most of them severely wounded, including Fay.  That day, the Union army left the Rappahannock, leaving behind the wounded at Sherwood Forest. Whether this was oversight or intent is not clear.

Two days later, the Confederates crossed the river and took as prisoners the Union wounded at Sherwood Forest. This may have been the last act at Fredericksburg that resulted in “casualties” before the armies left altogether. Eventually, the captured wounded were sent to Richmond for care.

Few sites in the Fredericksburg region embody as varied a story as does Sherwood Forest–agriculture, slavery,civilians amidst war, balloons, medical care, and a landscape that served as setting for the major movement of part of the Union army. On its present trajectory, however, the site cannot last long. In 2011 Preservation Virginia listed it as one of the state’s most endangered historic sites. Its survival represents a significant challenge to this community.

Northeast Virginia’s railroads showcased Civil War creativity that was both constructive and destructive, and originated with soldiers and civilians as well as with generals and other top officials. Prototype, customized, or infrequently seen structures, equipment, extensions, alternatives, and practices appeared along or were proposed for the region’s iron arteries. Those often offered previews, with technical or procedural novelty that had appeared along one line reappearing along another.  What follows is a sampler of the lesser-known, novel developments during the first year of wartime operations along the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad (RF&P).

The RF&P’s Fredericksburg railyard and its approaches from the Rappahannock River bridge in 1856. This area, extending several blocks from river’s edge to the station buildings, was the scene of nerve-wracking but creative moments for Southern forces in 1861 and, a year later, for Northerners. Looking west. Detail from Edward Sachse chromolithograph, copy in collection of Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania NMP.

At the time of Fort Sumter’s bombardment, the RF&P’s uppermost segment extended 14 miles north of Fredericksburg and the Rappahannock River.  The railroad then lacked a trackside telegraph-line, and its managers feared surprise by Federals coming ashore at Acquia Creek landing. That place marked the RF&P’s northern depot, at the mouth of the creek on the Potomac River.  Acquia boasted a hotel; an engine house; fishery buildings; and a long, shed-roofed railroad wharf where in peacetime passengers and freight had transferred between trains and steamboats.

The Acquia Landing-Fredericksburg and Fredericksburg-Guiney’s Station segments of the RF&P Railroad, 1860’s. North at top. Courtesy Library of Congress.

On April 18, 1861, three days after President Abraham Lincoln called for armed suppression of the lower South’s rebellion, the RF&P’s Superintendent of Road instructed his representative in Fredericksburg to implement an early-warning system in the event of threatening moves by Union forces:

If any of the citizens exhibit any alarm [emphasis original] you can tell them that we will keep the Engine at [Acquia] Creek fired up all the time so that in case…any vessel come[s] in sight that looks suspicious or anything else[,] we will run the train direct to Freds’burg to give the alarm to the citizens….

Detail from an undated, rarely seen Alfred Waud sketch of Acquia Landing and environs, showing the cluster of huge buildings that probably housed the salting, drying, and storage operations of Walter Finnall’s Fishery. The Fishery complex was one of the most prominent but also the shortest-lived of the wartime Acquia landmarks, surviving the ship-to-shore fighting of May 31/June 1, 1861 but removed before or during the first Union occupation in the spring of 1862. (The wharf and hotel are just outside this view, to the right; the railroad extended from left to right and a short distance behind the Fishery buildings in this perspective.) Courtesy Library of Congress.

On May 14-15, 1861, either a train-borne alert or its horseback equivalent triggered the dispatch from Fredericksburg of a hastily organized, armed reconnaissance by railroad, as recalled by an officer in the Virginia State Forces: 

[T]he enemy sent down an old passenger steamboat, the Mt . Vernon, which had formerly been used to carry the mail between Aquia and Washington City, no doubt to see what we were about. [A] messenger was dispatched with the news. Ample time was allowed, during a ride of sixteen miles, for him to imagine all kinds of wonderful things; and by the time he reached head-quarters [at Fredericksburg] it was asserted that a fabulous number of vessels of war of the largest class were landing untold hosts of Yankees at the Creek; that they had already captured the works, and were advancing rapidly by way of the railroad on Fredericksburg. [The town] was thrown into alarm and excitement. Trains were ordered to be fired up. All the troops…turned out under arms, while staff officers dashed about in a manner truly wonderful to behold. General Ruggles’s forces had by this time been increased to five or six companies of infantry.

At the RF&P depot and yard in Fredericksburg, the half dozen companies   

embarked on the cars. A great crowd, apparently about half the people of Fredericksburg, assembled…. Mothers, sisters and wives were taking most affecting leave of their departing friends…. Whisky was abundant at that time, and its use to-night unrestricted. Heart-rending scenes of parting were witnessed on every side, while a military band, consisting of an old drum and some three or four brass horns, wailed forth ” Dixie”…. At nine o’clock P. M. we moved off, creeping along at a snail’s pace, and frequently stopping as if we feared a hidden foe behind every bush and fence-corner. Just before daylight we arrived at the Creek to find that the alarm was false, and that no enemy had been there at all.

A pan further to the right (north) in the same Waud sketch of Acquia shows a train departing via the causeway that connected the landing’s wharf and hotel to the main shore near Finnal’s Fishery. Waud’s notation “burnt Dock” dates his drawing generally to the period of occupation by Virginia State- or Confederate forces, and following their burning of the wharf on June 1, 1861–two weeks after the railroad reconnaissance from Fredericksburg to Acquia. Waud’s depiction, while lacking in detail, is an extremely rare, contemporary sketch of Confederate railroading. Courtesy Library of Congress.

The farcical aspect of this operation notwithstanding, it was one of the earliest instances of a reconnaissance-in-force via railroad in Civil War Virginia, being launched in sincere expectation of meeting the enemy en route to Acquia. It predated by a month a similarly-sized expedition launched by the Federals towards Vienna station on the Alexandria, Loudoun & Hampshire Railroad, where a bloody denouement on June 17, 1861 brought far greater notoriety.   

During ship-to-shore fighting on May 31 and June 1, 1861, Southern batteries situated at Acquia Landing dueled with Federal gunboats.  By that date or soon thereafter, Virginia State Forces had made their defense of the railroad in-depth by creating the nucleus of a fallback position south of Acquia Landing, at the railroad’s Potomac Creek trestle.  A list of the “Naval Batteries” prepared for “the defence of the State of Virginia” notes that an “8-inch Gun” had been emplaced at “Potomac Creek Bridge” by June 10, 1861, the crew overseen by Commander R. D. Thorburn.    

The fortification at Potomac Creek bridge likely never fired a shot in anger.  In the wake of a Confederate withdrawal in the spring of 1862—generally bloodless, with a few exceptions—Union managers inherited control of the railroad’s Acquia-Fredericksburg segment and made Fredericksburg their southernmost operational depot.  As described below, they probably extended that operational zone to Guiney’s Station for a day or two.  (My spelling of station names follows the antebellum usage of the railroad company in most of its official reports, and avoids variants such as “Guinea” and “Aquia.”)

Union soldiers rebuilding the RF&P’s Rappahannock River bridge at Fredericksburg, May 1862. Note timber on four-wheel truck at upper right, above the north abutment. Courtesy Library of Congress.

Federal military traffic along the RF&P south of the Rappahannock and through Fredericksburg began around May 7, 1862, with muscle-traction temporarily substituting for steam-traction in whole or in part.  In a diary entry for that day, Union General Marsena Patrick recorded supervising the dispatch of at least one truck—a set of four railroad wheels—across the river to serve as a vehicle to convey timber from woodlots just south of the town to the site of the Rappahannock railroad bridge, then undergoing reconstruction in the wake of its burning by the departing Confederates.  (Patrick merely lent occasional assistance; civil engineer Daniel Stone was in overall charge of the bridge reconstruction.)  Other trucks were dispatched to the work area at the span’s other abutment, opposite the town.  Evidently, a derelict locomotive was found in Fredericksburg and returned to service with a blue-clad crew, also to bring timber from the southern woodlots.             

With the bridge nearing completion and actual trains ready to cross into town, the Federals learned that retreating Southerners or their civilian sympathizers had placed artillery shells “under the tracks about the depot grounds.”  Soldiers removed a number and hoped they had not missed any.  None had been detonated by the passage of the truck or resurrected locomotive.

Herman Haupt, who was then an aide-de-camp in charge of Department of the Rappahannock railroad construction and transportation, took no chances and deployed what was perhaps America’s earliest vehicular land-mine detonator. The Federals’ first southbound train to cross the bridge and traverse the Fredericksburg railyard, on May 19 or May 20, 1862, was composed of a locomotive pushing “a car very heavily laden with scrap iron in front, so as to explode any torpedoes before the engine reached them,” Haupt would later write.  None were exploded by the mine-detonator.

Site in 2013 of the RF&P’s Fredericksburg railyard and station buildings in the 1850’s and 1860’s, looking southwest from site of the bridge rebuilt in May 1862 (one block behind the camera in this view).

On May 20, a saboteur attempted unsuccessfully (by means not specified in the ensuing report) to derail a train moving between the reopened Rappahannock bridge and the Fredericksburg station buildings, then “eluded apprehension by running into the crowd.” The town’s military governor quickly warned its civilian mayor, Montgomery Slaughter, to discourage his constituents from assembling near the tracks “if they would avoid the chances of suffering [the consequences] from any recurrence.”

The would-be saboteur may have been a member of a Home Guard raised the previous year.  They had not been lacking in ardor.  According to guardsman Bradford Ripley Alden Scott, their ranks consisted of “older men and boys under my father’s command for scout and guard duty.”  Scott was then all of nine years old, and had from time to time been “posted as sentry at our [northern] end” of the Rappahannock railroad bridge, adjacent to his home, in 1861.  In the spring of 1862, when Federal troops first arrived at that north abutment—the Confederates having by then burned the bridge–and prior to crossing into Fredericksburg, a still-bellicose Scott selected one Northerner as a target and “started for my gun to try a shot” from the town side of the river.  “But old man Layton, former bridge watchman, reproved and forbade me.”

With the replacement bridge erected and the railyard secured for Northern arms, a Union work train and crew proceeded six miles further south, beyond Fredericksburg.  In half a day, on May 26 or 27, 1862, they erected a prefabricated span over Massaponax Creek.  This was evidently the first fully prefabricated, military bridge installed on the RF&P.

This nondescript overpass, probably dating to the early 20th-century, stands on or near the site of the Federals’ prefabricated bridge over Massaponax Creek in May 1862. The railroad extends left to right along the top of the grade in background.

The unique structure at Massaponax supported what was destined to become one of the area’s least-known Civil War operations.  Today, we often understand the Peninsula Campaign’s grand tactics around Fredericksburg as culminating in President Abraham Lincoln’s abrupt cancellation, via a May 24, 1862 telegram, of a plan to dispatch Gen. Irvin McDowell’s 40,000 Federals there to reinforce Gen. George B. McClellan’s forces near Richmond.  Yet on May 25, 1862, McDowell actually launched a scaled-back but still sizeable movement south from Fredericksburg, sending Gen. John Gibbon’s brigade across the Rappahannock and beyond the town, along the Richmond Stage Road.   A group of three other brigades, meanwhile, moved south on a generally parallel course, along the Telegraph Road and nearby thoroughfares.  Billed initially as a reconnaissance-in-force, this operation had carried the Federals on the Telegraph Road some eight miles beyond Fredericksburg by May 27.  By May 26, the troops on the Stage Road had marched about the same distance south of the town to a bivouac point that one of Gibbon’s regiments, the Second Wisconsin, dubbed “Camp Ginnie’s Station,” situated about four miles from the RF&P depot of that name.  On the afternoon of May 28, Lincoln asked McDowell to consider expanding this limited advance into a linkup with McClellan’s northernmost troops near Hanover Court House. 

The RF&P Railroad lay between the Federal prongs dispatched by McDowell.  The Ninth Virginia Cavalry had evacuated Guiney’s Station on May 25.  The Union Harris Light Cavalry occupied it almost immediately afterwards—briefly on the morning of May 26.  Other Federals evidently followed the Harris Light to secure Guiney’s for Union railroading.  From at or near Camp Ginnie’s Station on May 28, another member of the Second Wisconsin reported, “The railroad bridge at this point was completed last evening and the cars have reached the station with army supplies”—presumably a reference to the brand-new span at Massaponax Creek, and Guiney’s, the next depot and water-station beyond the bridge.  He also reported that his regiment had received orders to be ready to resume the southward march “at a moments notice.”  (Further evidence for Guiney’s being the new railroading terminus is found in Herman Haupt’s description of the rebuilt Massaponax bridge as important for giving McDowell’s forces “25 miles of continuous railroad over which supplies could be thrown”:  almost precisely the length of the track between Acquia Landing and Guiney’s Station.)

Guiney’s Station and its connections to the Richmond Stage and Telegraph roads. From an 1863 plat of Fairfield plantation, site of “Stonewall” Jackson’s death. North at top. Copy in collection of Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania NMP.

Yet the probable, short-lived Federal terminus at Guiney’s—operational a year before Gen. T. J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s death in the office of a trackside plantation there—proved the high water-mark for southbound Union railroading on the RF&P during the Peninsula Campaign (and, for that matter, during the war).  On May 29, 1862, McDowell withdrew his troops to Fredericksburg and directed his primary attentions towards renewed threats in the Shenandoah Valley.  The date of the removal or burning of the Masssaponax bridge is unknown.

In the long run, too, the Federals would be the principal enemy of their own handiwork along the RF&P, destroying bridges, warehouses, wharfage, and rolling stock during three withdrawals from the region:  August-September 1862, June 1863, and May 1864.

Noel G. Harrison

Special thanks to Eric Mink for research assistance, and Mike O’Donnell of O’Donnell Publications for encouraging a previous incarnation of this post.  For information on early war operations on the RF&P south of Fredericksburg and Guiney’s Station, see Confederate Railroads, an outstanding website and database, here (be sure to select “VA” from the ”Railroads” dropdown-menu at upper left).

Sources in order of use above–early warning system: William N. Bragg to E.H. Chandler, 18 April 1861. Copy in collection of Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania NMP; May 1861 reconnaissance: [Bushrod Washington Frobel,] “Field and Camp…” Scott’s Monthly Magazine (Sept. 1866), p. 710; fallback battery at Potomac Creek bridge: H.W. Flournoy, ed., Calendar of Virginia State Papers… 11: 168; trucks and derelict locomotive: Alan D. Gaff, On Many a Bloody Field: Four Years in the Iron Brigade, p. 123; David S. Sparks, ed., Inside Lincoln’s Army: The Diary of Marsena Rudolph Patrick, pp. 75-76; mine detonator and dates of Rappahannock bridge: Herman Haupt, Reminiscences of General Herman Haupt, pp. 47, 49; Official Records 51: 1^st part: 74-75; sabotage attempt: Official Records 12: 3rd part: 211; home guard and Bradford Scott’s ardor: Bradford Ripley Alden Scott, Memoirs of the Civil War, “Boyhood Escapades,” “The Advance on Fredericksburg,” at http://mck9web.com/brascott/index.html dates and description of Massaponax bridge: Haupt, Reminiscences, pp. 50, 53; Official Records 12: 1^st part: 78; McDowell’s advance on May 25-28:  “From the Second Wis. Regiment,” May 26, 1862, “May 28, 1862,” both at http://www.secondwi.com/fromthefront/2d%20wis/1862/may.htm ; Official Records 51: 1st part: 75-76; Edmund J. Raus, Banners South:  A Union Community at War, pp. 129-30, 132-33; occupation of and probable railroading to Guiney’s:  Richard Armstrong, ed., The Journal of Charles R. Chewning Company E 9 Virginia Cavalry C.S.A., p. 3; John McDowell (Harris Light Cavalry), diary, May 26, 1862, copy in collection of Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania NMP; “May 28, 1862,” at http://www.secondwi.com/fromthefront/2d%20wis/1862/may.htm ; Official Records 12: 1st part: 78. 

This is a repost from a couple years back, germane to today’s 150th anniversary of the fighting at Fairview.

Over at Fredericksburg Remembered, I have also posted more reflective things, including my remarks at the opening ceremony for the Chancellorsville 150th: A Remembering People.  

I have also posted “Icons, the merely famous, and us”–my thoughts on Jackson on the anniversary of his wounding. 

Working on these fields, we are of course pretty familiar with them. But closeness doesn’t always make for clarity. No resource on our fields is more obscured by closeness than earthworks. At ground level it’s impossible to see them as anything but vertical features–now slowly fading mounds of earth. But with the advent of readily available high-resolution aerial photography from Google Earth or Virtual Earth, you can see these earthworks in a whole new way: as they relate to each other horizontally.

A case in point:  Fairview, on the Chancellorsville Battlefield. With all apologies to Jackson aficionados, I have always felt that if visitors can make one stop at Chancellorsville to get a general grasp of the battle, Fairview should be it. It was the fulcrum upon which the battle of Chancellorsville turned. That becomes apparent looking at an aerial view of the site (these views are from Google Earth).

I have labeled on the image the six artillery lunettes built by the Union army on May 2, 1863, when its attention was focused eastward and southward. But the aerial view shows the tangible impact of Jackson’s flank attack on the battle, as it crashed down on the army from the west (to the left). The new line of works built overnight May 2-3 is oriented westward, not south, to better defend against what changed front required by Jackson’s assault. Note too that the artillery here on May 2 was paltry compared to the extensive line constructed prior to the fighting on the morning of May 3–as many as 34 tightly packed Union guns fought along this line that morning. Fairview became the focal point of massive, life-eating attacks–some of the heaviest sustained combat of the war (no hyperbole there). For five hours, a man fell every second in the woods and fields around Fairview, more than 18,000 in all.

This change in the works and the relative scale of the lines can be seen clearly in this aerial view, but is much harder to grasp on the ground.

One other little observation.

In Eric Mink’s recent posts, Are Those Trenches Real?, he included an image of the CCC at work “restoring” a lunette at Fairview. On the map above, I have labeled the lunette they worked on as #5. On the ground today, that lunette does not appear to be radically different from its adjacent partners. But look at it from above: you can see that the CCC work radically enlarged it, compared to the others. I had never noticed it before looking at the aerial image.

Here’s another example, at Spotsylvania. We know the Muleshoe Salient as a Confederate construction, and of course it was the focal point of fighting for two days: May 10 and, most famously, May 12, 1864. If your meanderings take you to the east face of the salient, walk around and take a shot at making sense of the jumble of works there. Good luck.

But take a look at this aerial view, showing the East Angle at the upper left and the east face of the salient (the Bloody Angle is about 400 yards off the left edge of this photograph).

While the origin or use of the double set of works at top remains obscure (at least to me), it’s clear that the original Confederate stretch of works at right, along the east face of the Salient, was re-faced by the Union army, with the best and most extensive traverses that survive anywhere in the park. While the aerial doesn’t bring clarity on everything, it’s certainly an important point of departure for figuring these things out.  More than that, it demonstrates that the construction of the lines at Spotsylvania was anything but haphazard. They were carefully engineered, geometric undertakings whose complexity and precision is almost impossible to grasp from ground level.

The aerial imagery is an important new tool that helps understand the resources we manage, and it offers great potential for public interpretation as well–something we will be exploring more as we move forward. In the meantime, explore yourself. You might spot some things you (or we) never noticed before.

Jackson’s map. See the bottom of the post for a version with the modern landscape overlaid upon it.

It is perhaps the greatest artifact in the park’s collection, and we’re putting it on display for the Chancellorsville 150th. It’s a map in Jackson’s distinctive hand, showing the battlefield around Chancellorsville, with markings both random (seemingly) and purposeful. We cannot say when Jackson composed this map or how he used it. But there are clues, and questions.

First, some background: Robert E. Lee kept relatively few mementoes from the war, but this is one. After the war, he took the map and mounted it in his first-off-the-press copy of John Esten Cooke’s 1863 biography of Jackson. He also pasted into the book Jackson’s autograph, and then signed the title page himself: R.E. Lee.

The history of the book and the map is unclear, but by the 1890s it was in private hands. It came to the park in 1940, donated by Roland I. Taylor, who bought it an auction in Philadelphia for $750 (isn’t THAT painful to read in 2013?). The book and map (they are inseparable now) were on display at the Chancellorsville Visitor Center for more than four decades, though so unobtrusively that most visitors seemed to miss its importance.  We took it off display several years ago, fearful that continued exposure to light would damage it.  The book and map are now back on display for the 150th.

An early article about the map asserts it was used by Lee and Jackson at their final bivouac on the night of May 1-2. That may be true, but it’s also clear the map includes a good deal of information that suggests Jackson used earlier in the campaign: Fredericksburg, Hamilton’s Crossing, and, most tellingly, Tabernacle Church are all marked in Jackson’s hand.  These places mattered to Jackson on April 30 and May 1.

But, the map also includes features germane to Jackson’s flank march and attack on May 2: the Brock Road (almost perfectly drawn), Wilderness Tavern, and the fords on the Rapidan and Rappahannock (though they are not labeled).  Tellingly, it does not include the network of roads that would carry him to the Brock Road on May 2, and ultimately to the Union flank. Information about those roads did not emerge until the night of May 1-2.

A few intriguing marks and symbols appear, their purpose not entirely clear. At first glance, the squiggly line that overlays the Brock Road suggests something special about that feature–and has led some to guess that this is Jackson’s attempt to sketch his intended approach toward the Union right flank. But, look a the Rappahannock: it has the same sort of squiggly line drawn upon it.  What does it mean?

Around Tabernacle Church, Jackson places three “x’s.”  Also near Ely’s Ford and along the river north of Tabernacle Church.  Are they camps?  Or are these marks the result of Jackson trying to illustrate something during conversation–something akin to Pictionary?

[Kudos to Beth, by the way, for pointing out to all of us that the modern iteration of Tabernacle Church is NOT on the site of the wartime church, something all of us had long presumed. The original site was about two miles east of the present church].

What can we say about he accuracy of the map?  Clearly Jackson drew this from memory; given that, the map is remarkably accurate and proportional.  He puts the rivers too far north, and so too the Orange Turnpike leaving Fredericksburg.  But the relationship of features to each other is pretty close–Wilderness Tavern, the junction of the Plank Road (Route 621) and  the Orange Turnpike (Route 3) near Wilderness Church, U.S, Ford, and the Brock Road.  Clearly Thomas J. Jackson has a good understanding of the landscape upon which the battle raged May 1-2, 1863–certainly better than his opponent.  Beth has overlaid the modern road network on Jackson’s map, so you can compare yourself.

What do YOU think?  What do you see here that we or others might have missed?  Comments welcome.

Overlay by Beth Parnicza. Click to enlarge.

This is an edited version of a post first appearing in September 2010 on our sister blog, Fredericksburg Remembered. A revision and reposting here seemed timely on the eve of Chancellorsville’s sesquicentennial.

I’ve often wondered how developments in the animal-rights movement will affect historical interpretation, including that of Civil War events. I’m thinking today of places related to the Chancellorsville and Fredericksburg campaigns, and eyewitness portrayals of animals there.

Dead horses and, evidently, birds of prey sharpen the battlefield landscape at Chancellorsville in a June 1863 sketch, at left; a flock of chickens, in engraving at right, softens it at virtually the same spot 21 years later. Sketch by Confederate engineer Benjamin Lewis Blackford courtesy Library of Virginia; photograph-derived engraving by Charles Wellington Reed from Battles and Leaders of the Civil War.

Of course, the record of humans’ advocacy on behalf of animals is as ancient as the record of their affection for or, at the other extreme, mistreatment of animals. Yet I’m still struck by the prominence of recent, animal-centered legal developments, media programming, and product- and service marketing.

Lasting rights-revolutions for people have obviously wrought profound change in the way we talk about history. Will today’s ongoing, dramatic shifts in the status of animals exert comparable influence over our understanding of the past, of those moments when their ancestors shared the stage with ours and with equal visibility?

My preliminary thoughts include placing historical portrayals of animals along a spectrum. Anchoring one end are images of animals essentially as animated scenery for military events, with animals (in humans’ perception) granted only minimal influence or agency. My spectrum’s other end, however, is anchored by humans’ portrayals of animals’ agency or utility, sometimes to the extent of their intervening decisively in human affairs. I am also fascinated by the interplay, within this spectrum, of animals-as-individuals and animals-as-symbols.

Cattle and evidently at least two oxen accompanying the Federal army at Chancellorsville, amid the chaos just behind the gun line at Fairview. Detail from a sketch by Alfred Waud. Courtesy Library of Congress.

Let’s begin with portrayals of animals (again, in humans’ perception) as animated-scenery on battlefields. A Union veteran, describing events near Salem Church on May 4, 1863, wrote about a herd of cattle trapped between the opposing skirmish lines. Watching the animals, the man recalled, “it was very amusing to see them run and bellow, first to the right, then to the left, with tails straight out.”

Half of a two-part ox shoe found in area of Stafford County occupied by encamped Federals during the Fredericksburg-Chancellorsville period, and by units from both armies at other times during the war. Courtesy White Oak Museum.

Recalling a different moment and place in the Chancellorsville campaign zone, another Federal remembered that whip-poor-wills responded to “the strange changes that have come over their usually quiet haunts” by making the night “hideous” with their calls.

Whip-poor-will.

In his own recounting of Chancellorsville, Confederate veteran and writer John Esten Cooke described the whip-poor-wills in a more interactive role: performing, however unwittingly, a funeral dirge. Their “mournful” call, he noted, was “that sound which was the last to greet the ears of so many dying soldiers.”

For the Eleventh Corps soldiers forming the Union army’s ill-fated right flank at Chancellorsville on May 2, 1863, wildlife provided an unintentional—and unheeded—reconnaissance or alert, not entirely unlike the conscious but equally unheeded human efforts at warning of Confederates massing in the woods just beyond. An Ohioan in the Eleventh, W.S. Wickham, recalled an “open field in our front across which scampered wild animals of the country,” herded forward by “Stonewall” Jackson’s approaching but still-invisible troops.

This Alfred Waud sketch, perhaps appearing for the first time in an interpretive venue, evidently portrays one of the Eleventh Corps regiments “on the right at Chancellorsville,” where soldiers witnessed pre-attack stampedes by wildlife. Courtesy Library of Congress.

More consciously, some 2,000 mules served the Union army at Chancellorsville as part of an experiment to improve mobility. John Bigelow, who published the first, major scholarly account of the campaign in 1910, judged unfavorably General Joseph Hooker’s tenure as “the first commander of the Army of the Potomac, and the last one, to substitute pack-mules for army wagons extensively.”

Army mule during Civil War (left) and after (right). Woodcut illustrations for poem in Chancellorsville chapter in regimental history of the 118th Pennsylvania Infantry. From History of the Corn Exchange Regiment, f. p. 208.

Note particularly that Bigelow’s critique, here, focuses in part on how mule psychology imposed changes upon the configuration and pacing of an army on campaign:

As compared with wagons, pack-mules require more men, and more animals to a given freight, take up more room on a road…. [W]agon-mules can rest without being unharnessed or even unhitched–not perfectly, but far better than pack-mules can without being unpacked. To unpack a train of mules and afterward repack them, consumes so much time that it does not pay in halts of less than an hou[r]…. Pack-trains are capable of traveling faster than wagon-trains, but to do this for any length of time without hardship they must be allowed to travel their own gait; the troops must conform to the movements of the train or allow the train to travel independently… [T]he mules in this campaign were tied together in strings of two or three, and led. Thus secured, they did not stray away, but instead of rubbing against trees, they rubbed against each other, with about the same effect upon the loads, and a worse effect upon their poor bodies. This arrangement must have been a cause of many of the sore backs…. The introduction of the packtrains was unfortunate and unnecessary….

The Union veterans who published a history of the 118th Pennsylvania Infantry some two decades prior to Bigelow’s book also included a spotlight on the packtrain system during the campaign, but they used verse and a first-person voice (a mule’s), rather than Bigelow’s prose and impersonal narrative. The Pennsylvanians’ poem opened in lighthearted tones, with the mule-narrator recalling that, “I brought up your rations through mud and through dust” but also acknowledging that “I raided the hard-tack; I chewed up the tents.” Yet the concluding lines, including those of the stanza below, and accompanying illustrations portrayed Army of the Potomac mules as honorable soldiers destined to be forgotten as veterans, far from the inappropriate, campaign-hobbling participants in Bigelow’s telling:

If I share not the honors with you in your pride,
Why did they put US in plain sight on my side?
Ah! The war days are over; old friends have grown cool
To the broken-down, pensionless, old army mule.

Confederate artillery position atop Prospect Hill, or “Dead Horse Hill,” on the Fredericksburg battlefield. Courtesy National Park Service.

As noted by Confederate artillerist William Hill Carter, writing after the war of the fighting at Fredericksburg’s Prospect Hill in December 1862, the ordeals of military animals who served alongside people had gone well beyond “sore backs” and postwar neglect in severity:

Dead men between the guns and under their very mouths; broken wheels, of which there were a multiplicity; over-turned cais[s]ons, one of which had blown up; horses shot in every conceivable way, some dead, some plunging in the last agonies of that grim monster. One poor animal, I well remember, was walking about with all of that portion of his face below his eyes entirely carried away by a solid shot or shell.

The sulphurous smoke was dense…the shrieking of the shell and shot as they tore through the branches of the wooded knoll, was appalling.
…
In a very short time the big [Union] guns over the river began to growl and grumble for more blood. Their infantry made a terrific burst, their light guns opened…Pandemonium broke loose again on “Dead Horse Hill.”

Twice I planted our battle-flag firmly in the ground outside of our guns, and as many times it went down. A shell struck one of the pieces plumb on the top, exploded, and killed and wounded nine men.

I ran to unhook two wheel horses…. As I put my hand on the traces, a solid shot passed through the stomachs of both…. a handsome, black eyed boy ran by me, carrying ammunition; a shell took him between the shoulders, lifting him three feet from the ground, and his home was made desolate.

In this particular account the ordeal of the horses is even worse than that of the soldiers. And the carnage among the animals overall comes to define the severity of the combat, to the extent that Prospect Hill acquires an alternate name.

Some Civil War accounts recorded initiative among animals in their partnerships with people. In contrast to many occupants of Dead Horse Hill, the dog described in the following reminiscence survives the same battle–at the opposite end of the combat zone, in or near the town of Fredericksburg–and saves a Confederate soldier. The passage appeared in 1871 in a brief article entitled “Reason and Instinct,” which asserted that dogs, horses, and some of the other “higher animals” are gifted with the “dawn of reason, so extraordinary are some of their acts”:

Woodcut illustrating the article “Reason and Instinct,” which described a rescue dog in the aftermath of Fredericksburg. The article offered that story and two others—including an account of a dog in Canada that had learned to break puddle-ice after a single demonstration by its human companion—to argue that dogs’ behavior went well beyond displays of instinct to reveal “intelligence which comes from reason.” Merry’s Museum, March 1871, p. 128.

After the battle…it fell to my duty to search a given district for any dead or wounded soldiers there might be left, and to bring relief. Near an old brick dwelling I discovered a soldier in gray who seemed to be dead. Lying by his side was a noble dog, with his head flat upon his master’s neck. As I approached, the dog raised his eyes to me good-naturedly, and began wagging his tail; but he did not change his position. The fact that the animal did not growl, that he did not move, but, more than all, the intelligent, joyful expression of his face, convinced me that the man was only wounded, which proved to be the case. A bullet had pierced his throat, and faint from the loss of blood, he had fallen down where he lay. His dog had actually stopped the bleeding from the wound by laying his head across it! Whether this was casual or not, I cannot say. But the shaggy coat of the faithful creature was completely matted with his master’s blood.

Historical portrayals of animals in the Civil War have continued to emerge in film, digital exhibitions, and sculpture, as well as literature. Perhaps, though, today’s ongoing shifts in animals’ status throughout society will also bring an increased frequency in their historical portrayals being viewed collectively, and less in isolation. This broadening perspective might highlight more of the interplay and subtleties among historical images, ranging, as I have discussed here using Chancellorsville and Fredericksburg examples, from differences in the reception of the same animal sounds, crucial shifts in the behavior of the same type of animal (mules pulling wagons vs. mules carrying cases and bundles), to perceived distinctions in the treatment of veterans. Also, a wider perspective could better illuminate animals’ roles as definers of history as well as participants in it–as collective symbols in addition to individual actors. Studying war, with all its revealing extremes, seems ideal for exploring the hazy borderland between people and animals.

Click on photo for animated gif: in motion during the planning for Chancellorsville. Union Bureau of Military Intelligence Chief George H. Sharpe’s horses, held by one of his staffers or oderlies near Army of the Potomac Headquarters in Stafford County. Like Sharpe, one or both of these animals had a greater visual preview of the opening scenes of the upcoming Chancellorsville campaign than most other members of either army. Few horses and riders were undertaking more decisive missions than Sharpe and his mounts at the time the photographs were made. Individual images courtesy Library of Congress; gif courtesy of Alan Zirkle.

Noel G. Harrison

Special thanks to D.P. Newton and Donnie Shelton of the White Oak Museum for research assistance, and to National Park Service volunteer Alan Zirkle–the other Lumiere Brother–for meeting my request for an animation with his usual patience and precision.

On the eve of the 150th Anniversary of this event, we repost this from a couple years back.

Regulars of the Fifth Corps pass in review on the Sthreshley farm in Stafford County, April 8, 1863.

It was the greatest gathering of American military might ever displayed before the 1865 Grand Review in Washington, D.C. On April 8, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln reviewed about two-thirds of the Army of the Potomac–as many as 70,00o men–in the Union camps in Stafford County, across the Rappahannock from Fredericksburg. This spectacle was seen by few spectators, and the tortuous logistics that left soldiers standing in wait for hours peeved more than a few. But, the display had a profound affect on the army, for armies rarely get to see themselves. This day they did, and the soldiers were impressed. A few days later an officer of the 12th Corps mused, “after such an opportunity of seeing our army as I have had this last week, I cannot help” but conclude “that the Army of the Potomac is a collection of as fine troops…as there are in te world. I believe he day will come when it will be a proud thing for anyone to say he belonged to it.”

Click to enlarge

The huge April 8 review in Stafford (one of five held during Lincoln’s visit to the army) received national coverage in the press, attracting scribblers and artists from dozens of newspapers and magazines. Hundreds of descriptions written by soldiers survive–the vast majority including either grumbling at the wait or descriptions of  a “careworn” President (Lincoln may have thought he was reviewing the army, but the army emphatically was reviewing him).  The Union 2nd Corps, 5th Corps, 3rd Corps, and 6th Corps were all reviewed that day–three of them together on the Sthreshley Farm (called “Grafton”) and the 6th Corps on the fields in front of Boscobel, the home of Henrietta Fitzhugh. What of these sites today? Where are they?  What do they look like?

The location of these reviews is given to us by a map generated within the Army of the Potomac that specifically documenting the review sites and the routes taken by the various corps to reach those sites. You can see a copy of the map here.  I have gone ahead and overlaid the key data onto a modern aerial from Google Earth (above). The roads and house sites are derived from our Virtual Fredericksburg project.

The camps of the Army of the Potomac, with the April 8 review site highlighted in red.

The farmhouse of James Sthreshley and his family stood at the south end of what is today Scott Drive in the midst of Grafton Village subdivision. So far as I know, no trace of the house remains. Sthreshley (whose name is more frequently misspelled and mispronounced than perhaps any in this region–it is pronounced Thrashley) was one of the more prosperous farmers in Stafford County. In 1860, he and his wife Helen owned land worth $12,000 and personal property of $30,000, including 25 slaves–sixteen of them under the age of 16. No image of his home is known to survive, but it was impressive enough to attract a procession of Union generals to use it as headquarters. Before and after the Battle of Fredericksburg, Samuel Sturgis of the Ninth Corps took up here, and he was joined by Clara Barton, who made Sthreshley her base of operations before and after her service in Fredericksburg.

On April 6, Lincoln reviewed the cavalry corps of the Army of the Potomac on the Sthreshley farm. Spectacular as that display was, it was dwarfed by the events of April 8. Today the open fields that Lincoln rode and that soldiers of the Second, Third, and Fifth Corps marched upon are a subdivision–indeed a dense, 1960s-era subdivision called Grafton Village.  If you want to take a close look, go to Google Earth; the coordinates are 38 19-24 and 77 25-38.  Here are a couple of shots of the review fields today.

Looking south on Grafton Street.

Looking north on Edwards Drive.

The review of the Union Sixth Corps and the army’s reserve artillery brigade that day took place just a short distance to the east, on the fields in front of Boscobel. Boscobel was one of Stafford’s oldest homesteads, and with the arrival of the Union army that winter it became the headquarters for corps commander Daniel Sickles. It was here on April 7 that Sickles hosted a party for the president.  During that party, Princess Salm-Salm (the American wife of a Prussion prince) led a procession of women offering Lincoln kisses–gestures that outraged the first lady.

Boscobel, Sickles’s Headquarters

Boscobel no longer stands. Around the house site, which features a modern ranch house and a nearby cemetery, is a large-lot subdivision of expansive homes (named Boscobel Farms).

The headstones in front of the site of Boscobel

The fields upon which the review was held have not been entirely obliterated–the lots are large enough to get a sense of the lay of the land.

Looking south from King Georges Grant.

Lincoln conducted three other reviews of troops during his stay in Stafford: the First Corps near Belle Plain–the precise location is not known. The Eleventh Corps near Brooke Station, and the Twelfth Corps between Stafford Court House and Aquia Creek. Again, the specific locations of these reviews are not known (at least not by me). If you are interested in the reviews and Lincoln’s various visits to Stafford County, we recommend you read Jane Conner’s very nice Lincoln in Stafford, which is privately published, but available for sale at Chatham.

I wrote this for the 150th Anniversary observance back in December, as part of the procession that moved from the river through town to the Sunken Road. The procession stopped near the site of the canal ditch–where Hanover Street crossed it–and Frank O’Reilly delivered these words to about 1,500 people. Today the canal ditch runs under Kenmore Avenue. Thousands pass the spot every day, unmindful of what happened here. That’s okay, but it’s well once in a while to stop and remember this powerful story of fear and courage intermingled (as they invariably are).

As Union soldiers descended into this valley and prepared to cross a mill race that ran just off to your left, they encountered dreadful sounds and sights—the full cacophony of battle, a panorama of suffering, the “Valley of Death.”

 Once here, there was no time for reflection.  Men and their commanders could only act. 

Here they struggled with the great dilemma that confronts every soldier—the competing forces of fear and duty. Narratives of the Civil War—be they modern studies or eyewitness accounts—invariably discuss courage at length and fear very little. Not at Fredericksburg. 

Fear was omnipresent among Union soldiers on this field, and they freely admitted it. 

 As one man from Connecticut plainly put it, “We thought every moment would be our last and I am willing to say for one that I was pretty badly scared.”

Another soldier remembered that one of his comrades “seemed in terrible mental agony, groaning and taking on.  Perhaps I felt as badly as he but I kept it to myself.  I felt that the hand of man or any earthly power was unable to save me, and I appealed to my Heavenly Father to save me, if it were His will.”

For most, a sense of duty and commitment helped overcome the paralyzing fear. 

A rookie soldier from Pennsylvnania remembered:

“One may ask how such dangers can be faced.  The answer is, there are many things more to be feared than death.  Cowardice and failure of duty with me were some of them.  I said to myself, ‘This is duty.  I’ll trust in God and do it.  If I fall, I cannot die better.” 

Courage is an inverse measure of fear.  Courage is the will to overawe fear.  The depth of fear at Fredericksburg demanded an unprecedented measure of courage to overcome. 

Courage among soldiers is not limitless.  Draw upon that reservoir again and again, and evermore deeply, and it will empty, and the soldier may cease to function.  So intense, so frightening, so courageous were the efforts of soldiers on this battlefield, that it left many with reservoirs empty. 

Here, in this deadly valley, Union soldiers crossed a threshold to a place unlike most of them had experienced before.  The threshold was literal: the canal ditch. Of course the Confederate army, with days to prepare, knew this place well. They had torn up the bridge where Hanover crossed the ditch, leaving only the stringers. Far worse than that, Confederate artillery had time to measure the range to the this crossing precisely. As regiment after regiment crowded down George Street onto Hanover, Confederate artillery opened fire.

The Irish Brigade especially suffered here. 

Beyond was a landscape whose horror would lodge in the American consciousness.  Five hundred yards of open field, broken only the remnant fences of the town’s fairgrounds and a single house, owned by wheelwright Allen Stratton.  This would be the defining landscape of Fredericksburg. 

A Union brigade commander—a rank of men not usually prone to declamations of fear—wrote of that place, “I never realized before what war was. I never before felt so horrible since I was born.”

But he and thousands of others went. And we will follow their footsteps anew, all the way to a place none of them reached, the Sunken Road.

Frank’s reading of this (in part) was included as the conclusion of a short video done about that day, which you can find at the bottom of this post by Brooks Simpson.

For additional posts about the canal ditch and Bloody Plain, click here  and here.

The canal ditch crossing today:

One of the great benefits of milestones is this: preparing for them requires you to focus on the essentials, to articulate broad and big ideas efficiently and powerfully. We are currently at work on the Chancellorsville 150th (schedule coming soon). Chancellorsville has always been the most difficult of our four battles to convey. While it features giant personalities on both sides, and while Lee and Jackson produced unarguably an immense military achievement, the battle lacks the texture or landscapes of Fredericksburg (with its varied environments and participants) or the high drama of Wilderness and Spotsylvania (as the first clash of Lee and Grant and the evolution of a truly different way of waging war). 

The recitation of why Chancellorsville matters is familiar: Lee seizes the intiative that carries him to Gettysburg, Jackson dies, Confederate faith in the Army of Northern Virginia intensifies (among the public AND Lee), while yet another Union commander suffers failure in the face of a smaller foe. Lincoln wails, “My God! What will the country say!”

All dramatic stuff, all important. But, let’s go to the last item on the list: what DID the country say about Chancellorsville?

Not much.

Which leads me to my point: maybe the greatest signfiicance of Chancellorsville resides in what it tells us about the war at large. By 1863, the Civil War had become so large and so complex that even a singular, dramatic, decisive victory by R.E. Lee moved the needle of public sentiment or the tides of war very little indeed. The most  unlikely, one-sided victory of the war, born of incredible risk, yielded almost nothing for the Confederate cause.

That in turn begs the question:  by 1863, had the scope of the war rendered Robert E. Lee’s talents more symbolic than real?  Was he the equivalent of Bobby Orr having to play for the 1972 New York Islanders (what a horrifc thought)–an immense talent trapped in a place where he might make some spectacular plays, but with little hope of affecting the larger outcome?  The war, it seems to me, had become a grinding effort to accumulate or degrade, and Lee could accumulate no longer. 

Authors and historians are forever trying to elevate the significance of their subjects. Maybe this is an instance where the larger importance of an event lies not in the impact it had, but in the impact it didn’t have and what that tells us.

Our friend Mike Snyder, master of all things Schuylill County and Pottstown, PA, sends along a note about a soldier who fraudulently claimed a disability pension as a result of an injury received  the great St. Patrick’s Day race. Thanks very much Mike. 

William Mintzer Hobart of Pottstown, Pa.  rode in the St. Patrick’s Day steeple chase. At some point in the race he was thrown from his horse and hit his head on the ground. In 1879 Hobart applied for a pension claiming the injury happened in the line of duty when a cavalryman ran into him. In 1884, after an investigation disclosed that he was injured in the race, his pension was stopped. Hobart served in Co. C, 4th PA and then the 116 PA and eventually was the provost marshal for the 1st Div. 2nd Corps. After the war he spent the rest of his long life in Pottstown and married a 1st cousin of John Rutter Brooke. He was still living in June 1923 when the attached photo appeared in a issue of the Pottstown News. There were many 53rd PA veterans in Pottstown and I don’t think they liked Hobart as four of them testified that they saw the event and saw Hobart thrown from his horse.

It was perhaps the most raucous day in the history of the Army of the Potomac, chronicled by many, widely covered in the press. St. Patrick’s Day 1863 came three months after the disaster at Fredericksburg and in the midst of a winter of re-emergence from the army. If the fresh bread, clean water, and improved medical care rehabilitated the army’s collective body, St. Patrick’s Day gave life anew to its addled mind.

The highlight of the day was the grand steeplechase, a wild, even deadly affair that drew more than 20,000 spectators from all parts of the army. We can’t say precisely where the great race took place, but it was likely somewhere north of what is today Exit 133 on I-95, the junction with Route 17. What follows is a description by a man, Samuel S. Partridge of the 13th New York, who decided to first witness and then join the race. Partridge was a great writer of letters, conveying vivid details and sharp observations. This is perhaps the best description there is of the steeplechase. Copies of Partridge’s letters are in the park files. Some of them (though I don’t believe this one) were published decades ago in Rochester Historical Society Publications XXII, 1944

To night I am going to tell you about the great steeple chase in the Irish Brigade on St. Patricks day.

It beat Donnybrook fair all to the mischief. A race course—elliptical—of a mile was laid out. Guidons and such things were stuck in the ground to point out the course to the riders. There were four hurdles and three ditches…There were more than 20,000 spectators, soldiers and officers. Everybody who could get a pass from camp was there, some even walking a dozen miles through the mud to get there. The track was slippery blue clay and about half hoof deep.

The hurdles were made of logs forty feet long, laid three side by side, three logs high, and hurdle no. 2 four logs high. A horse stumbling on a fence may knock a rail off and get not fall, but here, when a horse stumbled “somebody got hurted” every time. No. 3, the twelve foot ditch, was in a little valley, the ground sloped towards it each way. It was as deep as it was wide, and so slippery was the bank, that if a horse paused a tenth of a second to measure his distance, he slid in. None but horses who took this hump on the swing got over, and a good many of these fell short. I went over this while four horses and riders were wallowing in the mid. No. 5, the eight foot ditch, had on the far side a hedge two feet high made of stakes driven in to the ground and cedar boughs interwoven, that stuck many a horse and hurt many a rider. No. 7, six foot ditch, on the home stretch, had hard gravelly banks, but you were doing up hill when you came at it.
For the Steeple Chase of two heats only eight or ten horses were entered, all of Meaghers Brigade. Major Genl. Hooker was the umpire.

One rider was clad in white curdoroys, wax top boots, drab cutaway coat and drab stovepipe hat, regular English jockey style. One Greek Captain had a silk goat, one side green with white sleeve, the other side white with green sleeve. His horse bolted the first hurdle and pitched him over it, but he arose with his many colored coat all slate color, remounted and made him take the leap. The horse also went over the twelve foot ditch and left the rider in it, and I saw neither horse nor rider again.

Both heats were won by a chestnut stallion with a white mane and tail, ridden by a boy, an officer’s servant, about fifteen years old, and not over ninety weight.

The second heat being over, Col. Schoeffel proposed to me to go over that hurdle, pointing to the highest. As he is a large sized man, I didn’t think he would dare follow me, but was rather daring me to do it. So I never said a word but laughed at him and rode Black Dan over the hurdle, and looked back just in time to see Schoeffel come flying after me on his Frank, a big blood bay, and just for the fun of the thing we kept on round the course. The way we scattered the men off that track was a caution, and the way the crowds at the ditches and hurdles would yell when we got to them was enough to scare a horse over an eight rail fence.

Then came a race just for fun, free to all officers horses—horses to be placed with their tails on the score, and at the word go to whirl round and run in the opposite direction. Lots of small, light weight men wanted to ride Frank. The Colonel’s large bones are too heavy for that horse. I rather wanted to find somebody to ride Black Dan, for if you don’t give him a free hand, he has a way of pitching the rider and going over the track alone. In our camp scrub races Hall rides him bare back and with a halter only, putting the strip in his mouth.

One of my teamsters who was riding him to water undertook to run him once without my knowing it. He gut run away with and thrown off and was over two hours catching the horse again. But as I haven’t been thrown yet, I went it myself.

At the word go! Ten or a dozen horses started straight off and went ten or twenty rods before the riders could turn them. Those of us who know how, executed a “demi-volt” and let em spin. If a horse bolts at a jump, or goes round it, he is out of the race, unless he goes back and takes it again. It is ruleable for a horse to go over everything—no matter how—so he goes over. If he misses he is distanced.

I never rode so fast before. It took all the horsemanship I know to do it .I kept a tight rein, till within three lengths of the jump, and then loosened up by holding the bridle hand forward about half way up the back, so as to tighten up after the jump by drawing the hand back again, without loosening the reins and gathering them up again. I remembered too to sit close to the saddle as I ran, and to raise the body from the saddle on the jump, but keep the knees close as though there was a pivot through them.

There were five beside Schoeffel and myself went everything clear. The rest except the few who got stuck came straggling in afterwards.

Your fancy riders, who have the stirrups so long that they have to point the toe down to reach it, did very well when their horses rose to the first leap, but when they came down they saw their stirrups flying about their ears, and the jolt of it didn’t unhorse them so shocked their sense of propriety that they didn’t do so any more. Your men with their feet all gathered up in very short stirrups found themselves shot over their horses head like a hot shot out of a scoop. And the foo foo’s who took hold of the pommel of the saddle with the right hand generally got jerked on to the beasts neck.

It was the biggest spree I ever went on—the wildest ride I ever took—and I don’t want to do so any more. Col. Schoeffel’s Frank was as still this morning as a wooden horse and Black Dan felt a little old, if I could judge by the way he went under the saddle this afternoon. I feel proud of my horse, and al little vain of my horsemanship, but at the next Steeple Chase count me a spectator. As a rider “Excoosy me.” I’d rather look on and see bones broken than risk my neck in any way not in the Army “regulations.”