Civil War Show

We just got back from selling at a Civil War show in Va. Ah, such fun! We bought a goodly number of rare books on the Civil War from various folks while there. Even I bought quite a number for my folks with interests in the medieval and renaissance periods!

While in Virginia and North Carolina, we visited Fort Branch, and Petersburg to see The Crater. Both were very awe inspiring. Fort Branch was hidden in the back of nowhere and away from the tourists, which was quite nice. It was a Confederate earthen fort overlooking a river with slots where the cannons were placed. After a time the fort was abandoned and the cannons heaved in the river where they were found in 1972 and restored. We explored the fort and earthenworks and were dumbstruck by the amount of work it took to build it - unfortunately most of the work probably was slave labor.

The Crater was in the Petersburgh Battlefield area and just the opposite. It was well kept up and attended to and well trafficked by tourists altho it is still early in the tourist season. The Crater was dug by Pennsylvania coal miners and explosives placed to break through Confederate lines there. They did a very good job, however the endeavor was destroyed by bureaucracy and stupid decisions. There was a company of black soldiers that was trained to go through the Confederate lines but at the last minute were withdrawn and replaced by white soldiers with no training in the mission. And as a result when the Crater blew, the soldiers ran into it instead on the edges of it - effectively becoming fish in a barrel for the Confederate sharpshooters.

Each year we do the Civil War Show, usually in Chantilly but for the next 5 years will be in Fredericksburg, we try to explore Civil War places of interest or battlefields.