It certainly counts as one of the three or four strangest experiences of my life–the 45 seconds of confusion and even fear that accompanied the earthquake the other day. Many have rejoiced in being able to have checked something off their bucket list, and I confess I would be enthused about that too, except for the real damage the quake did. Indeed, the toll seems to be highest on historic buildings. In Culpeper, several buildings in the downtown were condemned. We had no such dramatics in Fredericksburg, but chimneys by the dozen tumbled, and not a few places had cracks and other bothersome problems.

You can find photos of the damage to the Fredericksburg Area Museum, in the old town hall, here.  And here too is video from Fredericksburglive.com of damage to the historic town hall and the building across the street, and the treatment undertaken on both.

The story is one of the cornerstones of Manassas lore and a powerful symbol of post-war reconciliation–the Manassas version of Fredericksburg’s Richard Kirkland:  John Rice of the 2d New Hampshire is hopelessly wounded near Matthew’s Hill and left for dead.  But local resident Amos Benson and his wife Margaret find him and intervene, caring for him along the roadside (without moving him) for more than week, watching him make a miraculous recovery. Once well enough, Rice is sent to Manassas and then to Richmond with other wounded Union prisoners. In 1886, this is how Rice described his experience to a reporter:

“[After being wounded], my comrades bore me off in he wake of our retreating forces toward Sudley Church, where our surgeons had established a hospital. I a short time, being closely pursued by the enemy and finding that I was apparently dead, they laid me under a fence and made their escape. Some two days after the battle I recovered consciousness but was unable to move…In this condition I was found by Amos Benson and his wife, who lived on the opposite side of Bull Run. They were returning to their home at evening, after spending the day at Sudley church….Benson, discovering life in me, brought an overworked surgeon from the church, who, however, turned away with the remark that he had no time to spend on so hopeless a case. Mrs. Benson meanwhile brough me food from her house, while her husband removed my clothing and scraped away the vermin that were praying upon me. They continued to feed and care for me till at the end of 10 days I was so far revived that the surgeons were persuaded to remove me from under he fence to more comfortable quarters in a freight car at Manassas Junction, whence in a few days I was carried to Richmond and consigned to Libby Prison.” [From the Springfield Republican, November 24, 1886]

(Harry Smelzer has a very nice post on the Benson-Rice story and the sites today.)

More than 25 years later, Rice returned to the battlefield and looked up the Bensons, now living next to the abandoned cut of the Unfinished Railroad, across from Sudley Church.  They had a joyful reunion, and Rice asked if he can do anything to thank them for saving his life.  The Bensons asked for nothing, but did say that the Church, much damaged during the war, still had an outstanding debt it was finding difficult to pay. Rice returned to his home in Springfield, Massachusetts and published the story in the Springfield Republican. Within days, he had collected enough money to retire the debt on the church and sent it along.  The story received national publicity.

It’s all good, and there is ample documentation to confirm the events of 1886, when Rice and Benson reunited.  But, in going through some newspaper material recently, I came across an article in the Lowell Daily Citizen from February 3, 1862. The paper noted that John Rice, recently returned from Rebel prison, was visiting the city, and “has had an eventful experience as a soldier.” The paper then went on to recite Rice’s experience in the days after the battle, presumably hearing it from Rice himself.

“Late in the afternoon of the Bull Run battle, he was shot through the left lung.  Three of his comrades, who remained by his side, were soon taken prisoners, and he himself carried to Sudley church, and, as this was crowded with others wounded, he was placed on the ground with many more, half of whom were dead the morning following. He remained on the ‘sacred soil,’ under the droppings of that sanctuary, for nine days, more dead than alive, before being taken to Richmond. The surgeon ordered him stimulating drinks, but his wounds were not dressed till the fetor became intolerable, and then it was first done by two fellow prisoners, each of whom had broken arms bound up in slings. Five months he passed in the Richmond hospital, being exchanged with many others early in January. His health is nearly restored, so that he proposes to serve out his term of enlistment.”

In this account, there is no mention of the Bensons, and no claim of being left under a fence by the roadside for nine days. Instead, Rice shared the far-more-typical experience of the majority of wounded found at Manassas–they were brought to hospitals rather than simply left to die. (I confess that Rice’s assertion that a surgeon rejected him as hopeless–not even bothering to have him transported–and that other surgeons agreed to care for him only after he had demonstrated he might survive has always struck me as puzzling; it’s not how physicians generally worked.)

Perhaps there is ground upon which Rice’s 1862 narrative and his 1886 version can intersect, allowing for the removal of some details later added for dramatic purposes. Perhaps Amos and Margaret Benson in fact cared for Rice at Sudley Church, rather than along the roadside.  Maybe Rice left the efforts of these Southern civilians out of his 1862 narrative because the need or desire to illuminate on the good deeds of Southerners was hardly popular at that time.

But, there is no skirting around the differences in the two narratives, and that they inevitably raise the possibility that one or the other is simply incorrect.  That in turn begs the question, did the Rice-Benson incident actually happen?

As I have said as it relates to the Kirkland legend at Fredericksburg, I feel strongly that legend has a power all its own, usually rooted in some fact. To demolish a legend requires, I think, affirmative evidence that the legend is incorrect. The 1862 newspaper article doesn’t rise to that level, but it certainly does compel us to pause and reconsider a story that to my knowledge none of us have heretofore had any cause to question.

Not long ago I did a program in Spotsylvania County on the 1862 exodus to freedom in the Fredericksburg area, something we have written about a good deal. The event was at the new John J. Wright Museum in Spotsylvania County, a great exhibition dedicated to the history of African-Americans in Spotsylvania. We had a good crowd–60-70 people, about half black, half white.

The program was fine enough, but what occurred afterwards dropped jaws all around. I can’t explain how it happened, but the Q&A turned into a public forum on the place of the Civil War in our culture, and specifically how African-Americans view the War and slavery. It was as open an exchange about history among people with different backgrounds as I have ever seen. If we could bottle it and repeat it a thousands times, we’d make a difference in the world…

There were harsh, honest words. One man in particular declared that he viewed everything associated with the Confederacy as “toxic.” Another suggested that the Civil War has been and is simply a popular vehicle for helping to maintain white supremacy in America. Others pitched in–politely and productively, though often intensely–and through the room swirled a current of feeling that everyone who was there will remember the rest of their lives.

It wasn’t that everyone agreed; it was that everyone understood from whence other opinions came.

In public history we deal with lots of contrasting ideas and interpretations, for the Civil War was clearly the most complex event in our nation’s history. But every once in a while, from the swirl emerges some clarity–and so it was for me on this day.

I have written fairly extensively about the distinction between personal motivation and national purpose, and how we as a nation have, when it comes to the Civil War, often merged the two.

As these people spoke that day in Spotsylvania (the majority of the speakers African-Americans), the source of the chasm that exists between how African-Americans view the war (mostly as it relates to popular culture and politics) and how many white Southerners see it emerged. Virtually every person in that room who rose to speak saw of the Confederacy purely in terms of its national purpose–most prominently, its avowed intent (embodied in its constitution) to perpetuate a white supremacist nation that sustained slavery.

Many white Americans–with their intensely personal connection to the war and the Confederacy–speak of the war in terms of the personal motivation of participants (sometimes imperfectly understood), often their ancestors. To those Americans the war is defined not by national purpose, but by personal motivation.

And therein lies the great American chasm as it relates to the Civil War.

To many people in attendance, efforts to deny or redefine the national purpose of the Confederacy in order to reflect more positively on an ancestor or the South is simply offensive, and so the war evokes no connection or inspiration, only hostility.

 As I have written elsewhere, at least some African-Americans view the National Park Service as party to an ongoing “celebration” of the war that only glorifies the Confederacy and its heroes. Hence, African-Americans stay away from the sites the NPS manages.

I think we can all “get” white Americans’ personal connection to the Civil War, and we “get” their discomfort with talking about the issues that surrounded it, and we can even understand why some (spanning generations) would try to redefine the war to something far simpler and neater than it in fact was (though we may not agree). But it would be impossible to be at John J. Wright that day and not also “get” why African-Americans see the war (and its heroes and symbols) so differently–through the lens of national purpose–and why they find the war’s and the Confederacy’s place in American culture today so troubling.

For both public historians and the nation at large, this chasm represents a great challenge.

It also emerged in our discussion that there is serious collateral damage amidst all this: in disconnecting from the Civil War, the African-American community has also separated itself from the history and evolution of slavery–and freedom. The nature of slavery has, of course, been a pawn in the larger effort to redefine the Confederacy–the images of the “happy slave,” the myth of black Confederate soldiers, the relentless effort to minimize slavery’s harshness. Add to that the historical hesitancy of public history sites to talk about slavery, and we are left with a monolithic view that in subtle ways continues to degrade the victims of slavery and does nothing to inspire modern Americans to connect with the story.

In fact, of course, the history of slavery is in part the history of slaves’ struggle for freedom, be it within the bonds of slavery or absolute freedom beyond. Historians have shown that this is a rich, textured story, fraught with both ugliness and inspiration. By disconnecting from that story–by throwing the story of slavery out along with the legacy of the Civil War, and by seeing slaves as simply the recipients of freedom rather than participants in its creation–have we as Americans done a profound historical injustice to those who struggled so mightily for generations to endure, change, or end bondage in our nation?

Isn’t it time to stop forgetting and start remembering?

The discovery last week of bullets imbedded in a tree at Gettysburg reminded me of a transient mystery from my Manassas days.  Out in the area of Groveton woods–a couple hundreds yards east of where Porter staged for his August 30 attack–there stood a decrepit barn that once had been part of the farm of Montgomery Peters, a postwar resident on the battlefield. Like its owner, the barn was postwar too–we knew that–and so there was little urgency to halt its deterioration (the attitude would not be as dismissive today), which by the time I encountered it was decades old. Finally, the place just had to come down, and the park’s maintenance staff went at it.

Some of the timbers were ancient and huge, and when they cut into at least one of them, they found it contained several Civil War bullets.  But…the barn wasn’t there during the war?  A scramble to the source material confirmed that that was undeniably true. After some puzzling, we soon realized that the timbers had probably been cut from the adjacent woods, which had been the scene of heavy combat….

And that’s how bullets from the battle ended up in a barn that wasn’t there….

In July 1891, Virginians took the 30th anniversary of the First Battle of Manassas to memorialize Stonewall Jackson anew–by reinterring him beneath and dedicating a new statue in the cemetery in Lexington, Virginia. The event attracted tens of thousands, including a brigades-worth of veteran of Lee’s army. It was, and remains, one of the most vivid expressions of Lost Cause nostalgia.

The monument over Jackson's grave, dedicated July 21, 1891.

By 1891, such events were an accepted part of the American landscape, as the spirit of reconciliation was in full national bloom. By any measure, the reconciliation that America undertook is astonishing when compared to the common fate of rebels and rebellions in other parts of the world. Part of the ostensible deal: former Confederates could have their glory too. Indeed, Confederate glory would, over time, be amalgamated into American culture.

Across the nation, Americans joined the chorus that surrounded Stonewall Jackson’s reinterment, or at least witnessed it in silence. But, not everyone proclaimed the accepted theme of reconciliation. While we sometimes like to see our history in simple terms, there was in fact a strong undercurrent of unhappiness and bitterness that flowed both ways (North and South).

As evidence: this editorial from a Michigan newspaper, the Jackson Citizen Patriot, written in response to the ceremonies in Lexington on the 30th anniversary of Manassas. (Jackson, MI is claimed by some to be the birthplace of the Republican party, and  it was almost certainly the birthplace of the Ritz cracker, though that’s less relevant here.) In noting the ceremonies in Lexington, the Michigan editorialist foreshadowed his dark take by noting that the “remains of the heroic traitor” had been buried beneath the new statue. He conceded that Jackson was “scarcely second to Lee as their military hero” and that “no one need object to that,” except, he said, “that no public monument should ever be permitted in this nation in memory of a man who violated his oath of allegiance and sought to destroy the government he was educated and trained to defend.”

On that Bull Run anniversary in Lexington, the keynote was given by former Unionist turned Southern patriot Jubal Early. As the unhappy Michigan editor wrote, “Gen. Early closed his oration with the following words, which ought to be memorized by every union soldier for the purpose of denouncing them:

‘If I should ever apologize for any part or action taken by me in the war, may the lightning of a righteous heaven blast me from earth, and may I be considered as spawn of the earth by all honest men.’”

The thousands in attendance cheered Early’s words, to the utter annoyance of our editor in Michigan.

Mourners at Jackson's "first" grave. The site is still preserved, though now empty.

Yet those men claim to be loyal to the government and many of them did apologise for the part they took when, in order to hold office under the government, they subscribed to the ironclad oath of allegiance after the war. Were they sincere then, or are they loyal now? The Union soldiers who fought at Bull Run and for four years on scores of Virginia battlefields believe that Gen. Early ought to apologize for the part he took, and it is such speeches as his that cause public distrust of the loyalty of all who applaud them. It is an evidence that the same spirit of hatred to the union cause exists to-day as it did at the battle of Bull Run in 1861, but covered up by circumstances, only to break out when occasion is given like that of unveiling a statue of a rebel chief. The nation is now strong enough to be magnanimous, but it is not an encouragement of patriotism to permit such a demonstration as attended the Stonewall Jackson celebration at Lexington.

A far cry from the simple, happy, hands-across-the-wall image we prefer of post-Civil War America.

W.T. Grants, corner of Caroline and William. Courtesy Central Rappahannock Heritage Center.

It is likely the place most powerfully associated with the Civil Rights movement in Fredericksburg: the intersection of Caroline and William, at the very heart of downtown. In 1960–long before outlying strip malls rendered downtowns historical curiosities–this corner was the virtual center of commerce and shopping for the Fredericksburg region. Four prominent business sat on the four corners here, three of them major national chains. Department store Woolworths stood on the northeast corner, where R&R Antiques now stands. Across William, on the SE corner, was W.T. Grants (in the old Ben Franklin), a direct competitor to Woolworths both locally and on the national stage. Across Caroline from Grant’s (today it is the antique store next to Crown Jewelers) stood People’s Drug Store, then perhaps the most prominent chain drugstore in Virginia. Local Drugstore Bonds stood on the NW corner.

All three of the national chains had something in common: they all served food at in-store lunch counters. These counters would become a non-violent battleground in the struggle for civil rights.

Much was happening elsewhere that summer of 1860. At North Carolina A&T, students had started sit-in protests at lunch counters in Greensboro, and shortly thereafter enthusiasm for similar protests emerged in Fredericksburg. Problem was, Fredericksburg had no college or university that permitted African-American students, and so the lot fell to high school students to mount the challenge. 

Woolworths. Courtesy Central Rappahannock Heritage Center.

Local dentist Phillip Wyatt (president of the local NAACP chapter) and community activists Gladys Poles Todd and Mamie Scott worked with the students to organize the protests. They drilled in methods of non-violent protest, preparing for the resistance that would inevitably come. They dressed neatly. They learned not to touch merchandise–lest they be accused of theft. They organized shifts  committed to–by their simple presence–closing the lunch counters in the three chain stores on a rotating basis. 

On July 1, 19060, the protests began when eight students walked into Woolworth’s at 1 p.m.  They took their seats silently–some of them reading books–and did not order. Staff quickly put out signs, “This Section Closed.”  For an hour the students rotated between the three stores. As soon as the students left, staff reopened the counters to white customers. And so it would go.  The Free Lance-Star reported that “Police observed the afternoon demonstrations but indicated they contemplated no arrests unless a trespass complaint was filed by a store.” 

The sit-ins required extraordinary effort on the part of the students. Most of them lived in the Mayfield section of Fredericksburg and could get downtown only by walking. Every day. In the clutches of summer. 

But resistance came in many forms.  Managers of the three stores asserted that they would continue to operate the lunch counters “in accordance with local customs”–that is, that only white customers would be served. When protesters arrived, white customers on occasion rushed to claim the seats, disrupting the protest.  On July 7, protesters arrived at Grant’s to find packaged blankets occupying the seats at the lunch counters. Abiding by their training not to touch merchandise, they did not take seats. Instead, staff removed pillows whenever white customers approached, as apparently several did, then promptly replaced the pillows.  Store manager Elliott Middleton explained that Grants was having a sale on blankets that extended to “every department” in the store, including, apparently, the lunch counter.

People's drugstore is in the distance in this view of Caroline Street taken in the 1940s. By 1960, Woolworth's, seen at left, had moved to its location at the intersection. Courtesy Central Rappahannock Heritage Center.

Still, the protests continued throughout July.  The protesters quickly discovered that they need occupy only every third seat to close down a counter (a bit of strategem that allowed the twenty or so protesters to extend their reach), since, as protester Gaye Adegbelola remembered, “if someone white wanted to sit down they would have to sit down by someone black, and nobody white wanted to do that.” 

The site of Woolworth's today.

The protesters also urged a broader boycott of the offending stores, and so walking a picket line became part of the daily toil.. Ms. Adegbelola remembered that sympathetic white residents honored the boycott, but some reacted angrily. She recalled being surrounded in front of Grants, all the while reciting the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” in her mind. She also remembered another incident, when a crowed gathered outside People’s.  “It was late one evening and crowds gathered outside of People‘s and they yelled, ―Come out coons, come out coons.  They had Confederate Flags. To this day, that is part of why I abhor Confederate flags.”

A breakthrough came on the thirtieth day, when Grant’s and Woolworth’s quietly put out word the their lunch counters would be desegregated on July 30 at 4 p.m. At that hour, at the stores’ invitation, four African-Americans sat dawn to served in Woolworths and three in Grants.  V.R. Cutts, the manager at Woolworth’s explained, “We are pleased and feel it is now appropriate to announce the operation of the food department on a desegregated basis.”  Middleton, the manager at Grant’s, said simply, “they will be served.”

People’s Drugs–which was clearly the most reactionary of all the local businesses–continued to resist, and indeed it would be months before the counter at People’s accepted anyone other than white customers.

In 1960, this building housed People's Drugs--the most resistant of Fredericksburg's national chains.

But the seed of change had been planted–in just four weeks a bunch of high school kids overturned a policy that had been present in some form in Fredericksburg for centuries.  Other public places like local theaters…and eventually schools…soon desegregated as well. It was an astonishingly swift change that wrought by a small group of young people determined to see justice. 

The W.T. Grant building today.

Last week we shared what I think is one of the truly iconic, metaphorical images of the war. That same day, photographer George Barnard took several more images. They are generally familiar to people who have spent time with Manassas, but there are a few things that jumped out at me.

Back when I was up to my ears in Manassas stuff, I was startlingly disinterested in historic images, doing little more than glancing at the few wartime images of Manassas then available and blandly accepting conventional wisdom (or traditional captions) about them. But getting ready for various events or tours associated with the 150th thrust me back, and this month for the first time (I blush to say) I took a close look at the newly available hi-res scans of  the Barnard’s spring 1862 images. I was immediately struck by the presence of the children in most of the images–clearly kids who had tagged along with the photographer, and whom he had decided to incorporate into his photographs. More interesting is this: they are almost certainly the Thornberry children, who lived just up the hill from Sudley Springs Ford. Samuel was 12 in 1860; his brother Joseph, 7, toddler Annetta,  and Laura, 5. All four appear in the image of the ford at Sudley Springs on Catharpin Run (above), but the boys continued on with Barnard and appear in several other images, both of them very neatly attired in miniature Confederate uniforms.

Here is an image of the Thornberry House (more commonly called “Sudley Post Office,” though it was not used in that function until after the war). For time unending, this had been identified as the obscure Thornton House, which stood a mile or so northeast of Sudley. But some really excellent detective work by long-time (he was there BEFORE I got there in 1981) museum technician Jim Burgess confirmed that it is indeed an image of John and Martha Thornberry’s home (read his analysis of the image here).

And there, standing on the pile of boards in the yard are Samuel and Joseph Thornberry.

A couple of quick things about the Thornberry House. Most famously, it was to this house that Rhode Island Major Sullivan Ballou–he the author of what must now be the most famous of all Civil War letters–was carried after he was mortally wounded on Matthew’s Hill, and it was here that he died and was buried in the Thornberry’s cabbage patch days after the battle.  Laura Thornberry also remembered a horrific scene in the yard of the house during the Union army’s visit in March 1862–perhaps only days removed from this image. Here father had been wounded in the nearby battle on July 21 (the only local resident to become a military casualty), and had recently returned home.

After my father got back, living in his own home, a terrible noise was heard one night about 2 o’clock. Ten Federal soldiers came to our home and burst the front door down. A piece of it struck my mother in the face and disfigured her very badly as well as hurting her. They arrested my father…for [spying]. … The next morning before taking them to Washington, the soldiers got a rope to hang my father, placing it around his neck. This did not occur in our house but just outside of our yard. My brother begged and cried like a baby not to hang his father, “He didn’t do anything.” One of the men said “Search his pockets before you draw that rope.” There they found a diary of his whereabouts. That saved him; he always kept one.

For a nice modern view of the Thornberry house, check out Harry’s image over at Bull Runnings (in fact, you should check out Harry’s site completely–it’s excellent).

One of the most frequently published images Barnard captured during his visit to Sudley is this one, of children kneeling before makeshift graves crudely marked northwest of Sudley Church.

There again are Samuel and Joseph.

It’s interesting to ponder the circumstances and decisions that led the children to be included in these images. Clearly Barnard thought they added a touch of humanity to the views–and they do, especially in this one, which would be entirely forgettable if not for the children (those, by the way, are almost certainly Union graves they are kneeling before). It’s hard not to speculate that the kids’ Confederate uniforms had something to do with Barnard’s desire to use them. That they would agree–with the ostensible consent of their mother and father (who had recently been abused by the Yankees)–is also curious.

This view is taken on the north bank of Catharpin Run, looking southwest. That’s the spring house for Sudley Springs at right, and beyond is Sudley Church, sitting in an oft-described grove of trees. The road leading up from the ford is to the left.  The Thornberry’s house is just of the left edge of the image–it sat on top of the knob visible at left.  But, note…here again is a Thornberry, this time the younger boy, Joseph.

Barnard concluded his series with a couple images of Sudley Church itself.

Our friend John Cummings points out that in the view above the boys appear one final time, posing with a Union cavalryman on the front porch.  (John is about to publish a book on Manassas photography–as you may know, his work on Civil War photography has been nothing but impressive.)

Over the last fifteen years or so, my forays back into Manassas-related topics have always been unadventurous, relying almost entirely on things I uncovered and learned years ago rather than trying to hunt up (or even keep track of) new material. In the last week, though, I have had occasion to do some work in preparation for the tour I’ll be giving at Manassas this coming Friday as part of the 150th there–a look and walk through of the community of Sudley and its experience during and after First Manassas. This demanded that I not only revisit the material I’d accumulated way back when (it’s hard for me to admit that anything meaningful in my life could have happened nearly thirty years ago, hence the vagary), but also dig into what has become available since then. I’ve learned a good deal, some of it thanks to the seminal work of others.

Above is an image you and I have probably seen a thousand times, but never really took in closely. It shows four children sitting along Catharpin Run at Sudley Springs Ford, with seven Union cavalarymen looming on the far bank. Taken in March 1862, if there is an image that better serves as a metaphor for most white Virginians’ perception of the Civil War in its early months, I haven’t seen it: children facing down looming disaster in the form of Union soldiers.

We’ll write about the children visible in this image (for some of them appear in others taken the same day), but suffice to say that it’s virtually certain that these are the four children of John and Martha Thornberry, who lived just up the hill from the ford. Their ages and gender match what we know about the Thornberry family, and there was no other collection of offspring that matched in the Sudley Area:  Samuel was 12 in 1860; his brother Joseph, 7, stands next to him; that’s likely toddler Annetta with her hand on her forehead, and at the left is Laura, 5. Laura would later in life write a brief memoir about her family’s experience during the war.

Opposite them on the far bank of Catharpin Run are seven Union cavalrymen standing next to the spring house that marked (and whose rubble still marks) Sudley Springs. It was here that nearly one-third of  the Union army crossed Catharpin Run on its way to battle on July 21, 1861 (and where we will be doing a tour this Friday night at 6 p.m., as part of the Manassas 150th activities).

They’re not being nearly still enough to satisfy the photographer, George Barnard, for all are blurred in the image except the man at the far right. Still, there is enough detail to see that one of the soldiers has his sabre drawn, perched menacingly on his shoulder.

This is one of a series of images taken in and around Sudley Springs on that March day in 1862. We’ll look at the rest of them in coming posts.

Let me recommend to you strongly Garry Adelman’s new book, Manassas Battlefields Then and Now, which identifies for the first time many long-known-but-little understood photographs of the Manassas battlefields. It’s a rare thing when virtually everyone who knows something about Manassas (or anything else) agrees an author gets most everything right, but in this case it is so. Garry did a terrific job. You can order it here.

Here is Stonewall Jackson at the Centennial Re-enactment of First Manassas,, 1961, a topic we will explore in future posts.

My apologies for being distracted from blogging lately–some heavy business at the park and vacations have intervened to rob of almost all thinking and writing time. It was indeed my intent to slow the pace of posts on here, but certainly not to the extent you have suffered of late.

As many of you know, I have written a great deal about Manassas over the years. There was a time when I was completely Manassas-ed out, and had little desire to read, speak, or see another word about Manassas.  But, have recovered from all that, and lately have been doing a lot of reflection on what I did and did not to do as it relates to the Civil War landscape around Manassas. One of the things that strikes me is the degree to which, in two books on the battles, I almost completely ignored the civilian landscape upon which the battles took place–hardly delving deeper than identifying property owners, with a few details added here and there. Lately I have been doing some prep work for a tour I’ll be doing at Manassas as part of the 150th–a walk through the former community of Sudley. And so I have re-engaged a bit on things Manassas, and I have enjoyed it a good deal. Not surprisingly, there are as a result a few things I’d like to write about related to Manassas. Rather than start another blog, I have decided simply to expand the scope of this one a bit to range northward from Fredericksburg occasionally.

I do this without any desire to intrude on the bloggish turf staked out by Harry Smeltzer over at Bull Runnings, a site I enjoy and respect very much (and recommend to you highly). Harry’s work is largely focused on compiling sources related to the battle; mine will be to occasionally look at issues of landscape, some mysteries, and maybe a few conundrums as they relate to Manassas.  We will not be leaving Fredericksburg behind…but will be simply broadening the scope of the blog a bit.  I’ll have a few Manassas-related items in the coming weeks, as well as a look at “Sit-in Corner” in Fredericksburg, and more.

I will concede that the business of blogging is a bit consumptive and exhaustive. For me, this expansion of the scope is a bit of a boost with respect to interest and energy.  I hope Noel, who has considerable expertise in things related to Northern Virginia, will join in on the discussion as well–as he has so often on things Fredericksburg related.  Onward.