Photos From This Past Weekend

These are most of the photos that I took in Virginia last weekend. There are a few more, but these are definitely the best of the lot. They appear pretty much in chronological order.

This is the United Daughters of the Confederacy monument to Brig. Gen. Turner Ashby. It sits on the spot where Ashby was killed, which is just outside Harrisonburg. It sits in a remote, tiny park run by the UDC. JMU is building athletic fields right next to it, so it remains to be seen how those fields will impact this handsome monument.

These two signs sit about twenty yards from the Ashby monument.

This is the UDC monument to the Battle of Cross Keys. There are a number of interpretive markers around it.

This large, multi-panel marker denotes the battles of Cross Keys and Port Republic, which were fought several days and a few hundred yards apart during Stonewall Jackson’s 1862 Valley Campaign.

Jeff Wert delivering the opening address at the first session of the conference.

Gordon Rhea delivering the keynote talk on Friday night, which was an excellent overview of the entire Overland Campaign.

This is the Widow Tapp Field at the Wilderness. I shot this more or less at the location of Robert E. Lee’s headquarters.

This is a line of Confederate earthworks running through the Widow Tapp Field.

This little monument marks the spot where the famous “Lee to the Rear” marker sits on the edge of the Widow Tapp Field. It’s a nifty little monument, a few yards from the Texas monument.

This is the Texas monument. It is made of the same rose marble as all Texas monuments, and sits a few yards from the “Lee to the Rear” marker.

We’ve now moved on to the Spotsylvania Court House battlefield. This monument marks the spot where Maj. Gen. John Sedgwick, the commander of the Sixth Corps, was killed by a Confederate sharpshooter just after saying, “They couldn’t hit an elephant at this range.” Wrong.

This is one of the tiny handful of monuments on the Spotsylvania battlefield. There are three of them right at the Bloody Angle in the Mule Shoe. This is one of those three, the 15th New Jersey Infantry of the Sixth Corps. Just a few yards away is the marker to the 22-inch thick tree that was felled by being struck by so many bullets during the horrific fighting for the Bloody Angle.

These are re-created Confederate earthworks on Lee’s last line at Spotsylvania. They actually sit astride an actual and exceptionally well-preserved line of Confederate earthworks that runs through the woods you can see in the background.

This is the only monument of any sort on the North Anna battlefield, and it’s less than twenty years old. It sits right at the entrance to the county park.

Bobby Krick deep in thought, listening to Gordon discussing Ledlie’s ill-fated attack on the Confederate lines at North Anna.

After leaving the North Anna battlefield, we made our way across the Pamunkey River at some of the crossings employed by Grant, made a quick stop at Enon Church to discuss the Battle of Haw’s Shop, and then stopped at this 1725 house. This is the Shelton house. Patrick Henry was married in this house. It was donated to the Park Service last year, and will eventually serve as the visitor center/headquarters for the Park Service’s new Totopotomoy Creek unit. It’s not yet open to the public.

Bobby Krick, Gordon Rhea, and yours truly on the battlefield at Cold Harbor.

Our final stop was a quick visit to the Yellow Tavern battlefield. This is the monument to Jeb Stuart that marks the spot where he received his mortal wound. It’s a favorite monument of mine in what Bobby likes to describe as the “postage stamp park”, describing the tiny oasis in the middle of a subdivision where the monument stands.

That’s it. This was, as they say, a busman’s holiday for me. I had a fabulous time. How could you not have a fabulous time with the likes of Jeff Wert, Gordon Rhea, and Bobby Krick?