Battlefields and Museums

This last week I was able to go on a couple of field trips. Wednesday we went to some of the sites of the 7 Days' Battle, including Botswain's Swamp and Malvern Hill. Here we were able to see where Lee ordered his troops into sheets of fire and huge destruction. Botswain's Swamp involved sending troops through woods to face three separate lines of Union troops, two of which were up a hill. The fire the Confeds faced was continuous, and absolutely murderous. Not pretty if you were a Confederate. 1800 casualties in a short time. Malvern Hill took place days later, and involved Lee sending troops through a relatively narrow front against massed Union artillery and troops on top of a gently sloped hill. Looking back on it now, it seems to have been a "warm-up" for what happened at Gettysburg. End result of the 7 Days? 20,000 Confederate casualties, 16,000 Union casualties.

Yesterday I drove a van for the group to Pamplin Park, a museum near Petersburg dedicated to the Civil War soldier. All kinds of cool stuff there. Outside there were surviving earthworks from when the long siege took place. Inside the two museums was info on how Petersburg fell, and how common soldiers typically lived in their armies, whether Union or Confederate.

I learned some details about army life that are sure to thrill my students. Lice was a huge issue for the men. To get them out of their clothing, sometimes they'd walk up to the campfire and shake out their clothes really hard. If the lice was big enough, it would make a popping noise as it exploded in the fire, just like the sound of popcorn. Men also spent much of their time in camp playing cards, dice, and gambling in other ways as well. Some of them would get so addicted to gambling they were known to bet on a race between two lice. At other times they enjoyed playing a newly-invented game: baseball.

Other items of interest at Pamplin park: In the museum, two bullets found fused together, which had happened instantaneously after they had hit each other in midair! A short video on amputation, which replicated the process in somewhat gory detail. In a slave quarter on the plantation there, a video showing the viewpoints of six different types of people in the 1850s towards slavery. These included a northern abolitionist preacher, a southern plantation lady, a southern female slave, a free black in PA, a non-slaveholding southern farmer, and a free soiler from Illinois. Alas, the video was not available for purchase in the bookstore, or else my students would have been sure to experience these somewhat corny yet historical renditions of various viewpoints. Despite the absence of the video, I was still able to raid the gift shop for some items that I hope will help in learning about the Civil War this fall.