Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 307, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 December 1910 — A Visit to Old Battlefields [ARTICLE]

A Visit to Old Battlefields

Mr. Editor: I promised to give you a short account of our trip south and east and will try in my own way to tell you of it. leaving Rensselaer on Monday noon we arrived in Richmond, Va., about daylight on Thanksgiving morning. After breakfast we started to look over the city. Seeing a bunch of police we asked the reason for so many in a group and learned that President Taft was expected, so w,e waited and had a good look at him. We also saw a flying machine. We then started for the old battlefield, Fair Oaks and Seven Pines. The roads look natural but the field itself does not, as it has grown up with brush and pine, but the old breastworks are plain to be seen, while the bullet-scarred trees mark the place where so many gave up their lives for the preservation of this union we are enjoying today. We were in St. Paul’s church where Davis received the dispatch from Lee telling him of the surrender of the army of Northern Virginia. The old church is in a good state of preservation. We next visited the old Spottswood house, where Davis and his cabinet met while the war was going on. It was now a confederate museum and the old confederate battleflags carefully preserved, are very much in evidence. Lee’s uniform, also that of Gen. J. E. B. Stewart, are In glass cases. We were shown the building and relics by an old “Johnny Reb,” who was very willing to show us around and explain everything of interest. In the evening we started to Petersburg, 23 miles south, where the mine was up in 1864. There is still plainly to be seen the effects of shot and shell, the scars of that fearful seige. Petersburg has many buildings of interest to the visitor. One, in particular, is a church built 1735. The building where Washington had his headquarters during the war of 1776-77 still stands and is well preserved. Coming back to Richmond, we started back to Fredericksburg, which to me brought feelings I can not describe. It was here that a useless sacrifice of nearly 15,000 lives was made and many of them were my comrades, all through the blunder of ordering men into a death trap. The old St. Mary’s house, riddled with shot and shell, is still standing, and the stone wall and sunken road have changed but little in more than a half century. We saw the old house or tavern, the Rising Sun, where Washington and his generals had their headquarters and the house where his mother lived and died. We left Fredericksburg and went to Alexandria and from there to Mt. Vernon, about 16 miles from Washington. This was the old house and all the surroundings are beautifully cared for. We passed through the great building and then to the outside, coming to the old family carriage wherein the “Father of our Country” had ridden in state a century and a half ago. Going down toward the Potomac, where the scene is the grandest in the world, we came to the tomb of George Washington. We thought we might get some little relic to remind us some times of having been there, but seeing a little building nearby we wei e anxious to see what was there and getting near we saw therein a “colored gemman” watching us and our relic hunting was at an end. You can buy relics but you pay for them, too. It seemed to us that the general must have been a good manager. He had a building for each of his numerous family. A carpenter shop, a spinning room and others where work could be carried on in bad weather or when the employees on the big plantation were not otherwise employed. The old loom and spinning wheels are still there. From ML Vernon we went to Washington, where we remained two days, visiting the many points of interest at the national capital. The capitol and other public buildings are great monuments to the progress of our nation. Washington is very different from what It was in 1861, and all through the war things were in confusion. Now all is peaceful and the city has been beautified by many magnificent public buildings, the streets have been the parks beautified, many appropriate statues erected and Washington now looks like a happy home for the rich, and it was made possible by the heroism and bravery of the American volunteer soldier. We also went to Arlington, a beautiful national cemetery, and the former home of Gen. Robert E. Lee. On Christmas night, 1861, I drew my first pay as a soldier at this house. The cemetery is a beautiful spot and here rest many men of the union army, and of the country, conspicuous among them being General Sheridan, whose resting place is marked by a large monument. From the old Lee mansion can be had a fine view of the City of Washington, about 4 miles away. Old Fort Myer is near Arlington, and there in the fall of 1861 the 6th and 7th Wisconsin and the 19th Indiana regiments were encamped. It is now a cavalry post and fine build-

By JOHN KRESLER

ings for men and horses have been constructed, altogether different from the quarters the old boys had from ’6l to ’65. We next went to Baltimore. My companion, Everett Halstead, was not very favorably impressed with that city, although it numbers something over 600,000 inhabitants. From Baltimore we went to Gettysburg, ground which was the scene of the greatest battle in the history of the world, the scene of such terrible carnage the first three days of July, 1863. More men were lost on this battlefield those three days than on any other field during the civil war, for the time it lasted. It was purchased and is now owned by the U. S. government. Hallowed by the blood of its heroes it has been set aside as a sacred spot that none may ever devastate. Our mighty government has cast its protecting wing about it and made it one of the most beautiful spots in the country. To the west of Gettysburg is Blue Ridge, Big and Little Round Top, Culp’s Hill and other places of historic interest. More than four hundred monuments and seventy tablets have been erected on the battleThey are placed all over the field, while more than a thousand markers show the positions of the different troops. The same grim old batteries, which sent death over the very ground, now stand in silence, but they bear token of their harvest of death, while on all sides are trophies of the triumph which cost so dearly in its toll of human lives. Five great towers for observation purposes have been erected by the U. S. government on the highest points, giving a fine view of the battlefield. Over a hundred miles of fine roads have been built giving easy access to all parts of the battlefield. We found the marker where the Maltese Cross of the Fifth Corps (of which I was a member) stood in line of battle for two days and nights, where the batteries of our command made such awful gaps in Pickett’s brave but misguided battalions, who would close up the rents and move grandly. forward until torn literally to pieces in the vain attempt to crush the Union center. We found five regiments from old Indiana, the 19th, 20th, 10th, 7th and 14th, and I think one regiment of cavalry, the 3rd. Five states have erected monuments to their sons that participated in that battle, viz., New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota and Ohio, and they show in bronze letters on great tablets the names of all whose participated in the battle, and those who were killed and those who survived, and I found my own name in bronze letters on the Pennsylvania monument which was dedicated last summer. All over the little town are marks of the struggle. Shot and shell are witnesses of the strife. Notably among the buildings was the Jennie Wade home. It was in this house that she was killed, while working at dough and baking bread for the Union soldiers. Although others had left their homes Jennie Wade sought to relieve suffering from hunger among the soldiers and stuck to her kitchen and her young life was destroyed by bullets that passed through the kitchen door. There were several holes through the door, where the bullets had entered. This house is preserved as a tribute to her heroism, and a monument in the citizens’ cemetery shows where she sleeps. At Gettysburg there is also a fine national cemetery where rest brave, men, who sacrificed all they had, laid down their lives for their country and left us a land of freedom, a stainless flag and unlimited possibilitties. We had a grand trip and I wish that all readers of The Republican could take a similar one, receiving more direct an impression of the great loss of life, of the marvelous sacrifices, of the real agony of a real war, and then to know that a good government has done much to perpetuate the memories of the sons who conquered by death and'< suffering, a foe that aimed at freedom, the very institution on which our country was founded. It would bring an old soldier back to the days of strife and it would be a lesson to all of what real war means. To me it was a visit combining different emotions. It brought back the memory of fallen comrades, of a fallen foe, of saddened homes and broken hearts, and it Impressed the lesson that from the ruin of human life had grown a greater nation, a nation made possible only by the spilling of human blood. And I that the men who died were a part of the nation, they were brothers to those who survived and they were “casting their bread upon the waters.” I realized that the brothers who survived are the nation of today and it was plain by the purchase and beautification of these old battlefields that the brothers gone before are remembered by the beneficiaries of their sacrifice. And I realized that the chasm that brought on the war had been healed and that a united country with a common purpose is the result. And I realized that, although much of the loss of life might have been averted at times, yet the sacrifices on the whole were needed to

settle the problem of human slavery and the power of the state to withdraw from the nation and I can but hope that the lessons so dearly learned will inspire the present and future residents of this land of the free to make the most of it.