About a month ago I visited Spotsylvania Courthouse National Battlefield while on my way down to Richmond. I knew that this battlefield was part of a single Fredericksburg-Spotsylvania Counties park system and didn’t have a visitor facility at the battlefield, but I didn’t want to go out of my way to stop at the Fredericksburg NBP visitor center for the muffin stamp. I was kind of hoping that in the interpretive shelter they might have the stamp and ink pad in a box, like they do at Fort Washington Park, but they don’t. If you want a stamp to mark your visit, you’ll have to stop in the Fredericksburg or Chancellorsville NBP visitor center.

Anyhow, I have always wanted to see this NBP because of all the descriptions of the bloody, protracted hand-to-hand fighting that occurred at the Bloody Angle on May 12th. It’s just one of those things that is hard to imagine. 20 hours! I wanted to see the battlefield for myself in order to try and picture it.

Unfortunately, I can’t provide any photos to help you picture it. My camera batteries were low and my spares had not been charged. The first (and last) photo I took was of this plaque:

To imagine that small arms fire could bring down a 22-inch oak tree might tell all you need to know about the intensity of this battle without other photographs.

…and then my batteries died.

It is an amazing battlefield. On the Confederate lines, can you imagine seeing 20,000 Union troops of the 2nd Corps emerge out of the woods just a few hundred yards in front of you in the early morning mist?

Hiking over to the treeline, can you imagine walking out of the woods that May 12th morning and looking across the terrain and slightly upwards at the Confederate breastworks, bristling with men and cannon?

Casualties were tremendous; regiments were wrecked and yet there is a paucity of monuments at the site. Personally, I expected dozens clustered right there. There are good and bad consequences to that, but that’s a discussion for another post.