Fridy Photo Round Up: Wilderness, Chancellorsville and Spotsylvania Battlefields

Wilderness battlefield 2010.

3 Handsom boys at the site of a major battle in 1864.

This is the battle where Longstreet lost his arm and also where soldiers were left unburried for over a year. This location looked as woody then as it does today, although now it is dotted with houses amidst the trees. I imagine that this was a gruesome forest back 150 years ago! Makes the serenity almost ironic today, that a site of so much horror could be the location of neighborhoods and bird songs...

Chancellorsville has alway had the feeling of wonder for me because it is such an iconic battle for the loss of the great general Thomas Jackson.

in about a 15 mile radius there were four major battles of the war.

Two crazy boys at chancellorsville.

I had to have proof I was actually there!

a picture of the location of the shooting of Jackson in 1900.

Where jackson was shot in present day 2010.

The norther position, facing toward the location of Jacksons shooting.

Artillery.

My camera was running out of batteries so I only got pictures of portions of the Union position at Spotsylvania battlefield.

Federal Earthworks facing toward the bloody angle and the intense fighting at the front. This is back about 1/2 mile from where the major fighting occured.

trenches heading up to the major action.

I unfortunately didn't get any photos of the Bloody angle, where a tree was actually shot in two by the fierce nature of the battle. You should have seen the horse shoe trenches the south dug out to battle the northerners. This battle was a very hard one! and only a few days following the Wilderness battle! The south snuck away from this engagement without a clear victor, but they would not have stood another day. I am really amazed at the violence these people endured over the four years of this war, make the Iraq/Afghan conflict look like childs play in my estimation, especially when you realize this happened in their own towns and counties, country side and villages. Brutality at home is much different than brutality in another nation, not that the brutality is any more or less destructive, but that they endured it for four years. At the cost of over 600,000 lives. Makes you think.