Day 112: End of Innocence

Our morning of worship at Ashburn Presbyterian Church, with longtime friends who'll soon move back to Colorado, was a bright and shiny time in an otherwise dreary and, thanks to our park visit, sad day. The Manassas Battlefield was the scene of the first battle of the Civil War. Following the attack on Ft. Sumter in April 1861, Lincoln asked for 90-day volunteers for the Union army...and sent them to take the Conferedate capital, Richmond, in July. On the 21st, they engaged with a similarly "green" Confederate army at Manassas, a key railroad junction between Washington and Richmond.

Unbelievably, spectators gathered to watch what was believed to be a short skirmish that would end the war. Blankets were spread on nearby hills with a view of the junction, and picnic baskets and bottles of wine were opened. The realities of battle were unknown to all but the few veteran soldiers who had seen action in the Mexican Wars. The first battle of Manassas, also known as Bull Run, shattered that innocence, ushering in the realization that the South's secession was not an easily overturned situation. Another battle in the same fields little more than a year later emphasized that fact.

By day's end of that first battle, when the Confederates declared a victory, nearly 900 men and boys lay dead in the fields, and thousands more were wounded. Due to the astronomical rates of infection in wounds ranging from scrapes to amputations, the death toll grew much higher, ultimately reaching 5,000. The Union army's fast retreat to Washington was made more difficult by roads clogged with terrified "tourists" rushing back to the city. Many residents of Manassas Junction had no home to return to, many of them destroyed and/or pillaged beyond recognition. One cannonade ordered upon a house from which sharpshooters were firing had the tragic consequence of claiming the life of a civilian...85-year-old Judith Henry. She was bedridden and had refused an evacuation in the early minutes of the fighting.

The family of Wilmer McLean was one of those dislocated. Their home had been used as the Confederate headquarters during the battle, their barn a field hospital. Rather than restore and repair, McLean moved his family to a little town in southern Virginia...Appomatox Court House. Imagine McLean's disbelief four years later when his new parlor was the site of Gen. Robert E. Lee's formal surrender.

We've reached our max on battles...at least for the next few days. In the weeks ahead we'll visit battlefields elsewhere in Virginia, the Carolinas and Tennessee; but tomorrow we'll focus on a Maryland National Park that teaches about plantation life prior to the Civil War. I'm sure it will have its own set of difficult facts to swallow.

The Henry home is the 1870s rebuild of the original, which was bombed by Union cannons and in which Judith Henry was killed.