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Show rnr j v iaa " ; .."R $r &orjn.vamA conxrirouj VXT It CUtl7J ' By ELMO SCOTT WATSON Jl M?vV ' l. J"" - VW" J 4 MONO the many national parks 'st t- 1 . JVJ t'V J&i l which Uncle Sam ha. set aside .4 'or the enjoyment of hi. chIL -ZF r dren. none I. more Interesting " - .?"T I nor has had a more thrilling his- . fWii . fi j ' "" t'i . - 4 , I tory than the Fredericksburg vyjg " --J" .f I ft and Spotsylvania national bat- dBArrCU.ORSV3XX EATZZZtUXD By ELMO 8COTT WATSON 14 MONO the many national parks i which Uncle Sum has set aside , ; for the enjoyment of bla chll- r dren, none is more Interesting F D0' hi" '"d a more thrilling hls- tory than the Fredericksburg 1t and Spotsylvania national bat- JgTJ m, tiefleld park, the latest addition Ji&L Jm to the list of our national play-(fsJ play-(fsJ Brounds. For here wns Anier-sSjSJ' Anier-sSjSJ' lea's greatest sceue of courage, g" O a small section that could be Included In-cluded within a semicircle with a radius of twelve miles, an area that has been , . appropriately called "The cockpit of America," ' where more armies maneuvered and more men ' were killed and wounded than on any other similar sim-ilar area In modern history prior to the World war. This park, which was dedicated late last year by President Coolldge, Includes six battlefields battle-fields Fredericksburg, Chancellorsvllle, Cold Harbor, Salem Church, the Wilderness, and Spot-aylvanla Spot-aylvanla Courthouse. Here In the space of nine . days of actual fighting 700,000 men struggled heroically he-roically and 100,000 were killed or wounded. No less than nineteen generals were shot down on these fields. Among them were Jackson, Long-street, Long-street, Cobb, Hays, Bennett, Grey, Jenkins, Dan- . lei, Sedgwick and Wadsworth. It Is a curious coincidence that the latter was the grandfather of Sen. James Wadsworth of New York, -chairman of the military affairs committee which passed on the bill presented to congress last year for the establishment of this national battlefield park. , . , '"History stumbles over Itself In this neighborhood," neighbor-hood," says a recent writer. Confederate soldiers fought In the same trenches thot their Revolutionary Revolution-ary ancestors had used In same sections. Two battles bat-tles bad to be fought at Manassas before the curse of war left that field. Two were fought at Cold . Harbor and two at Fredericksburg and two in the Wilderness thickets. In Fredericksburg reminders re-minders of Colonial, Revolutionary and Civil war days are to be found on the same block. The Wilderness stretches as grim and tangled today as la the days of the W'l ; the Chancellor House, Spotsylvania Courthouse, the trenches of Bloody Angle must all appear very much as they did then." For this region was the very heart of the conflict between the two greatest forces of the Union and the Confederacy, the Army of Northern Virginia, defending Richmond and the Army of the Potomac, seeking to break Its way ' through the cordon of Gray to the Confederate capttol. The first fighting in the section took place in December, 1802, when Burnslde attempted to capture cap-ture Richmond by way of Fredericksburg. First bombarding the town he crossed the Rappahannock Rappahan-nock under cover of his own guns and attacked Lee's entrenchment on Marye's Heights to the west of it After a battle that lasted all day, ' during which the Irish Brigade made Itself iru-mortal iru-mortal by Us series of hopeless charges on the Heights and the Sunken Road at the foot of them, Burnslde withdrew, recrossing the river. He lost 12,905 men and the Confederacy 8,377. Burnslde, after Fredericksburg, was succeeded - by Hooker who early the next spring moved his men tip the north bank of the Rappahannock and , crossed' at three different places, marching by as . many different roads towards Chancellorsvllle, ; ': where his forces converged and started toward ' Fredericksburg. Through this move Hooker had I I gotten behind Lee's army while Sedgwick, with 28,000 men, was in front of it Learning of the ' move, Lee faced bis army west and advanced to ; meet Hooker, leaving behind a small force to oppose Sedgwick, still at Fredericksburg The , Union-forces planned to crush Lee between them. , Sedgwick broke through at Fredericksburg and advanced to Salem church where Lee sent rein-i rein-i forcements to bis troops which had retreated be-1 be-1 fore the advancing Federals. The two forces clashed on May 3 and Sedgwick was driven back on the Rappahannock, crossing at Banks Ford, . seven miles above Fredericksburg. In the meantime Lee met Hooker's advance at Chancellorsvllle, defeated the Federals and forced them to recross the Rappahannock several sev-eral miles above the ford at which Sedgwick's troops had crossed. The losses Id the fighting were 10,845 for the Federals and 12,403 for the Confederates. Lee followed up bis advantage by advancing into Pennsylvania, was defeated at Gettysburg and the two armies returned to Virginia where they wintered. Grant had assumed command of the Northern army, Jackson had been killed and his place in the Southern army taken by Long-street. Long-street. On May 5, a year after the battle of Chancellorsvllle, Chancel-lorsvllle, Grant crossed the Rappahannock about fifteen miles above Fredericksburg and started to-, to-, wards the Wilderness. Lee, who had wintered at Orange, moved east to Intercept blm. It was critical time In the life of the Union. Notwithstanding Not-withstanding Gettysburg the North was discouraged. discour-aged. He,r sea commerce was badly disrupted, volunteering, which had begun spontaneously and with burning enthusiasm, bad stopped and she bad been forced to resort to the draft Polltlclol plotting was rife, demands to end the war were insistent Had Lee forced Grant back across the Rappahannock there would have been a cry for an armistice, backed by Europe. At "the opening in the Wilderness" the two armies met and began what some historians place among the 20 decisive battles in the history of the world. For three days they struggled for the strategic key to the situation, the Brock road for Grant the woy to Richmond, for Lee the means ot blocking the movement and forcing the Federals again across the Rappahannock. The two great armies swayed and fell back and advanced in turn. One hour the Brock road appeared to be Lee's, again it was almost within Grant's grasp. Then, slowly, the tide of gray began to sweep past the Brock road. Grant's army fell back stubbornly, contesting every inch of ground. His career threatened, Grant sent reinforcements. re-inforcements. These, too, gave way before the slowly advancing rebels. But suddenly the Confederates Con-federates ceased to move forward. Concentrated I effort was momentarily succeeded by hesitation and confusion. For the second time chance and fate had combined com-bined against the fortunes of the South. A single sin-gle bullet, fired by one of his own men, bad struck down General Longstreet within less then two miles from the spot where almost exactly one year before "Stonewall" Jackson, Longstreet's predecessor, also had been killed by his own men. Grunt seized the situation and attacked. The Confederates withdrew to their first lines. The Brock road was Grant's. The next day he began moving over it towards Spotsylvania Courthouse, on the way to Richmond. Lee, to the east of him, began to cut a road through the woods to meet him. At the Wilderness the Confederates had lost 10,641 men, and the Federals 17,668. The race for Spotsylvania, ten miles away, con-tlnued con-tlnued with straggling encounters until the armies met at Bloody Angle where took place the greatest hand-to-hand and small arms fighting fight-ing that is recorded in history. Here for 12 hours nearly 60,000 men struggled for the possession pos-session of a section of land containing less than 500 acres, not larger than the average Virginia farm. At times the ground became cluttered with the dead and dying. Lines of Union troops advanced to the trenches and fired blank into the faces of the Confederates who rose to defend them, whole companies hacked each other to pieces with bayonets, bay-onets, a tree 12 Inches in diameter, a portion of which is preserved in the Smithsonian Institute, was cut down, bit by bit, by musket bulls. The wounded could not be cared for and many were left on the field to die unattended. The fighting at Bloody Angle entirely overshadowed the fighting fight-ing on the other seven miles of line along the battle front at Spotsylvania. After Bloody Angle the exhausted armies fought no more for nearly a week. Then Grant began a "siding" movement toward Richmond and Lee moved along on parallel lines. In a short, time both armies were on the North Anna river, out of the park area. The Union forces had lost at Spotsylvania 10,577 men and the Confederates proportionately more, their killed and wounued being 11,583. The total losses for both sides in the fivj buttles on the park area was 102,811. The passage of the bill In congress last year which set aside this area, not as a memorial to war but as a monument to the 100,000 who gave their lives to the nation, marked the culmination of an effort which began more than thirty years ago and which bad been made by the people of both the North and the South. Although the effort ef-fort was unsuccessful for many years these fields of battle were places to which thousands of Americans made patriotic pilgrimages every year and In the march of modern progress they found golf balls instead of cannon balls whlzalng across the fields. For famous old Mannsfield hall on the battlefield of Fredericksburg, had become a country coun-try club and the game of golf was being played over the field once drenched with blood. Cannon balls which had been unearthed in the vicinity were used as tee markers. It was on the porcb of this country club that President Coolldge stood last fall at the dedication of the new national na-tional park, and said: "The unanimous action of congress in passing the military parks bill and the Joint participation of the people of both the North and the South In carrying into effect the : law Is another welcome demonstration tn a long tine of events not only that the war is over but that reconciliation Is becoming complete." General plans for the park which are now being be-ing carried forward by the government reveal that the project is one of the greatest of its kind ever undertaken. The builders of the park propose pro-pose to strive for beauty. Scores of miles of fine roads will be built, lined with grass lawns and abutting the trenches In which the northern and southern armies met on the fields of Fredericksburg, Fredericks-burg, Chancellorsvllle, Spotsylvania and the- Wilderness. Wil-derness. Along these roads will be long lanes of blossoming trees, cherry trees, dogwood trees, Jnponlca and many other specimens, some of them very rare, the purpose being to so plant the trees that at all times of the year when any trees are tn bloom many hundreds of blossoming trees of one or another variety will offer a colorful drive longer and as beautiful as the famed cherry cher-ry drive at Washington. The roads will be well built and about the same width, but at spots the roads will swell into large parks, with beautiful stone pr rustic bridges In imitation of nature, and with memorials and markers placed upon them. Beside these areas, where the government will build large parks along the parklike roads, it is expected that states, organizations and Individuals will establish parks on the roads as memorials. An effort will be made to get away from the stilted monuments peculiar to battlefields, and to have placed upon these fields only monuments and markers which have inherent beauty and which are to be placed In spots which can be made attractive and where shrubs and flowers will add charm and there nooks and benches will be provided for those who want to rest Every advantage is to be taken of the natural landscape to add beauty to the roads and parks. In order that the battlefield park may not be marred by ungraceful monuments or shrubbery, the fine -arts, commission in Washington will pass upon every design and nothing but those which they approve can be built |