We got up later than we had planned, and didn’t get moving very fast, but we were finally off about noon. Today we were driving out to Chancellorsville, to see the site of an important and famous Civil War battle. Mr.15 thought he was in heaven! Unfortunately, again we had a problem. It was about an hours drive from our hotel to Chancellorsville, but there was so much traffic, it took three! Oh well, we finally got there and they had a very interesting movie in the visitor center, and we looked around for a while and listened to a Ranger’s talk about one of the Generals in the battle, Stonewall Jackson.
Even though he was on the side of the Confederates, Jackson was quite a hero. He was mortally wounded at Chancellorsville, and had his left arm amputated. A few days later he died of pneumonia. His men had so much respect for him, that at the field hospital where they had amputated his arm they saved the arm from disposal with the other amputated limbs and took it to a nearby farm, where the brother of one of the officers lived. The arm was buried in the family cemetery there. So after we got some lunch, we went out to Ellwood farm and visited the home there, which was built before the Revolutionary War, and of course the cemetery as well. The home had served as an important location during the Revolution, and was both a field hospital for the Confederates and Headquarters for the Union at different times. The house was being restored and they had removed some sections of plaster from the walls, so we got to see the board and batten construction which was typical of pre-Revolutionary construction.
Mr.15’s hero is General Lee of the Confederate army, and it has been very interesting to have so much information about Lee, and the other facets of the war from the Confederate side. We had an awesome discussion in the car. We talked about how a person’s sense of right or wrong was effected by the society in which he/she lived and how although by all accounts Lee was an extremely moral and righteous person, he still supported the South’s right to slavery. How could he do that when slavery is so clearly wrong? We also talked about how our country as a whole had changed its views on what “Liberty and Justice for All” means. In Revolutionary times it was only for white landowners over the age of 21. Now women, blacks, non-landowners, and everyone is entitled to the same freedoms. The emphasis was on *how* and *why* and I really feel as if the boys learned a lot, I know I did.
We got back so late that we didn’t do hubby’s birthday again. LOL, poor man! We are trying again tomorrow, as we got in and to bed very late again.
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