The photos below come from a recent visit to Monocacy National Battlefield Park just south of Frederick Maryland - site of the “Battle that Saved Washington”. Civil War Chronicles will trace the major battles of the Eastern Theater of the war through photos and brief histories.
The Battle of Monocacy is a bit of an outlier in that it wasn’t really a major battle of the Eastern Theater of the Civil War, but a minor one with major implications. While Generals Grant and Lee were engaged in the final grappling of the war around Petersburg, south of Richmond, Lee wanted a distraction to pull some of Grant’s army away. He attempted this by sending General Jubal Early to go on the offensive and attack into Union territory, the third Confederate invasion of the North during the war. Early was sent with 15,000 men to threaten Washington D.C. and, if possible, to raid the prison camp at Point Lookout and free the Confederate soldiers being held there. Lee also knew that a presidential election was looming and he hoped that another invasion of the North might bring about the defeat of Lincoln and a favorable end to the long and brutal war.
Early’s army crossed the Potomac River into Maryland on the 4th of July, 1864 and marched past Sharpsburg, the site of the Battle of Antietam two years earlier. You can’t march 15,000 infantry troops across a state without anyone noticing, and word quickly got to General Lew Wallace who was then the Union commander in Baltimore. Wallace gathered what men he could muster and quickly set off towards the west. Thinking quickly, Wallace decided to head towards Monocacy Junction, just south of Frederick, Maryland. He didn’t know where the Confederates were headed, but this point would allow his troops to defend the Georgetown Pike to Washington, the National Road to Baltimore and the Baltimore and Ohio Rail Line. If he got there first, he could strategically place his men along the Monocacy River and defend all three of those routes which crossed the river at that point. He arrived in time to dig in and establish a line of defense.
Hey y’all, I’m not going to lie, it’s been a tough week for me personally. I think this whole process has brought waves of emotion for us all, and I’m grateful that I have had peaks in the midst of it, but this week was definitely more of a valley. And don’t get me wrong, valleys can be beautiful places, you just don’t see the sun as often when you’re in them.
Last week I wrote about the permanent closure of the tour company I’ve worked for through much of my adult life. It’s a company which was founded three years before I was born and which I guess I expected to be there, in one form or another, indefinitely into the future. The company and I had found a good rhythm, one which worked really well for us both. For me, it allowed me to do something which I enjoy and which I’m good at and which allowed me to travel to beautiful places, hike often and practice my photography. In return, my company got a true professional career guide who could work independently and be gone for months at a time with minimal supervision while still producing high quality tours and satisfied customers. I could make enough money in a few months to pursue my other interests during the rest of the year and I think it’s been a pretty fair and balanced relationship. While there are other companies out there and I know that my experience will land me a job in the future, it won’t have the same shared history for me. Couple that with the uncertainty of the when’s and where’s and it has left me less upbeat about the future than I usually am. And that, for me, is a problem. If you’ve been following this blog long enough, you know that I suffer from depression and anxiety and that travel helps me cope with both. In the past, when things have gotten bad for me, I’ve inevitably been able to look optimistically towards the future and find some point in my mind where things are okay and things are better. And even when I didn’t necessarily think I would be going back to guiding, it was always there as an option and thinking about a fresh season in a new van could always bring me out of a funk. While I know that somewhere out there is a new season with a new company or perhaps a better option which I haven’t even considered before because I haven’t been forced to look for it, it’s taken a few days of mourning to reach that point.
In addition, it’s been a tough few weeks of watching the news and social media with everything which has been happening in the U.S. I find myself, as usual, torn when it comes to so many things. Over the last 20 years, I’ve traveled to all corners of the U.S. and met wonderful people everywhere I went of all shapes, sizes, shades, ages and backgrounds. Americans, generally speaking, are kind, hardworking people struggling to find a path forward and doing the best they can.
The photos below come from a recent visit to Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Battlefield Park, which also includes the Battles of Chancelorsville and The Wilderness. Civil War Chronicles will trace the major battles of the Eastern Theater through photos and brief histories.
It had been almost a year since the horrific battle of Gettysburg, and in the interim President Lincoln had turned command of the Union Army over to General Ulysses S. Grant. Grant would lay out a plan to attack the confederacy on many fronts including Sherman’s march towards Atlanta and an attack on Mobile, and Grant himself would ride with General George Meade’s Army of the Potomac. Their goal was to bring the war back to Virginia and keep the pressure on General Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia. This Overland Campaign would be a war of attrition and would bring the war to new levels of horror but ultimately lead to Lee’s surrender at Appomattox.
On May 4th, 1864 the Army of the Potomac crossed the Rapidan River and engaged Lee’s army in an area called The Wilderness. Apparently the area today bears little resemblance to what it did at the time when new growth underbrush made movement difficult, artillery less effective and confusion the norm. Fierce fighting took place on the scattered farms in the area which allowed for some open space in which to maneuver, but most of the battle took place in the dense forest. On May 6th, the Union Army had taken the upper hand and Lee’s men were in grave danger of being overrun on the widow Tapp’s farm. In a scene from the movies, Longstreet’s reinforcements arrived at just the right moment and Lee was prepared to lead them into battle himself, but the Confederates wouldn’t allow it and moved him quickly to the rear. After two days of heavy fighting neither side had gained a decisive victory. Unlike his predecessors, Grant didn’t pull back but rather pushed forward, ordering a night march towards the town of Spotsylvania Court House. His plan was to get between Lee and the Confederate Capital at Richmond. Sensing this move, Lee ordered his men to move that night as well.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and this series focuses on a single picture and what it brings into my mind. In this particular post I’ve chosen two photos (and written closer to 2000 words) on the topic of “otherness”. One picture is me at a work party with the other teachers I worked with in Japan and the other is of me and my students when I taught in New Orleans.
There have been a lot of times in my life where I have been the “other”. In fact, most of my adult life has been dominated my some form or other of “otherness”. Some have been more pronounced while others have been more subtle. Since this idea of “otherness” has captured the national attention recently, and for very good reason, I thought I’d offer my own perspective.
After High School, I went to Penn State, a state university in central Pennsylvania. I didn’t realize at the time nor think much about the fact that the vast majority of people there were obviously going to be from Pennsylvania. There were always sports team loyalties and conversations about differences in accents and dialect that mostly went over my head. It wasn’t until much later, having spent a fair amount of time driving through rural parts of the state and recognizing town names from people I went to school with that I realized how different their upbringing was from mine. When I think of my time there though, I think mostly about our school spirit and camaraderie – how our “sameness” around our love of Penn State, our obsession with wearing blue and white clothing and our never-ending conversations about the football team overshadowed, for me at least, that sense of “otherness”.
In my professional career as a tour guide, I have taken hundreds of people from around the globe on cross country tours of the United States. While it is obviously my home country, I have spent much of the last 20 years surrounded by international guests.
Hello Everyone,
Another week has come and gone here in Washington D.C. Time has taken on a different quality for me here. I’m very used variety in my life, so when I get a chance to stop and catch my breath, it’s actually kind of nice. Now I’m through the “catching my breath” phase and into a routine phase which I know is how most people’s lives simply are. It has its ups and downs, but more than anything the time just seems to slip away. I hope every week to at least have something to show for that week, but even if there isn’t anything tangible it’s another week of keeping myself safe and sane and another week of helping who I can do the same. Sometimes it’s the little things that can make a difference too. This week I saw my first lightning bugs of the summer and it reminded me of how magical these little critters are. How cool is it that they can just glow like that in the dark? When I used to guide night snorkel tours in the islands, I used to try and show people some phosphorescence in the water, but lightning bugs are way cooler than that. They fly and they glow. In my next life, it wouldn’t be a bad choice. On a completely unrelated note, my mother set a new personal record for rabbits seen on her morning walk this week with 16. Like I said, sometimes it’s the little things.
My week started with a relaxing Thursday. I’m sure I did things, but I can’t remember what they were. There are more of those kinds of days recently too. I did have a nice Zoom chat with some of my friends from college and it felt really good to laugh for a while. Friday was exciting because we tapped our recently brewed homebrew and I have to say it was pretty tasty. We sampled it alongside other beers of the same kind (Kolsch), and ours held up okay. We also brewed a fresh batch on Friday as well, an American Cream Ale this time, so we’ll see how that works out in a couple of weeks. It’s been bubbling away in the fermenter, so that’s a good sign. After all of the beer excitement, we enjoyed some nice weather outside on the patio with some snacks and an exciting game of Skip-Bo, one of our go-to pandemic card games. It wasn’t a bad Friday at all.
Saturday I met up with a friend for a nice walk down in Rock Creek Park, a wonderful National Park unit which splits the city down the middle along the natural valley formed by the creek. It was a beautiful day for a walk, and hence was a little more crowded than I would have liked, but we did okay. My friend brought her dog along and he seemed to enjoy the exercise as well. We sat for a while by the water and chatted away the morning and for a minute, it almost felt like normalcy.
I am not a protester. I don’t like chanting and I don’t want to carry a sign. I am, however, a historian and have spent a big chunk of my life studying U.S. history. I believe strongly in people’s constitutional right to protest and people need to be reminded that that right was not extended to black people in the U.S. until the 14th amendment passed in 1868, a full 80 years after the U.S. Constitution was ratified. That amendment only passed under duress during Reconstruction.
One of my many projects is my podcast American Anthology, and one of my goals with that project has been to call attention to some of the lesser known chapters in the struggle for Civil Rights in this country. We all know about MLK and Rosa Parks, but for a lot of people that’s where things start to fade out. The struggle has been long, painful and bloody beyond belief, and didn’t end with the Civil War or Civil Rights. It has always been just about being treated the same, about having the same rights as white citizens of this country.
My normal goal on this blog is to give people a break from the news and politics with some beautiful photos, but one of the main goals of my podcast has been to help educate people about American History, and especially some of these lesser known chapters. If you want some easily digestible (though not necessarily pleasant or easy to hear) lessons on the struggle and how things have gotten to where we find ourselves today, I’d like to call your attention to some of the topics I’ve covered:
Episode 5 – N.C. – The Wilmington Insurrection – the only successful Coup d’etat in American History
Episode 7 – S.C. – Briggs vs. Elliott – the struggle for a single bus for black students – became part of Brown vs. The Board of Education
Episode 9 – TN - The Lynching of Ell Persons – 5,000 people showed up to this public lynching advertised in the paper. Sandwiches were sold…
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Here’s a picture of me, Anthony Bourdain and Eric Ripert at the Warner Theater in D.C. and the story of how I came to meet these guys that night in 2010.
I’ve never been much on celebrity heroes. I’ve always thought it was a little strange that people will idolize a musician or an actor because it always feels to me like they are idolizing a character, not a person. Most rock stars and movie stars are playing a role and are very different when they are off camera, so to me it’s a bit like looking up to a character in a book like Atticus Finch or Tom Joad. On the other hand, there are people you come across at times in your life when you really need a hero and maybe their songs or their movies are the things that keep you going. Anthony Bourdain was that person for me.
After spending my twenties guiding multi-week tours of the U.S. all summer and spending my winters traveling the world, I finally gave in to the pressure to “grow up” and “get a real job”. Coupled with that was my desire to help out in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans which is how I found myself wearing a tie and teaching junior high school math. The times were tough as was the job itself, but it was the dramatic lifestyle change that affected me the most. After so many years on the road, I was all of a sudden faced with rent and bills and trying to make the most of my weekends. I’m not going to lie, “the real world” wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. I found myself struggling from paycheck to paycheck and from one week to the next. Going from my tour guide salary to a teacher’s salary seemed like a big jump, but after all of my bills it really didn’t leave much and I ended up getting a second job working three nights a week waiting tables. It was all a bit much.
The Battle of Gettysburg which took place from July 1st-3rd, 1863 would be the bloodiest battle of the Civil War. 170,000 men would clash over those three hot days in July and over 50,000 would end up dead, captured, wounded or missing. While both armies were looking for a fight, neither expected it to be in this tiny Pennsylvania town.
After his dramatic victories at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, General Lee decided to once again push north into Union territory. He wanted a decisive victory on Northern soil to try and force President Lincoln to the negotiating table. Lee marched his Army of Northern Virginia north, crossed the Potomac River and moved through Maryland and into Pennsylvania. The Union’s Army of the Potomac, still under the command of General Hooker, pursued. By the end of June, General George Meade had replaced Hooker at the helm…
The photos below come from a recent visit to Gettysburg National Battlefield, the site of the bloodiest and most well known battles of the war. Civil War Chronicles will trace the major battles of the Eastern Theater through photos and brief histories
It’s been a warm week here in D.C. – summer has definitely arrived. I’ve had some nice days to get out and explore the city this week, but also some hot and humid ones and a few epic thunderstorms as well. It’s been a long time since I’ve experienced summer in our nation’s capital, and there are definitely pluses and minuses. I will say that the lack of traffic anywhere at any time makes the heat of summer a little more tolerable. As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, that lack of traffic definitely makes for cleaner air and clearer skies – something my camera sees even more than I do. That is one of the plusses of the situation. We’ve been enjoying some summer fruit too, which is one of the best things about summer anywhere. We’ve had beautiful cherries, watermelon, strawberries and others and I’m looking forward to peaches very soon.
Last Friday my stepfather made some wonderful homemade pizzas and we sat in the basement and played some games and listened to some music while we chowed down on a couple of pies. It was another great Forget-About-It Friday, which we are grateful for. This coming week we will tap our homebrew and see how it turned out, and begin our next batch as well – an American Cream Ale. I’m looking forward to having a taste and to keeping the brewing going while I’m home. It’s fun and there’s a (hopefully) fine finished product at the end. After the cream ale, I want to try something a little more complicated now that I’m getting my brewing confidence back up.
The rest of the weekend was pretty quiet. My mom spent Saturday cooking up a storm and we had a wonderful dinner on Saturday night as well. Sunday I spent some time reading my new (to me) book about the Gettysburg Address which I’m really enjoying. I also got some photos edited and published from our trip to Antietam last week, and got some writing done as well. It was a pretty relaxing weekend all around, but it felt good to accomplish a few things along the way.
After being turned back south after the Battle of Antietam, Confederate General Robert E. Lee marched his army back to Virginia. Union General George McClellan was replaced by General Ambrose Burnside to command the Army of the Potomac, and President Lincoln urged Burnside to pursue the Army of Northern Virginia deep into the state and attack the Confederate Capital at Richmond. The major obstacle lying in their way was the Rappahannock River.
Burnside arrived at Stafford Heights overlooking the river and the small town of Fredericksburg in mid-November, 1862. He had sent orders to have pontoons at the ready to provide a means of bringing his army rapidly across the river. Tragically for Burnside and his men, the pontoons didn’t arrive for several weeks. Instead of crossing the river in boats or rafts, he chose to wait for the pontoons. By the time they got there, Confederate troops had dug in on the high ground south of the city called Marye’s Heights and behind a stone wall along a sunken road to the front of this position.
Union engineers worked through the night of December 10th to assemble the pontoon bridge, but their progress was slowed by Mississippi sharpshooters in town. A small group of Union soldiers crossed the river in boats and fought a battle to secure the streets of the town. They finally secured the town in late afternoon on the 11th, but it was winter and the daylight soon gave out. The bridge would be completed and most of the army would cross it on December 12th.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. In this series I’ve chosen one picture per post which brings out strong memories for me and has a story attached to it. This picture is of the Santa Monica Pier in Los Angeles, California, the place I first watched the sun set into the Pacific.
I was as far from home as I’d ever been.
When I went to college, my goal was to work for the National Park Service. My major was Wildlife and Fishery Science with a minor in American History. I spent five years working on two degrees to prepare myself for my career, but in the days of the infancy of the internet I really didn’t know what that career would entail. While there, I worked in the banquet department at a beautiful resort hotel and golf course and made pretty decent money for a college kid. I was, therefore, pretty disappointed when I started looking for a real job only to find that the only Park Service jobs available to me were 3 month temporary positions in parks I’d never heard of making $8 an hour. I couldn’t believe it – after five years of good grades and two degrees from an excellent institution I was only going to make $8 an hour? That was significantly less than I was making in my current job. And in three months I’d have to start all over again?
I decided to think on it for a while and headed to my summer home of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. In my first “real world” lesson, I had to sign to a one-year lease to get a decent place to live, and went back to work at the restaurant I had worked at the previous two summers. Over the next year I worked a lot, drank too much and made some really good friends, some of whom are still my friends today, but didn’t make a lot of progress towards any career goals. I’d like to say it was fun, but looking back it just seemed like it was at the time. There were some great days, but life after college was supposed to be different.
After a year of spinning my wheels I found myself no further ahead than I had been when I arrived. I cut my losses, packed up my bags and headed north. I went back to Pennsylvania for a while, and then headed to Ocean City, Maryland for a few days to see what the work climate was like there. Nothing seemed to be working out, so I finally gave up and heading home to D.C
Antietam National Battlefield was the sight of the bloodiest day in American History and one of the best known battle of the American Civil War. Along Antietam Creek just north of the tiny town of Sharpsburg, Maryland, 100,000 soldiers marched into battle on September 17th, 1862. By the end of that day almost 23,000 were dead, wounded or missing.
After a Confederate victory at the 2nd Manassas/Bull Run, General Robert E. Lee pushed into the North for the first time. The Virginia countryside had been ravaged during the first year of the war, and Lee wanted to give it time to heal, plus a decisive victory in the North might bring President Lincoln to the negotiating table.
On September 15th, 1862, Lee crossed the Potomac River into Maryland and dug in along the high ground west of Antietam Creek. Union forces under Commanding General George McClellan moved in from the east. At dawn on September 17th, the battle began…
The photos below come from a cloudy visit to Antietam National Battlefield, the site of the bloodiest day in the American Civil War. Civil War Chronicles will trace the major battles of the Eastern Theater through photos and brief histories.
