Winters in the Land of Lincoln can be memorable.

Now that is interesting. What are now known as “Lincoln Sites” in Springfield were once called “Lincoln Shrines” and the change over was fairly recent, sometime I believe in the early nineties of the last century.

“Knowing the Jackson story the way I do, I have to admit I shed a bit of a tear standing there.”

As would I. Jackson was an American original, and his death a crossroads for the American people. To think of Jackson is to think of the many alternate paths that history could have followed if he had lived. I think someone being killed at the time of their greatest victory inspires those type of thoughts. In that way, and not only in that way, I have seen a striking similarity between Abraham Lincoln and Stonewall Jackson. I thank you Jon for inspiring my thoughts for a future post on that subject!

I’ve shared before some of the experiences I had working in Fredricksburg during the 90′s. I’ve stood at Mary Washington’s grave, poked around James Monroe’s law office, seen General Mercer’s house, climbed Telegraph Hill, and walked the Sunken Road among other things – all on my lunch hour.

The two most poignant experiences I had however concerned Spotsylvania in a way. The first was a trip I took out Route 3 one winter afternoon to Spotsylvania Court House, where I walked the Bloody Angle. Although the battle happened in May, the day I was there was bleak, cold, and gray. You can walk a little trail through the woods and field known as “Bloody Angle Trail.” I was completely alone, with no one else in the park. To be out there and stand on the ground where men choked out their lives pushed five and six deep into the mud was one of the most moving and positively eerie experiences I’ve ever had.

The other was one warm May 10th, probably in 1995 or ’96. Every morning on my way to work I passed the sign on I-95 reading “Stonewall Jackson Shrine.” I decided that day to finally see it for myself. Only about six miles from where I worked, at lunch I decided to point the car south.

The “house” where Stonewall “crossed over the river” is very small. In 1863 it was a mere plantation out building. The plantation house disappeared long ago, but the building where Jackson died, per the sign, immediately became a shrine.

Anyway, I digress – I actually found myself that day, as I did the day I visited Spotsylvania Court House, left completely alone. There was a ranger at a little desk just outside, but as I entered the bedroom where the General had breathed his last, I found no one else. Knowing the Jackson story the way I do, I have to admit I shed a bit of a tear standing there. I knew the whole script of the event just the way Shelby Foote describes it in “The Civil War;” from Dr. McGuire to Jackson’s wife. The clock in the room is stopped at 3:15, the moment Jackson died, as was the custom then.

Years later, when my two boys were around 8 and 10, the three of us were heading north on I-81, traveling back to Pennsylvania after visiting my folks where they live near Asheville. As my wife wasn’t there to stop us, I pulled off at Lexington and drove into town. There we visited the grave of Stonewall, and I and the boys prayed an Ave for his repose.

And now I’ve spent far too much time in your combox AGAIN…;-)