History Travels

My wife and I took my daughter down to Gettysburg College to start her freshman year a couple of weeks ago.  Now although Gettysburg is obviously full of history, we're going to be back there in October for parents' weekend so we decided to take advantage of being down there to visit a couple of other places.  For my wife "visiting other places" meant an outlet mall in Leesburg,Va.  For me, it meant any historical site I could get to while we drove to Leesburg and back over the next couple of days.

On the way down we made a quick stop at Catoctin National Park, mainly just to say we were there.  It's in northern Maryland, just south of the Pa border.  Looks like it has lots of hiking trails and campgrounds.  I looked around the visitor's center for a bit, got the stamp, and off we went.

From there we went to the Monocacy battlefield, just outside of Frederick.  The battle at Monocacy was fought in July 1864 and is sometimes known as "the battle that saved Washington".  Even though it was a Federal defeat, it slowed down the Confederate advance on that city just long enough for reinforcements to arrive.  I was fortunate enough to visit the battlefield while it was displaying the famous "Lost Orders" associated with the Battle of Antietam, so that was a real treat.  I really don't know a lot about this battle and  so I wasn't able to appreciate the battlefield.  I need to read up on it.  After we finished it up it was off to Leesburg and the outlet mall.

After a trip to the outlet mall we stayed at a place near Leesburg (thanks Priceline!)  it was off to visit the battlefield at Ball's Bluff.  The entrance to this battlefield is literally at the end of a fairly new housing development (the suburbs of DC keep pushing out farther west).  Balls Bluff was a vicious little fight that took place in October 1861.  The Union sent a force over the Potomac River to conduct a raid on a Confederate camp.  The size of the Confederate force was underestimated, and the fight soon developed.  A US Senator, Edward Baker, who was commanding some Union troops, was killed (only US Senator killed in a military action), and when the Union line broke they had to retreat down a very high bluff.  When they got to the river there was a shortage of boats to get them back across, and many surrendered.  Looking at the Bluff today you can understand that it was a terrible place to have a battle, especially with their backs to that bluff.