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Fields of history

We’d been touring the park all day, piling in and out of the SUV, listening to the recorded driving tour and debating maneuver warfare tactics. But the shadows had begun to fall in Spotsylvania County, Va., and there was only enough daylight for one more stop.

So I tossed our Park Service pass on the dashboard, and we walked down the gravel drive of a historic farmhouse called Ellwood, past late-summer cornstalks standing at attention, and then under a garden arbor streaked with cobwebs. Finally, there it was, in a clearing in the cornfield — the final resting place of Confederate Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson’s arm.

A small stone marked the spot. I vaulted over the low wooden railing and posed for a photo. Now, the trip was complete.

Finding Jackson’s arm was the capstone on a delightful excursion to the site of four Civil War battlefields, an experience I’d recommend to anyone with a free weekend and an interest in military history.

Fredericksburg-Spotsylvania National Military Park, in and outside Fredericksburg, Va., is a veritable shopping center for Civil War history, with four battlefields that will appeal to both casual and hard-core civil warriors. The coming fall and winter are ideal times to visit the park, which is best viewed as the leaves change or, even better, when they’re gone.

The Fredericksburg area was strategically vital during the war, placed between Washington, D.C., and the rebel capital in Richmond. The battles that took place in the area — Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, the Wilderness and Spotsylvania Courthouse — together claimed 15,000 American dead and 85,000 wounded.

As close together as they are geographically, each battlefield holds its own appeal for visitors.

Touring the Fredericksburg battlefield yields a quick grasp of the tactical implications of the engagement, in which Union troops crossed the Rappahannock River on pontoon bridges, fought their way through the town and then were pulverized by Confederate defenders. You begin at the stone wall from which South Carolina infantrymen rained devastating fire on the Union attackers; then you see the highlands from across the river where the Federal troops launched their attack; and then you visit the hillside from which Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee directed his side of the battle.

For certain kinds of visitors — you know if you are — there is a definite thrill in walking the same ground, and viewing things from the same angles, as the great historical generals. Looking at the battlefield from the hill where Lee made his headquarters, a child could see the folly of the Union’s strategy: A frontal assault across a river and then straight into the defended highlands behind it? It’s especially satisfying to reach this conclusion from looking at the countryside, not a map in a history book.

For this reason, Fredericksburg is probably best viewed in the winter when the leaves have fallen, so you can see the relatively small scale of the battle.

Chancellorsville, probably the most famous of the battlefields, is just the opposite: As you drive the route Jackson used to outflank Gen. Joe Hooker’s Union forces, you have an entirely new appreciation for how brazen and difficult it must have been. The Virginia forest in this area really is a wilderness, bound with vines and undergrowth and stumps that you wouldn’t want to march through.

But those Johnny Rebs did march through it, and by doing so, the Confederate force outflanked the Yankees and defeated a much bigger army. Although it is called “Lee’s greatest victory,” Chancellorsville really belongs to Jackson, which makes it all the more poignant when you reach the point where Confederate infantrymen accidentally shot and badly wounded Jackson as he returned from a short reconnaissance mission with his staff.

His left arm was eventually amputated — later buried under the small stone we found in the Wilderness battlefield — and he died eight days later.

There are far too many of these micro- and macro-level details to list here, but they are engrossing even if you don’t own a blue or gray uniform for weekend re-enactments.

If you decide to go, I recommend taking a large vehicle because you’ll be spending long stretches in the car. If you’re planning a history-themed trip to Washington, D.C., and planning on renting a car anyway, a visit to the Civil War battlefields in Spotsylvania County makes an easy overnight jaunt from the capital.

We packed a picnic lunch, although there are many fast-food joints along a spectacularly ugly commercial stretch near the park, as well as a few grown-up restaurants in Fredericksburg.

I also recommend going soon, if you can: Suburban sprawl nips at the edges of the battlefield park, and even parts of the dense woods through which you follow Jackson’s flanking feint are spoiled by McMansions visible through the trees. The latest outrage is that Wal-Mart wants to build a Supercenter store within sight of the Wilderness battlefield.

Some of the locals are fighting it. Whether or not they succeed, it’s worth absorbing all the history you can in this part of Virginia while it’s still there.