"It is grim, perhaps, to tread the steps where both armies marched, to revisit a time when our nation was at war with itself. It is grimmer still to cherish these places where Americans killed one another, to preserve them with care, to mark them with stones and placards and statues for the men we lost. But it is good for us to remember what they did, and why they did it."National Review
"If you consulted the tourists who venture to Washington, D.C., they would probably say the monuments and memorials gracing our capital city are what most evoke thoughts of our country’s brief but remarkable history. For me, it is something a bit less expected, not the places where our political leaders shaped our early days as a nation but the dispersed locations where a different kind of leader fought to ensure that America would survive: the sites of Civil War battles.
. . .
"Many tours of Manassas, close by home, where the earliest conflicts of the war took place, where the First and Second Battles of Bull Run saw Confederate forces rout the army of the Union. To Richmond, Va., and Hollywood Cemetery, resting place not only of Jefferson Davis but also of Confederate generals George Pickett and J. E. B. Stuart. To Antietam, for a walk down Bloody Lane, ghostly site of the deadliest one-day battle in the history of the United States, with several times as many Americans killed there as in the D-Day invasion.
. . .
Alexandra DeSanctis is a staff writer for National Review
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