Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park

Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Wilderness, and Spotsylvania formed the bloodiest landscape in North America and vividly reflected the Civil War's tragic cost in all its forms. A city was bombarded, bloodied, and looted, farms large and small were ruined, and refugees by the thousands were forced into the countryside. More than 85,000 men were wounded and 15,000 were killed, most now in graves unknown. The fading scars of battle, the home places of bygone families, and the granite tributes to those who fought still mark these lands. These places reveal the trials of a community and nation at war, a virtuous tragedy that freed four million Americans and reunited a nation. At Wilderness, Union and Confederate soldiers grappled for two days in the woods west of Fredericksburg, and James Horace Lacy's house, Ellwood, served as headquarters during the battle. At Chancellorsville, Robert E. Lee won victory against great odds but suffered the irreparable loss of Stonewall Jackson. At Spotsylvania, two weeks of gruesome combat culminated in hand-to-hand fighting at the Bloody Angle. Chatham, a colonial plantation, was the only private home in America to host both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and during the Civil War served as a Union headquarters and hospital. After his mortal wounding at Chancellorsville, Stonewall Jackson was taken to a Caroline County plantation, where he died eight days later, saying, "Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees."

Fredericksburg, Virginia · United States