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Good question, Greg. I think I would have to choose Antietam. In addition to it being a major turning point in the war, it offers an excellent opportunity for terrain analysis, several different battle sites (e. g., Burnside Bridge), nearby related sites (e. g., South Mountain and Harper's Ferry), the opportunity to travel Lee's route along the old National Road and across the Potomac, and a very nice visitor's center (with knowledgeable staff) and bookstore.
Chickamauga... hands down. The museum is first rate, Chatanooga is only a few miles away (get your hotel there and visit two battlefields) and if you fly into Atlanta you can visit a host of others on the way from the airport and get a decent impression of the terrain. Between those two fields you can see Cleburne at his best as well as others.
Also it hasn't been commercialized in the same way as other more well known battlefields. Standing in Kelly's Field is an eerie experiance and walking the area of Snodgrass hill... gives an understanding of how ferocious and heroic the fighting there was (by both sides)
Antietem is nice as is Gettysburg... but I felt both were too highly commercialized when I visited them, though that was way back in 84 or so and things may well have improved.
__________________ Few take the trouble to understand or to view the American scene with perspective. And we Americans love to find ourselves guilty of something. However, it is never I who am guilty, but those other Americans, the past or present government or the other political party. Americans almost never find other countries guilty. It is always ourselves or our fancied influence in other countries. Louis L'amour
I think I would probably choose to go to a battlefield I hadn't visited before. I would pick Shiloh - site of a very significant battle and, from what I've heard, a battlefield that has changed very little over the years.
Battlefield touring is a passion for me. Growing up in Baltimore with Grandparents in Martinsburg WV I got to drive rt 40 through Monocacy, over South Mt and through Antietam frequently. I believe that is where my interest in the war was planted, on those trips and at the 1962 event at Antietam. (then I got into girls and things and my interest went on back burner for a while).
Cedar Creek, just below Winchester Va is near the top for me. It is being preserved by a local group, other then a few eyesores it is still fairly well preserved and it it is near the lovely Shenandoah Valley of Va with its battlefields and historic Winchester Va which has some sites of its own. I am biased though because Cedar Creek is the only battle that my Grandfathers actually fought each other. It is a spiritual place for me in a way and I will continue to make the pilgrimage there once a yr. I was lucky enough to see Chickamauga and Lookout Mt Last summer and both are truely beautiful parks, I will someday see Stones River, Shiloh and Vicksburg and I am chomping at the bit to visit the spring 1864 campaign sites from the Wilderness to Petersburg.
But, I have to admit that my favorite is the most comercial, the most covered with monuments and the one most crowded with camera toting tourists in summer-Gettysburg! Yes, I know all the arguments against it but sorry, it is still fantastic! So very much occurred there. You can walk the fields and lanes and ponder the echos of history endlessly. For every weird tourist shop next to a historic building in town there is a woodland solitude down by spangler's spring at the base of Culps Hill. For every crowded bus filled mob at the high water mark or on Little Roundtop, there is a wood where Archers Bgd slammed into the midwesterners of the Iron Bgd. There is the quiet behind Little roundtop where the tough soldiers from Alabama clashed with the gritty boys from Maine. You can go to East Cavalry field or Benners hill and be the only one there in July. You can look through the multitude of monuments and imagine the way it used to look or you can get a book on monuments in the fantastic bookstore and wander from monument to monument learning all about the hundreds of stories that each monument represents.
I urge all of you to go there with someone who knows the place and can show you the out of the way, off the beaten path places as well as the fields of glory and horror where the grand, sweeping charges resounded all those years ago. Go in the spring or autum. Go in winter or summer. It is all that is lofty and low in our passionate field of interest. And remember, somewhere, in the crowds of yuppy families, in those hords of jabbering students, those bustling tourists drawn to the tawdry t-shirt shops, somewhere in there is a young mind, full of wonder-thirsting for the deeper knowledge. So, smile at them when they cut you off rudely, look at them and wonder, which one is it.
I've been to Fredericksburg (overdeveloped), Spotsylvania Court House, Chancellorsville, The Wilderness, Richmond (only parts of it), Petersburg (only parts of it), Five Forks, Appomattox Court House, Sailor's (or Sayler's) Creek, Yorktown (American Revolution oriented), Dam No. 1 (on Yorktown Peninsula), Murfreesboro, Richmond (KY), Antietam, Shiloh, Kennesaw Mountain, Franklin (Carter House & adjoining areas), Lookout Mountain, Pickett's Mill, Cobb (Kulp) Farm, Fort Donelsohn, Fort Sumter & Moultrie, Knoxville (where Col. Sanders, not the KFC dude was killed & the Fort named in his honor), Secessionville (where my car was attacked by a Reb dog - I had gone too far, put it in reversed and backed away at which point the Reb dog gave chase. I stopped the car to turn it around and the Reb dog rammed me. I couldn't believe he was that stupid. He walked away.) and Nashville. Even been to Bowling Green, KY where the campus is site of Confederate entrenchments. Gettysburg is one major site (along with Vicksburg, New Orleans (are those forts still there?), Mobile Bay (anything there?), Port Hudson, and a whole host of others) I've yet to visit. Is Ball's Bluff still around or is it developed? I know Big Bethel on the Peninsula is overdeveloped.
BTW, if you want to see a well preserved coastal fort and get an idea of what Sumter looked like, go to Fort Point in San Francisco. It's open only on weekends now.
Two at the top of my list would be Chickamauga and Fredericksburg.
Chickamauga, because both my husband's great grandfather and my own fought there. I would like to think they would have seen each other in passing in the Confederate lines.
Fredericksburg, because four of my great uncles died there fighting for the Confederacy.
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