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Park Service volunteer Mike Powell (left) shows Kendall (center) and Cooper Jackson some of the work involved
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Artillerymen fire a Napoleon cannon at the Spotsylvania Courthouse Battlefield during a demonstration yesterday. |
By PAMELA GOULD
Not all of the youngsters visiting the Spotsylvania Court House battlefield yesterday appreciated being part of history.
In fact, some cried, many covered their ears and at least one headed for the woods, hoping to escape the thunderous boom of a replica Civil War cannon.
Alicia H., whose parents didn't want her last name used, wasn't among that crowd.
"I thought it was really cool, and I'd like to hear it again sometime," the rising sixth-grader from Spotsylvania County said.
Alicia, her parents and sister, Rachel, were among dozens of people on hand for the first cannon fire to echo across the battlefield since May 1864.
Having a father who's a history buff didn't hurt. Neither did the fact that she recently took a school field trip to Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond and had gotten a good primer on Civil War artillery.
The cannon fired yesterday is a replica Napoleon, a gun invented in 1850 by the French during the famous emperor's reign. Both Union and Confederate forces used the weapon that fires four types of ammunition, including 12-pound cannonballs, said Stacy Humphreys, a historian with Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park.
Despite yesterday's 90-degree temperatures, Humphreys and four men dressed in wool period uniforms to demonstrate and explain how the cannon operated.
The group portrayed members of an artillery unit from Stafford County that took part in 22 hours of hand-to-hand fighting on May 12, 1864 at a location known as the "Mule Shoe." The area was so named because of the curve in what had been intended as a straight earthwork, Hum-phreys said.
Peyton Van Stone, 4, heard the first blast of cannon fire loud and clear yesterday.
He decided before the second one that he should head for the woods.
Big sister, Lauren, 6, stayed put, but she covered her ears.
The youngsters from Vienna in Northern Virginia arrived at the battlefield with their parents and grandfather.
"He loves Civil War stuff," Lauren said of "Pop-Pop" Phil Van Stone, who was visiting from Chicago.
The family learned about the cannon demonstration while inside the Fredericksburg Battlefield Visitors Center.
"That was great," the elder Van Stone said after hearing the cannon blast. "I thought that was unbelievable."
Pamela Gould: 540/735-1972
Email: pgould@freelancestar.com
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COMING UP If you didn't get out to hear the thunderous boom of the 12-pounder Napoleon cannon yesterday at the Spotsylvania Court House battlefield, you'll get another chance. The bronze, museum-quality replica, bought by the National Park Service in 2006, will be fired again during the Chatham Manor living-history weekend, Aug. 16-17, said Stacy Humphreys, a historian with Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. That event is also slated to include at least one gun being brought by a group from Pennsylvania, an infantry demonstration, a medical demonstration and a reenactor portraying poet Walt Whitman. Whitman, along with Clara Barton, assisted surgeons Chatham Manor is located in southern Stafford County overlooking the Rappahannock |
