November 4-5 - 2017 Toano, Virginia

Believe it or not, JJ is finally getting enough of history and monuments (at least for a while he says😊).

The area we are in, is also VERY rich in history. On Saturday (Nov. 3), we were in Richmond, Virginia. That is the city, that was the capital for the Confederate States (sydstaterne) during the Civil War (borgerkrigen). We wanted to fill in some of the gaps, and get some views of the war from the side of the Confederates.

A lot of things we knew already, but we did learn a few new things, like:

-    Besides the issue of slavery, the southern states disagreed with the government about taxes (that old story!).

-     General Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House (the name of a town, not a building – we also learned), was not the end of the war. Battles continued to be fought in North Carolina and Texas/Oklahoma. It took about a month until the last troops had surrendered. (We had heard this before, but got more details today.)

-    Even though battles took place as far west as Kansas and as far south as Texas, most of the battles took place in or near Virginia.

-    That the Confederacy had several official flags, none of which is the flag, we think of today as being the Confederate flag. That flag was the battle flag for the Army of Northern Virginia (Lee’s army) and later became the battle flag for the Confederate Army.

First flag of the Confederacy - Stars and Bars

Battle flag for the Army of Northern Virginia 

-    There was never a peace treaty signed after the Civil War. The Confederacy never conceded (opgav), and the American government would probably not have accepted it anyway, because that would have given the Confederacy some legitimacy (Peace Treaties are made between nations).

-    The president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, was captured (fanget) in Georgia on May 10, 1865, and was imprisoned (fængslet). He was never brought to trial for treason (landsforrædderi), and was released after 2 years.

House where Jefferson Davis lived and worked, while president of the Confederacy

 

 

We ran across a couple of monuments. We haven’t seen too many from the Confederate side, so we thought we would show them😊

 

General Lee

 

Stonewall Jackson

 

Jefferson Davis

 

Yesterday, we thought we could write that we were done with the Civil War now, but decided that might be premature. We found a little more today😊 We drove out to see some of the old plantations (herregård) from the 1600 & 1700’s. One of them has the claim to fame, that “Taps” (et stykke militær musik) was written there during one of the battles of the Civil War. There are a couple pictures documenting these events.

 

 

Written by Mary

 PS - We saw these 2 new crops at the plantation.