I just got back from a battlefield trip to Chickamauga/Chattanooga/points west (there’s a particular skirmish I wanted to see the location of west of C’nooga for genealogical interest). When I was a kid my father used to love to visit battlefields and it always seemed the most boring pointless part of any trip- “It’s a pasture Daddy, it’s a big pasture… with statues. Can we go now?”
Now I find that if you have an interest in the battle and have researched it then seeing the place is great. (I still wouldn’t recommend them for the whole family because if you don’t have a particular interest then it really is a big pasture, or more like a golf course without carts and clubs.)
I was really impressed with the Chickamauga field because it’s apparently well funded through the NPS. There’s a great theater in the Visitor’s Center(though a cheesy as hell movie that’s in major need of updating) and some great driving tours (though the CD version needs updating as well- just kind of 1970s slideshow). Strangely one of the things that irked me the most about Gettysburg I liked about Chickamauga, which is all the monuments- more than 300 of them ranging from little “pauper’s field tombstone” sized markers to the 10 story tall Wilder Tower (climbing to the top of which is a great way to see the battlefield and also to remind you of how young and in shape you’re not), and while arguably they detract from the historic significance of the battlefield it’s no moreso than the fact that there aren’t 120,000 men shooting at each other and the grass is all mown.
Having read about the battle seeing the location adds great new dimensions: this is where Rosecrans was with the young widow when he gave the order to move the troops to close a gap that wasn’t there and in so doing opened a real gap just as Longstreet’s 15,000 fresh troops were coming through, or this is where Polk was when he should have been attacking and this is where Bragg was rushing to the latrines and writing the most confusing orders in Civil War history. Seeing the mansion where my own ancestors were billeted (on tents surrounding the place, not in the house itself) and the mill where they ran into an ambush has a nice personal connection as well.
Then Chattanooga, where unlike Richmond and Atlanta and other big cities there’s nothing they could possibly do to make the battlefield not visible almost 24/7: Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge aren’t exactly going anywhere soon. I saw what used to be called Confederama, a privately owned museum I’d love to buy because it’s sadly out of date but could be really special- it’s a model of the battlefield (with reversed E-W coordinates for some reason) that is still a great intro to the campaign but could be way better with I think only a little bit of work. So, Chickamauga-Chattanooga- two thumbs up because you really do get a sense of the place and the topography and the feel, especially this time of year- though next time I’ll try to go hungry and lice ridden to get a better one.
So the purpose of the thread: in a year and a half if the economy’s halfway decent Civil War tourism will probably see a surge since it’ll be the sesquicentennial of all the major events, so I hope to do some traveling myself since if it’s even 1/10 of what The Bicentennial was the places will have productions and events that they’ll never have again. What are some of the key Civil War sites (battlefields, houses, museums, whatever) that you have most enjoyed or would most recommend (or, for that matter, would least recommend)?
Some that many people don’t know exist that I would recommend, all in south/central Georgia:
The Governor’s Mansion in Milledgeville Georgia (ho-hum website but a gorgeous home) is in addition to being one of the most beautiful mansions in the South a welcome change from the “hall down the middle/spiral staircase/2 rooms off each side” Greek revival but an Italian design with lots of surprises. The most notable is the Georgia-gold plated dome* in the center of the house, under which Sherman slept on a door that was taken down from the governor’s office and balanced on two sawhorses. Some say he did this because he had vowed not to sleep in a bed til Savannah, but the fact the governor (a very vocal anti-secessionist named Joe Brown) had removed all of the beds and most of the furniture on one of the last trains out of town probably added to it.
Milledgeville itself has many great places to see- the Lunatic Asylum, eventually the largest on Earth, was there at the time of the March and had some interesting stories associated with how the “impaired folk” got along with the Yankees.
It was in Milledgeville that Sherman fully understood exactly what a hellhole Andersonville was, for that’s where some of the escapees met with him. Andersonville is in the middle of nowhere, but I still recommend it. The site of the camp is just a piney hillside with no evidence whatever of the horrors that happened there save for a few yards of reconstructed wall and shebangs and some monuments (mostly “Providence Spring”- one of the great stories of the war), but it’s also home to a fantastic museumdedicated not just to Andersonville but to PoWs of all U.S. wars from the Revolution to the present wars. The WW2 section alone can take hours to fully appreciate.
A relatively short ride from Andersonville- 30 miles or so- is a place called Westville. It’s a place I’d recommend to anybody interested in the antebellum south even though it’s fictitious- it’s a village that never actually existed that was created by moving antebellum buildings (most in disrepair and in danger of demolition) into a town grid setting, so while the town is fictional the buildings are real. (A similar site in New England is Old Sturbridge, or New Salemin Illinois- haven’t been to Sturbridge in 30 years or Old Salem ever but both are on the list.) The great thing is that while there’s no end of mansions used as house museums or private residences, Westville is how the “real” people lived- those who weren’t rich planters or shipping magnates but regular farmers, small town merchants, and th e middle class. They are making some efforts to get more slave dwellings added, but since most slave cabins are long gone they have to make do with reproductions and enactors. It’s not on par with Williamsburg by any means, but it’s a fantastic living history experience of “real” southern culture- the kind that wouldn’t have involved hoop skirts and riverboat gamblers- on the eve of the War. (The Patterson Marrett house is there- it’s one of my absolute favorite plantation houses; there were many more that looked like this and had beds and loomsin the parlor than there were like Twelve Oaks or Tara.)
Least recommended in Georgia: pretty much anything to do with the Atlanta Campaign other than perhaps Cyclorama (and even that isn’t worth going far out of your way for). Though most of Atlanta survived the war just fine in spite of what many would have you believe, the city long again tore everything down to build bigger newer structures that they named after things that aren’t there anymore (if there’s a peachtree grove on Peachtree St. I’ve yet to see it, and Scarlett probably sold Kennedy’s Hardware a century ago to build a strip mall that’s now a gay bar).
*For those not familiar, north Georgia is still rich in gold deposits and in the late 1820s/1830s was the site of the first major gold rushin the USA. It had it’s own mint until the Civil War and the college there has its own gold mine (though it’s not that productive these days).
was the worst day in American history. I toured the battlefield at night during the 
