I had several direct ancestors who fought in the War between the States. One was a young infantryman in a South Carolina Regiment of the Army of Northern Virginia who fought at Cold Harbor and on through the siege of Petersburg where he was wounded and captured. My mother grew of age knowing him as her favorite uncle. A great aunt on my father's side, who married an elderly confederate veteran when she was quite young, was the last widowed Confederate pensioner in Tennessee when she died. I remember her quite well. The war had the immediacy of recent history in my family. Another ancestor on that side of the family rode with Forest in Tennessee and Mississippi. The most notable was again on my mother's side. His name was William Barksdale, and he fell mortally wounded at Gettysburg leading his Mississippi Brigade in a charge that broke a Union Corps on the second day.
Northern Virginia is a wonderland of history. Everyone should see Gettysburg and the ground Pickett tried to cross on the third day. But ghosts walk on the battlefield of Sharpsburg (Antietam as the Yankees call it.) Just over the border in Maryland, it has hardly changed an iota since 1862. The park service is doing a magnificent job maintaining its original state. Relatively few people visit it because most tourists are pretty poorly educated and have never heard of it. But, Sharpsburg was the single bloodiest day in American history. Lee was outnumbered two-to-one but fought McClellan standstill.
Our home outside Leesburg had a barn dating to the 1850's. I looked hard, but never could find conclusive evidence that Mosby had used it as a rallying point.
