There is a place where I like to hike in summer and winter. It is about 20 miles outside of Washington, DC. The trails of the Manassas National Battlefield Park cross through woods and span creeks and wander over old farms. In summer on the anniversaries of the two battles the heat rises up out of the land like a steam rises from a kettle.
The Battle of First Manassas, the first major battle of the American War Between the States was fought on these grounds during the heat and humidity of high summer, July 21, 1861. Thirteen months later during the following summer the two armies met on the same ground in the Second Battle of Manassas, August 28–30, 1862. Summer can be fierce in this part of Virginia. The men who fought in the two battles not only struggled against each other; they also struggled against heat exhaustion under the brutal sun. The battles were bloody affairs fought with cannon and bayonet and musket and rifle. There were more than 20,000 men wounded in the two battles; 3,711 whom died. Many of the wounded lost arms and legs and would never fight again. Others were less severely wounded and would continue the struggle over the next several years.
Before the war, before the cannons’ roar, before the screams of horses and men, these were quiet farms and wood lots. This is where generations had lived enjoying the rolling hills and the cool streams which rose from springs deep in the woods. The people were born and lived and died on these farms. Most people never traveled more than a few miles from their homes. I imagine that the seven-mile trip to the railroad junction in Manassas was as far as many may have gone. Or perhaps they traveled the ten miles to the Chapmam-Beverly Mill at Thoroughfare gap. That mill provided food stuff for troops during the Civil War as well as during the French and Indian War, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World War I and World War II.
The farmers and their families worked hard on these lands. The land and the farms consumed their entire lives. The cemeteries that remain today include the Hooe family cemetery, the Carter family cemetery, and the Ball family cemetery. I am sure there are many unmarked graves throughout the area.
Families lived at Hazel Plain and at Brawner Farm during the war and saw the troops of the two opposing armies rush through their yards in the Second Battle of Manassas. The land around the Henry house saw some of the fiercest parts of the First Battle of Manassas pass by their very windows and up on the high hill where the Robinson House once stood.
In the woods around the farms and the barnyards the sound of the two battles echoed and faded among the trees. Today those echos can be heard by those who listen. There are sounds that are trapped in the woods and secrets too. Deep in the woods are trees that once saw soldiers from both sides of the conflict march into battle. The trees stand tall and strong against the years and spread their canopy high and wide. Several of these trees were once marked as ‘Witness Trees’, but the plaques have been removed or stolen. Standing in the shade of the Poplars in summer you might hear the rush of feet as the companies of men run towards the sounds of the battle. By the numerous creeks that thread through the area the huge Sycamore trees stand with their roots pressed deep into the moist soil. These trees also saw the fight. When the wind blows through their branches you can hear them telling each other of what they saw or what their ‘grand-trees’ parents told them.
All these wooded lots and farms and fields were connected by the lives of the people of the area and at one time by footpaths and wagon roads. Some of those paths and roads were turned into macadam roads and then paved highway and then maybe into Interstate Highways. Many of the paths were abandoned and became grown over.
Back in the deep parts of the woods there are old paths that did not become something else. These paths and old roads tied farm to farm and family to family. They might have trees growing up in them now, but generations of farm boys and girls traveled to and from farmsteads to carry their produce to market, to go courting, to marry. They walked or perhaps rode on horseback, but the trail they made into the wilderness and back was defined by the width of the wagon wheels. Years upon years of bare and booted feet, horses’ hooves, and cloven feet of huge oxen, wore and cut the path down. Rain carved the broken earth away. In each year came more feet and hooves and wagon wheels to cut the wagon-road deeper into the soil and forest floor.
And then it stopped. The farmers used other roads. The houses were abandoned and fell from their stone foundations and rotted away. After all left, trees grew up in the road and died, and other trees grew.
Now the wagon-road, though deep and wide, is still only a shadow in time of its former self. Covered by leaves and snow in winter and by shade and undergrowth in summer, the wagon-road is known only by those who walk deep into the woods away from the paved path. These wanderers stand in the old road and as they imagine the creak of harness, the rub of the wheels on axle, the song of the driver, the march of the company of soldiers going to war, the step of the lone solder returning home, and the laughter of the people, they are hearing the stories of those who traveled the old wagon-roads. The wanderers listen carefully and with respect, and the sounds and voices come to them of the friends and families who walked these paths long ago. They hear the stories that the wagon-road can tell them.
