Trip Report

I believe that I have sufficiently recovered from my weekend ramble to fill you in on a few of the highlights.

We spent Friday afternoon at the South Mountain Battlefield, exploring the positions of the Tar Heel regiments. I will confess that this was my first trip to the area. Much of my battlefield tramping is connected with whatever regiment I happen to be working on at the time. This was no exception, as one of the Tar Heel regiments involved in the battle might be my next project. We also got to view the North Carolina Monument at South Mountain, which ranks up there with the best Tar Heel Confederate monuments.

Having finished our work at South Mountain, we drove over to Antietam for a few minutes, hiking along the Sunken Road.

Friday evening found us with the likes of Charlie Knight, J.D. Petruzzi, Eric Lindblade, and William Frassanito at the Reliance Mine Saloon in downtown Gettysburg. It was an interesting evening to say the least…

On Saturday, we toured portions of the battlefield, including the customary drive down Confederate Avenue. I spent more time exploring the right of the Confederate army for an upcoming article, and we spent more time at the Devil’s Den, possibly one of my favorite sites on the battlefield. Saturday afternoon was spent in town, book shopping. Saturday evening I was signing books at the American History Store with John Michael Priest.

Sunday found us on the field at Gettysburg again. I was hoping for some good photo ops, but the clouds were thick. Kind of hard to photograph a gray monument with a gray background! We did drive around the east Cavalry Battlefield. On Sunday afternoon, we traversed the Monocacy Battlefield, near Frederick, Maryland. This was my first time visiting this field, and we got in some great hiking in 90+ degrees . Greatly enjoyed the witness trees along the trail at the mill pond. It appears that none of the positions occupied by the numerous Tar Heel regiments are preserved. It was nice meeting Brent Spaulding at the Monocacy Park and getting a signed copy of his new book on Early’s 1864 Maryland Invasion.

Overall, it was a great trip – my mom and dad came up and watched the kids and Elizabeth and I had some time away. I also picked up some more books and made some great connections! A special word of thanks to James Glessner of the American History Store and co-owner of Ten Roads Publishing for putting together the signings on both Friday and Saturday evenings!