Battlefield Images

My travels recently took me to the Gulf Coast on business and I found I had an afternoon off while waiting to fly back to Iowa the next morning.  I decided to take a little side trip to Fort Blakely State Park just outside Mobile, Alabama.  Fort Blakely was the site of the last major battle of the Civil War.  My great-great-grandfather’s 27^th Iowa Infantry Regiment was part of the assault on the fort which occurred on the same day as Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, but later in the afternoon of April 9^th, 1865.

As I entered the park, I was required to stop at a little building at the entrance to pay my three-dollar park fee.  A frail-looking, stooped-over, gray-haired lady came to the car window to take my money, then handed me a map of the park.

I drove slowly down the winding gravel road and soon realized that I seemed to be the only visitor in the park that afternoon.  I came upon a sign that said simply “Battlefield” and stepped out of my car to view the remains of the trenches, rifle pits, and earthen fort walls.  As I walked up to the 140-year-old earthworks, I was amazed at their appearance.  They looked like they could have been built mere weeks before.

I stepped through the piney forest trying to picture in my mind what it must have been like on that warm spring afternoon so long ago—the long lines of Union soldiers sweeping forward in a hailstorm of rifle bullets, along with deadly grape shot and canister fired from the rebel cannon behind the fort walls.  I wandered the old battlefield for an hour or so, my thoughts occasionally interrupted by a rumble of thunder from a distant storm.

I continued to drive toward the river and took a walk along the bottoms—trees draped with Spanish moss, and an ancient diesel dredge boat puttering up river.  It was easy to imagine an old stern-wheeled riverboat in its place, drifting by plantations with white-columned houses.  It was said that rebel soldiers hid in the swampy areas next to the riverbank once the Union soldiers overran the fort that day.  Still standing near the water was one huge tree with a hollow base where Confederate troops supposedly took refuge from their would-be captors.

The old town site of Blakely revealed little of its history except an old cemetery where many of its original settlers were buried, many victims of yellow fever.  One weathered gravestone explained that the boy buried there back in 1818 had died as a result of being “thrown from a horse.”

The sun was sinking low in the sky, and I knew I must return to the car and leave this lonely place.  Just before driving away, I turned to take one last look.  As I scanned the scene before me, I once again heard the rumble of thunder—or was it cannon fire just over the ridge?  As my eyes strained in the fading light, I swear I could see a long line of soldiers in blue making a headlong rush toward the rebel entrenchments with flags flying and bugles blaring.  And I realized once again that history—our history—is not dry and dusty.  It is as alive and relevant and exciting as we are willing to make it.

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