Fort Scott and Bleeding Southeastern Kansas

On the way back from the greater Kansas City area, I stopped in Fort Scott, Kan. because there was a fort there. Do I really need to explain myself? Yes? Fine. Because there was a fort there, whatever. This was like in October or something. It was a cool fort, and everyone that ever drives by Fort Scott should probably stop and check it out.

It’s been months now, though, so I don’t remember it all that well aside form thinking it was cool and people should stop there if they were driving through. Here are photos, maybe they’ll jog something.

So these houses were at the back of the fort. Oh yeah: the fort was a pre-Civil War fort, one that was supposed to form sort of a wall against Indians. Like, this was supposed to be the far western outpost of Euro-American civilization. They had dragoons stationed here (off to the left side of the frame), who rode horses and waved swords around. This was like in the 1840s or something, but then it got quickly overrun by Euro-Americans who wanted stuff west of here as well.

But the houses at the back of the fort were for the officers and their families. They were supposed to be nice-ish. IIRC they were two-unit duplexes. Also, the quartermaster sounded like a good guy who knew what he was doing. I mean the specific quartermaster who was here. I think he designed the fort and figured out how to store potatoes, things like that.

The pano is the view from the pre-Civil War hospital balcony; the below photo is the pre-Civil War hospital room. Reading about pre-Civil War medicine makes you feel okay about being alive today (as opposed to then). They were still thinking that mercury cured everything back then.

The left side of the panorama is where all the dragoons’ horses were kept. It’s a stable, I guess.

Above’s where the enlisted guys would play checkers when they weren’t out dragooning.

Not too far from there and also in southeastern Kansas, the map listed a “massacre site”, which I figured I should visit. It was for the Marais des Cygnes Massacre, which was sort of how “bleeding Kansas” got that name and did something or other resulting in the whole country that wasn’t in the south thinking that all slave owners were bad people. The something or other was a massacre. It was, like, the pro-slavery people tricked some anti-slavery people into coming with them under false pretenses, then told them all to stand in a ditch while they got shot.

The ravine is in front of my Jeep there. There was also a house on the property that was a house built by a friend of John Brown or something. Then I drove home (although, in truth, I went to the massacre before Fort Scott — tricked you!).

This is such a travel blog nowadays. Do I not have interesting thoughts otherwise? One assumes the negative based on the evidence at hand. Perhaps I have hit my angle of repose.

bkd

Down and Out in Pittsburgh and Washington D.C.

Some months ago I received visitors from California. During their visit, some photos were taken. I now offer up those photos to this repository. Long may they remain available. Long!

Pgh skyline from the Allegheny shoreline.

A tourist-photographer tests the light before taking a picture of a drain affixed to a wall in an otherwise empty room. There’s probably art here, I’m just not sure where its boundaries are.

Manassas Battlefield in Virginia.

As it turned out, I didn’t really take photos in DC. I did, however, discover that I really resent that place. It’s probably good I didn’t go to UMCP for grad school. Although they have better restaurants there than here.

Also: DLDF’s photos of the same trip are art, e.g., http://denatothepena.blogspot.com/2012/05/may-5-2012.html, http://denatothepena.blogspot.com/2012/05/abe.html, and http://denatothepena.blogspot.com/2012/05/antietam-manassas.html.

bkd

Yorktown, Petersburg, and Old Confederate Cemeteries

I was gonna do some big write up about the CSA, but I guess I don’t care that much. Going to the south is like going to a foreign country where they speak English. They have their own history and aristocracy and culture and symbols and clearly none of these are mine/yours (unless you’re from there, I imagine).

And for as extremely polite as they are to your face, southerners are the most impolite drivers in the country. There, it’s been said.

Meanwhile, cool battlefields and cemeteries:

This is an artillery piece from the Yorktown National Battlefield. For as important a battle as it was (it was the last major action in the Revolutionary War), there wasn’t a whole lot to look at. OTOH, the movie was informative and didn’t make me hate George Washington like Mt. Vernon’s did.

Some monument commemorating the battle. The setting is pretty, fwiw. I’d rather have died of a musket shot here than most places.

This artillery is from the Petersburg National Battlefield. There was a lot to see there. It was sort of the South’s last hope at keeping the North out of their one industrial center in Richmond. Was struck by how similar the tactics here were to those employed in World War I (a lot of trenches, stalemates, and unfortunate runs across no-man’s lands). Also thought that the whole thing with the Pennsylvanian miners digging tunnels under the Confederate lines in order to blow them up with dynamite was pretty cool, even if it wasn’t decisive or anything.

On a side-note, Petersburg is as run-down a town as I’ve ever visited, but otoh lunch specials at the Chinese place in town were under $6. There may be a correlation.

Here’s what the Blandford Cemetery looks like:

It was kind of cool. The church there was, after the war, turned into a “memorial chapel”. The Tiffany Company donated stained glass windows for it, with one window for each state that was aligned with the South (including Missouri and Maryland). I pointed out to the tour guide that the windows’ backgrounds corresponded with the actual direction you were facing (e.g., the western windows had mountains in the background, eastern had ocean), which apparently had never occurred to her. Maybe they don’t get many visitors.

Her: That *could* be what it is.

Me: Well, the sun is rising over the ocean in the eastern windows.

Her: Or is it setting?

Me: Assuming that’s the east, I hope it’s rising.

Although it’d be interesting if the earth started spinning the other direction. Kudos to her for keeping that dream alive.

Jefferson Davis’s grave:

Seems weird he was buried in Richmond rather than in Mississippi, where he was a senator. I dunno, whatever. He moved around a lot.

The cemetery is called the Hollywood Cemetery. There are some CSA generals buried there, IIRC, and a couple of forgettable US presidents as well. They also have this:

You just don’t hear much about the Jewish Confederate experience.

Monroe and Tyler Too were the presidents. I guess there are more forgettable ones out there.

And then driving out of Richmond, I cruised down Monument Boulevard, which includes monuments to six of Richmond’s favorite sons (most of whom were not from Richmond):

• (Gen.) Robert E. Lee
• (Gen.) J.E.B. Stuart
• (Pres.) Jefferson Davis
• (Gen.) “Stonewall” Jackson
• Matthew Fontaine Maury (renowned oceanographer (?!) and Confederate “Chief of Sea Coast, River and Harbor Defences” in Virginia)
• Arthur Ashe (the tennis player)

One of these kids is not like the others. Nice houses on the street, though. A lot of statues of guys on horses. One statue of a guy with a tennis racket.

bkd

The Museum and White House of the Confederacy

Main reasons for going to Richmond: (1) I’d meant to spend a day there on my road trip last year, but it got squeezed out; (2) $36 a night at a newly renovated Holiday Inn. Also it was within a six-and-a-half-hour driving radius from Pgh (barely). Plus there’s nothing to do there that requires you to use your hands to grab stuff.

That’s the White House of the Confederacy. The exterior is pretty unprepossessing. The side shown above is actually the back — the front is plainer. Supposedly the back was done up more because it’s the side that faces the (James) river and the place where guests would have hung out. Richmond city planners didn’t exactly go out of their way to preserve the “sanctity” of the location. The brick hospital that surrounds it on all sides is one of the uglier hospital complexes I’ve ever seen in my life.

For that matter, Richmond’s an aesthetically disappointing city generally. The topography should lend itself to something cool, but it hasn’t happened. Probably because all the good stuff got destroyed in the war (although they’ve had 145 years to recover).

The white house is a nice mansion. The stuff inside was cool. Plenty of smoking parlors, very tasteful. George Eastman and I could’ve hung out there and felt at ease, although I guess we both probably would’ve been weirded out by the slaves there. The tour guide looked like he was half-man, half-bloodhound, but he knew the heck out of that mansion, Richmond, Jefferson Davis, and the Confederacy. And fwiw, Davis didn’t really live here very long. Three years IIRC.

It  also didn’t cost much compared to less historically-relevant mansions (I think the museum + mansion ticket was $12; I mean, not *cheap*, but not hilariously awful either).

The museum was all right-to-good. It didn’t hammer home the Civil War story of the Confederacy like I thought it would — mostly just short write-ups on key battles posted next to displays of flags and uniforms. They had some cool artwork that I liked though. I think this is the most famous Confederate painting that exists:

Depicts the last meeting of Generals Lee and Jackson — before Jackson died from pneumonia at Spotsylvania.

My favorite part of the museum, though, was the more proletariat-focused art. Like this:

These are just a couple of pencil sketches done by some confederate soldier. I’m guessing they’re depicting one of the better days in camp (fishing with your buddies, hanging out by the fire smoking your pipe), but I think it explains a whole lot more about the Civil War experience than does Stonewall’s revolver — not just in terms of content, but in terms of perspective. It also supports my thesis on humanity that even the most horrendous situations become normal to people over time. Yep.

bkd