After the Sesquicentennial?

MoonHowler

Jennifer Buske has written an article about the area plans for the Sesquicentennial for the Washington Post entitled “As Civil War anniversary nears, Manassas sees a historic opportunity.”   In the Friday the 13th  article she writes what begins as an ode to deceased event planner Creston Owen and takes us though the history of the arriving at the Sesquicentennial.  Included in the article is a comparison between the Manassas Battlefield and Gettysburg.

Any attempts to compare the two battlefields ended about the time of the battles themselves.  Manassas is not Gettysburg and never will be, based pretty much on location, location, location, both then and now.  Gettysburg pretty much is a dedicated battlefield.  Manassas is a suburb of D.C.  And here is the gist of the problem.

According to the Washington Post:

Playing off the excitement of the sesquicentennial, Corey A. Stewart, the Board of County Supervisors chairman, said he wants to begin branding Prince William as a military history corridor where people can stop at the battlefield, the National Museum of the Marine Corps and the future American Wartime Museum. That attraction is scheduled to open in 2014 and cover every era of war from World War I to Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Manassas Battlefield to Commemorate Memorial Day

MoonHowler

From the News and Messenger:

Manassas National Battlefield Park will be marking Memorial Day with a commemorative ceremony on Monday.

The event will begin at noon at Groveton Confederate Cemetery and New York Avenue and will feature Union and Confederate flags, state flowers and wreaths of spring blooms decorating the battlefield in memory of the fallen of the two Civil War battles of Manassas in 1861 and 1862, and in commemoration of the nation’s war dead through history.

Members of the 42nd Virginia Infantry and 14th Brooklyn Militia reenactment groups will represent Con-federate and Union troops in conducting funeral musketry salutes at the cemetery and at the 14th Brooklyn Monument.

The park’s artillery detachment will fire a salute from a 10-pounder Parrott gun in honor of the war dead, and members of the 42nd Virginia will perform guard duty at the cemetery through the afternoon.

The ceremony will begin with the raising of flags to the peak of the cemetery flagstaff at noon. Musketry and artillery salutes will follow at the cemetery and a final musketry salute will be fired at the 14th Brook-lyn Monument at about 1 p.m.

The Groveton Cemetery is located on U.S. 29 about one mile west of Va.234. Parking for the cemetery is located immediately to the west of the site, off U.S. 29.

The 14th Brooklyn Monument is across U.S. 29 from the cemetery, with public access and parking located on New York Avenue, a park tour road.

Hopefully these brave soldiers will continue to be honored in this way, regardless of time.   Many of those young men are buried far from their homes.  Their families didn’t have the comfort of visting their graves.  Virginia is full of civil war graveyards.  My favorite one is a Union cemetery over on route 250, just east of Staunton.  My father always tipped his hat when we drove by on the way to visit my grandparents and said ‘hello buddies.’  He did that every time he passed a military cemetery.