Pamplin Historical Park, Petersburg, VA

 

National Museum of Civil War Soldier

Pamplin Historical Park is a private museum featuring the National Museum of the Civil War Soldier and situated on the grounds of the Breakthrough Battle of the Civil War. The museum is filled with artifacts from the civil war: uniforms, weapons, photographs, journals, and personal items. Entering the museum, you chose one of several soldiers and learn their story from recruitment till the end of the war. There were numerous exhibits depicting camp life: what food they ate, how the camp was supplied, the organization of units, how they were drilled and trained, medical care, and moving from camp to the battlefield. We were both surprised by how fair the exhibits were to both the Union and Confederate soldiers, pointing out how they felt that they were upholding the ideals of their countrymen. Unfortunately, they didn’t allow photography in the museum itself, I especially wanted a picture of a journal with a bullet in it.

Tudor Hall Plantation Slave Quarters

Outside had exhibits on plantation life at Tudor Hall Plantation for both the whites and their slaves. They also recreated the defense works that were put up to defend Richmond during the Battle of Petersburg. The combination of sharpened logs, moat, and walls built up from which the soldiers can shoot. We saw the remnants of these groundworks along a trail of the battlefield. For the last year of the Civil War, Lee and Grant battled for control of Petersburg, which led to Richmond, the Confederate Capital. The contest was won by Grant on April 2, 1865 when the Union troops broke through the Confederate lines at this location. More than a thousand Federal troops were killed here, but most of the Confederate soldiers were killed or wounded. We finished our day with a 50 minute movie about the life of soldiers from their initial recruitment through training, drilling, and fighting. It gave you a feeling for how terrible war is: wounded men dying on the contested land, the search for missing comrades after a battle, the attempt to help the wounded, often by removing a limb. The movie was centered around the journal with theWh bullet hole in it. How one soldier gave the journal to another in case he was killed, and that journal saved his life, when it stopped the bullet, finally how he continued journaling in his companion’s journal for the rest of the war.

Recreation of Civil War Earthworks