A little over a year ago, I posted a series of photos from Google Earth—satellite views of Civil War battlefields—and invited people to try to identify as many as possible. If you missed it, the Quiz can be found here. And the answers to the Quiz are here. It's a very different perspective than you're used to, but many of you are so oriented toward maps in studying Civil War battles, the topographical clues soon lead to recognition. I had planned to do a second quiz long before now, and the good people over at TOCWOC put it back into mind with their posting of coordinates for various battlefields.
For Quiz Number Two, I've given you six photos of battlefields already lost to development. This makes it a little more challenging, since familiar battlefield landmarks are non-existent. To aid your efforts, I've given you additional (easy?) clues in the accompanying captions, including whether it's Eastern or Western Theater, and some modern roadways. If you're a veteran of organized Civil War campaign tours, some of these should jump right out at you. Of course, if you live in one of these areas, that should help too.
Repeating a passage from the last time around: Post your answers as comments to this blog entry, and in a day or two I'll identify each image, and post some maps and other photos to show how the fighting transpired, or how the troops were aligned in these landscapes. I'll also heap plaudits upon the winner, if there is one. Click on each image for a larger view. Good luck.
No. 1: The tiny yellow pushpin in the center shows all that's left of this Northern Virginia battlefield. The large diagonal road above is U.S. 50. The large diagonal road below it is Interstate 66.
No. 2: The pushpin in the center denotes the site where a Union general was killed in a western battle. That big road, Interstate 20, was not there at the time—Sherman could have made good use of it.
No. 3: On this Tennessee hill, the Federals broke through the Confederate left, and it was all downhill for the Rebels after that. The hill was renamed for a Confederate Colonel who died there.
No. 4: The fort on this site was at the center of the Confederate line in a June, 1864 battle. Federal troops under David Hunter failed in their hours-long assault against this position. I've left the road names visible, guessing that most people are not that familiar with this neighborhood. Note some of the street names: Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire. Cruel Reconstruction joke?
No. 5: Federals in the Western Theater captured this Confederate fort, which is now home to the fishes. It was wet at the time of the war, but not this wet.
No. 6: Now a historic ghost town in the Deep South, somewhere near the center of this photo is the site of a POW camp for Union soldiers, whose misery was compounded every time the river left its banks.
If for one reason or another you're reading this blog entry without having seen the previous one (January 30), you might want to scroll down to that earlier entry first, and have a look at the mystery photos there.
Thanks to everyone who gave it a shot (more in the Civil War Forum, than in the blog). I may need to fine tune future entries—it's obviously very disorienting to see things from this perspective, and difficult to identify out of context, even to people who spend inordinate amounts of time studying maps. Future quizzes may include more distinctive geographic features from the satellite perspective.
In order, the January 30 images depict:
No. 1: Franklin, Tennessee. Pushpin on the left points to the Visitor Center/Museum at the Carter House; pushpin No. 2 (the red roof) points to the Carter House. Scroll down to the bottom of this page to see a map showing the location of the Carter House at the heart of Hood's massive assault.
No. 2: Vicksburg, Mississippi. The visible earthworks in the crook of the road intersection at left are what remains of the Stockade Redan where, during the May 19, 1864 assault, the colors of the 1st Battalion, 13th USI reached the ditch fronting the Confederate defenses, earning that unit the motto, "First at Vicksburg."
No. 3: Lookout Mountain—the northern point, around which the "Battle Above the Clouds" was fought. That water is Moccasin Bend in the Tennessee River, just downstream from downtown Chattanooga.
No. 4: Gettysburg, scenes of the first day's fighting. The white diagonal road is, of course, the Chambersburg Pike. The diagonal line above the Pike is the railroad cut. The road coming out of the bottom of the photo, a little left of center, is Reynolds Avenue along McPherson Ridge. It is more or less the same area seen in this map.
No. 5: Yellow Tavern. The monument barely seen in the trees just below the pushpin is the J.E.B. Stuart monument. From the NPS driving tour: "Confederate artillery near this location goaded Custer into a second attack at 4 p.m. The Federal charge broke through Lomax's line (behind you, as you face the monument), but was turned back by Company K of the First Virginia Cavalry. The action drew J.E.B. Stuart into the fighting, where he received his fatal wound. The monument marks the approximate spot where Stuart was shot. It is now under the care and protection of the United Daughters of the Confederacy."
No. 6: Spotsylvania: the Mule Shoe. Check the map below to see where the angle was (just to the right of the road intersection near the center of the photo). The faint trail across the field in the left center marks Emory Upton's approach. As I followed that trail through the woods, I thought of my mother's great-grandfather, in the 5th Wisconsin, who was shot in the knee during Upton's May 10th assault.
No. 7: Okay -- that was a hard one. Kennesaw Mountain.
No. 8: Pea Ridge. The structure in the clearing a little right of center is the reconstructed Elkhorn Tavern. Look at those woods. You can't begin to imagine how many ticks are out there.
No. 9: Manassas. What else? The Henry House on Henry Hill. Below: Bull Run, Va. Ruins of Mrs. Judith Henry's house, by George Barnard.
Test your Aerial Reconnaissance Skills
Amaze your friends
If you're like me, when there are dishes to be done, or garbage cans waiting to be emptied, it means only one thing: time to sit down at the computer for a nice long session of Google Earth. This evening I put together a little geography quiz for faithful readers. Can you identify the location or significance of the following Civl War scenes? Name the battle? Identify a few landmarks? Judge the season and time of day based on tree shadows? Click on the images to get a larger view.
A number of them are fairly easy, I think, due to road configurations (and in fact, I forgot to turn off the road names on at least one photo) or distinct features. On a couple photos, I placed push-pins to set-off the the tell-tale extant Civil War clues (a building, or monument) amidst a sea of residential and commercial development. All of the images were the scenes of bloody battles, or at least well-known peripheral fights associated with major campaigns (nothing too obscure).
Four of them are from the Western Theater, four are from the East. One is in the Trans-Mississippi.
In all of the photos, there is some famous battlefield feature in the center of the image, or nearly the center, though you may find something along the edges to help solidify your hunch—the more features you identify, the more impressive your answer will be. Post your answers as comments to this blog entry, and in a day or two I'll identify each image, and post some maps and other photos to show how the fighting transpired, or how the troops were aligned in these landscapes. I'll also heap plaudits upon the winner, if there is one.
Don't cheat by looking up the coordinates before posting your guesses or answers (use them to check your work, if you're dying to know). I did not notice they were listed until after the fact, and it's way too much trouble to go back and edit those out, then upload again. As the quiz evolves from this trial run, I'll edit out those clues. If you do not have a broadband connection to view this page, please accept my apologies, and also my invitation to join the rest of us in the 21st century.
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