Audio
Fredericksburg Driving Tour, #2, Chatham
Transcript
Welcome to Chatham Manor. It is best to explore this stop with a short walk around the grounds. Feel free to take your time wandering the elaborate 1920s-era gardens that lay between the parking lot and the house. On the opposite side of the house from the parking lot is a view of the Rappahannock River and Fredericksburg. When travelling around Chatham, take a moment to pause, look, and listen. Both sides of the house are great places to be present: to connect with nature as well as the complicated and layered history of this place. The history of Chatham, the house and grounds, dates long before the Civil War, and continues into the 1900s. Enslaved laborers and craftsmen built Chatham Manor in 1771 at the direction and financing of William Fitzhugh. In addition to owning hundreds of thousands of acres and at least one hundred enslaved people, the Fitzhughs were related to and good friends with other well-known Virginians like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and George Mason. But friends could be costly in the late 1700s. The non-stop social requirement of hosting friends and relations drained Fitzhugh's purse. As a result, Fitzhugh sold Chatham 35 years after moving in. By the time Virginia seceded from the United States in May 1861, Chatham was owned by secessionist J. Horace Lacy. After war broke out, Lacy volunteered to serve as an aide de camp in the Confederate Army while his wife, Betty, packed up the family and moved out of Chatham for the rest of the war. This left the large, stately manor empty and available for the United States Army to use by the fall of 1862. To succeed in his recently-appointed position, Burnside needed to quickly cross the Rappahannock River at Fredericksburg and continue the fifty-mile journey to Richmond. Prior to the war, bridges crossed the river for easy travel, but they had been destroyed earlier that year. Aware of this, Burnside submitted a request for pontoon bridging materials to be delivered to the Fredericksburg area. Expecting the bridges to meet him at Chatham, Burnside moved the army from their camps around Warrenton, Virginia. On November 17th, General Burnside and the Union forces began to arrive on Stafford Heights, opposite Fredericksburg, but the pontoons had not arrived yet. This delay gave Confederate General Robert E. Lee the opportunity to move his forces to the western edge of Fredericksburg. Lee wasn’t entirely sure what Burnside’s objective was, but he didn’t want the US army to get close to Richmond. Burnside delayed as he pondered his options for getting his army across the Rappahannock River safely. He did not start moving until December 11th, by which time Lee’s Confederate Army of Northern Virginia was in position. Around 3am on December 11th, 1862, Federal engineers set out to build the pontoon bridges. However, there were Confederates hiding in the buildings along the river and when the engineers were halfway across, the snipers open fired on the weaponless bridge builders. The engineers had no choice but to retreat to safety. With few options left, Burnside ordered the cannons on Stafford Heights to fire on Fredericksburg in an attempt to push the Confederate riflemen back and ensure the safety of his engineers. This began a day-long attempt to cross the river with alternating periods of bombardment and bridge building, but without success. At 3pm, soldiers rowed across the river in pontoon boats to establish a bridgehead. They would attempt to force the Confederates in town to retreat, clearing houses, cellars, and streets, one by one. The resulting urban combat finally succeeded and the pontoon bridges were completed by the end of the day. However, Burnside’s plan for a swift crossing to catch the Confederates by surprise had failed. As soon as the first shots were fired, Chatham’s role in the battle changed from solely being a headquarters to also being a hospital. Men wounded during the bridge building were taken to Chatham where doctors and nurses treated them. Eventually, soldiers who were wounded on the other side of the river arrived at Chatham to be treated as well. The entire house was filled with wounded and dying men, many forced to lay outside on the cold ground waiting to be seen. Alongside the official Army doctors, women like Clara Barton and Dr. Mary Walker tended to the wounded men. In the days after the battle, over a hundred soldiers were buried in the yard. The Lacys returned to Chatham after the war but could not maintain their lavish lifestyle as their wealth had been tied to the enslaved people who had since claimed their freedom. Shortly after returning, the Lacy’s sold the house and 1,300 acres. The next eight owners likewise had difficulty keeping up the house and grounds. Chatham’s fortunes changed in 1920, when Helen and Daniel Devore purchased the property. In the years to come the Devores would transform Chatham from a former slave plantation to a showy, country retreat. Much of what you see at Chatham today, the current state of the house, the elegant gardens, the statuary dotting the grounds, is a result of the restorations to the property in the 1920s.
Description
Part 2 of the Fredericksburg Driving Tour covers the stately Chatham, a slave plantation that dates from 1771. It was from these heights that the US Army of the Potomac began building the bridges to cross into Fredericksburg. During the Battle of Fredericksburg Chatham served as a headquarters and hospital, but Chatham's history expands long before and well after the Civil War.
Credit
NPS
Date Created
12/10/2021
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