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Thread ID: 17317 | Posts: 2 | Started: 2005-03-15
2005-03-15 05:12 | User Profile
'Gods and Generals' author pays homage to history
By MICHAEL ZITZ The Free Lance-Star
Published March 14, 2005
FREDERICKSBURG, Va. -- Simply seeing Fredericksburg from Chatham Manor helped Jeff Shaara when he was researching his best-selling novel "Gods and Generals," later a major motion picture.
Now, Shaara is trying to help Chatham Manor.
He visited the historic Georgian-style mansion in southern Stafford this weekend because funding woes had forced Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park to close Chatham except on weekends.
"I vividly remember what it was like to stand there and look down on Fredericksburg," Shaara told a reporter before a reception hosted Friday night at Chatham, which overlooks the Rappahannock River and the city.
Scenes that took place there played a prominent role in "Gods and Generals." The 2003 Warner Bros. film, which starred Robert Duvall as Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, features battles in the area, beginning in 1862 at Beaver Dam Creek in Hanover County and at Chancellorsville in 1863.
"Fredericksburg is very important to me, both in my research and in the way the people here receive both me and my books," Shaara said.
Chatham, with its breathtaking view of the city and the river, inspired him. The site was strategically important to generals during the Civil War, he added.
"I point out that view in 'Gods and Generals,"' he said. "That view plays such a major role in the story."
And, Shaara concluded, it could be almost as important to winning the battle to bring Civil War tourists downtown today. "When you stand at Chatham now, you see what I did in researching the book. You see it all, the growth of the city as it exists today, and you see the lay of land the generals did then."
Some $1,500 was raised Friday at what was called a pep rally for Chatham and a fund-raising effort to support the 80-some volunteers who will staff the historic site.
Linda Wandres, chair of Friends of Fredericksburg Area Battlefields, said she was pleased with the result.
Ticket prices for the reception were deliberately set low; the event's primary purpose was to build enthusiasm. "We wanted to honor those volunteers with the reception," Wandres said.
The horror of the Civil War is clearly illustrated, Shaara said, by the fact that doctors had to hurriedly amputate soldiers' limbs, feet and hands, and tossed them out Chatham's windows.
"It was so gruesome that outside the windows, there would be piles of arms and legs," he said.
When the Union Army asked for help tending the wounded at Chatham, the poet Walt Whitman and nursing icon Clara Barton were among those who volunteered. President Abraham Lincoln met there with Gen. Irvin McDowell, commander of the Union armies, in 1862.
But Chatham has a colorful history beyond its strategic perspective on Fredericksburg during the Civil War, Shaara said.
According to the National Park Service, Chatham was built between the years 1768 and 1771 by William Fitzhugh as the center of a large plantation. In 1805, that plantation was the site of a short-lived slave uprising. Slaves whipped their overseer; one slave was executed, and two more perished trying to escape. Another two were deported.
George Washington, who grew up less than a mile away at Ferry Farm, visited Chatham a number of times. It is the only house that both Washington and Lincoln are known to have entered. Jeff Shaara wrote "Gods and Generals" as a prequel to his father's hit novel "The Killer Angels," which became the movie "Gettysburg." His father, author Michael Shaara, died in 1988.
Shaara, whose latest work, "To the Last Man--A Novel of the First World War," deals in part with the story of a 19-year-old Marine, talked Friday with Marines at their Quantico base as he autographed books for them.
"It was really nice to get feedback from the Marines," he said. "I don't think most Americans realize the role the Marines played in first world war and what a key role America played in the Allies' victory."
He also made appearances at the Central Rappahannock Regional Library headquarters in Fredericksburg and before a regional group of Commonwealth Governor's School students gathered at Stafford High School.
Shaara said that today, in a time of war, it's more important than ever for Americans to understand history.
"Any time we are involved in a military conflict, it's too easy to simply look at our situation in a vacuum."
He said too few understand how what America did in World War I and World War II led to the current situation in the Middle East.
"Our history defines who we are," Shaara said. "Young people are not taught enough about where they come from."
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On the Net:
[url]http://www.nps.gov/frsp/chatham.htm[/url]
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The Free Lance-Star is published in Fredericksburg.
[url]http://www.dailypress.com/news/local/virginia/dp-va--chathammanor0314mar14,0,2605581.story?coll=dp-headlines-virginia[/url]
2005-03-15 05:38 | User Profile
Interesting. The Director was a good fellow also.
[URL=http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5408&highlight=God%27s+Generals]God's and Generals Director In Favor of Reducing Immigration[/URL]