Well hello there, sorry for falling off the face of the
planet (again)! I do have a decent excuse, though – over the past three months
I’ve been putting the finishing touches on my second book.
So even though this post is primarily about New Market
Heights, take a quick minute and order a copy of The Battle of First Deep Bottom (don’t worry, the Federals attack the New Market Line in this one too…they
just lose.)
Now that I’ve got those preliminaries out of the way, a
quick look at the calendar will tell you that this Monday is the 150th
anniversary of the Battle of New Market Heights. As you may have heard, Henrico
County is holding a re-enactment of New Market Heights and other actions
that took place north of the James this weekend! I’ll be there tomorrow and Sunday selling and signing books,
and the county was even kind enough to give me a whopping 30 minutes to speak
about the battle tomorrow afternoon at 2:15 p.m.
Then, once the weekend is over, I’ll be helping lead
real-time tours of the core battlefield on Monday morning September 29th.
These 2-hour tours will begin at 6:00 a.m. and 10:45 a.m.
Needless to say, I’m ecstatic that New Market Heights is receiving
this amount of attention and I’m cautiously optimistic that these events will
help raise attention about the heroes on both sides who fought there and maybe
even generate some public outcry about the current plans to turn the battlefield
into a community college.
I hope you’ll take the time to come on out to a unique Civil
War battle re-enactment and a very rare opportunity to walk on the hallowed ground
where 14 African American Union soldiers won the Medal of Honor.