My life has pretty much follwed the Civil War. My hometown is Mechanicsville, Va, just outside Richmond (Actually we were in a small "suburb" of Mechanicsville. Mechanicsville was the "big" town.)
In the hills, fields, and swamps around there, first Generals Lee and McClellan fought a series of engagements that history has recorded as "The Seven Days" in 1862. Jeb Stuart's calvary force crossed back into Confederate lines after his famous "ride around McClellan" at "Grapevine Bridge" about two miles from where I grew up.
Later in 1864, Lee returned to the area at the insistance of General U.S. Grant and the Army of the Potomac. They butted heads at a little place called Cold Harbor, just up the road. A few days later Grant called the meeting the biggest mistake he made during the war and slipped away from Lee and crossed the James River to attack Richmond from the south through Petersburg, thus beginning the end.
I now live in a little place that's not really a place anymore, but at one time it was important as a crossroad on the way between Washington and Richmond, Chancellorsville, Va. The site of Lee's greatest victory, and his greatest loss, when General T.J. "Stonewall" Jackson fell, shot by his own men, less than five miles from where I sit at this moment. Out the front window here I can see rifle pits, probably from a skirmish line watching the river crossings. Lee's victory here at Chancelorsville was really the beginning of the campaign that would end at Gettysburg.
Within a few miles of here, three other major battles of the Civil War were fought. Fredericksburg, Wilderness, and Spotsylvania Courthouse. This area is almost exactly halfway between Richmond and Washington, in a straight line (all three cities are on the fall line), making it by an accident of geography, a natural place for an invading and defending force to meet.
(You can toss in a few more battles if you want to count Manassas just a few more miles up the road and across the river and Brandy Station the site of the biggest calvary battle in North America).
The rest of the time, it was pretty quiet.
