And once I learned all the facts years later, I imagined the nine bridges the nine bands of raiders burned or tried to burn that night in 1863. I do not need to know that yet. I cross it in my imagination, stone bridges at Manassas and at Antietam, the Pamunkey River bridge, the North Anna bridge, Union Mills bridge, Bull Run bridge, Alexandria Bridge, Potomac Creek Bridge, the high bridge over the Appomattox River, Cedar Creek Tressle, the Long Bridge across the Potomac River to Washington, James River Bridge at Richmond, Burke Station bridge, the crude tressle at Hatcher's Run, White Oak Swamp bridge, Cumberland River Bridge, Strawberry Plains Bridge, Sullivan's Branch bridge, the Hiawassee Bridge, the Loudon Bridge, the Etowah River bridge, the trestle across Running Water Ravine, The Chattahoochee River Bridge, the bridge at Chickamauga, Whiteside Trestle, the Tennessee River Bridge at Bridgeport. A bridge that captures my imagination is the one that John Brown crossed from Maryland into Harper's Ferry, which for me links up all the other bridges in the war. Pontoon bridges were ahead of their time, put out, far ahead of the time it took to repair bridges, even Haupt's cornstalk master structures.
Pontoons put men too swiftly on the other bank.
Lincoln's funeral cars passed over. The spell a bridge casts. The many bridges, the many spells linger. But I wonder how many bridges the Civil War crossed are still standing today, thirty years later, 1897. London Bridge, Brooklyn Bridge.