Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1866-11-05
BATTLE-FIEhDS AROUND RICH
M0ND.

A correspondent of the. New York
Tribune has recently visited the, fortifi-
cations and battle.felds around Rich
mond. He says;
FAIR OAKS.
Standing at the fort on this line, which
frowns grimly upon the approaches to
the Nine-Mile road, down in the front q
mile away, group of isolated oaks,
trenched upon the edge OF pine forest
can be observed. These are the Fair
Oaks" and they are passing fair to the
eye in that wilderness OF pines and
dwarf growth. Between these oaks and
pines and the line of works where Lees
lines then were, is open ground--once
cultivated fields, now abandoned wastes,
save here and there patch of corn. In
the pi ne forest to the right of the Oaks,
Casey was encamped that terrible day
when the enemy pounced upon him, and
converted the pinery into shamble.
There are few traces of the struggle
visible now. Scrutinizing closely
and the trees can be seen to
be marked with bullets, here and
there one shattered with cannon ball /;
at intervals open graves, from which
the dead have been removed to other
sepulchres, and these are all l have
seen battle fields while the battle ragged,
have traversed them as soon as it ceased;
and j must say that if then they were
exciting, at four years after the battle they
are more agreeable places of resort. OF
the torn and mangled forms of men and
beasts, and the hardly less sorrowfully
suggestive debris of armies that then
always cumbers and aifrights mother
earth. there is here at Fair Oaks not
trace. The dead have been buried or
have mouldered out of sight, the wounded
have been carried away to get well or
die; the broken muskets, the blankets,
canteens and other articles that fall from
the nerveless soldier as the bullet strikes
him. have all been carried offby tourists,
or utilized by the people of the surround
ing country. Fair Oaks is to-day then
nothinc but a solitude, holding yet be-
meath its bosom the mouldering bones of
many of its victims, but bearing on its
face hardly scar of the terrible strife
that so racked and mangled it four years
ago.
SEVEN PINES.
Southwardly and eastwardly two miles
from the grove of oaks touching the edge
of that horrible corduroy road, called in
irony the Williamsburg pike, at precise
lv seven miles from Richmond, is the be-
ginning of heavy pine forest, hence the
name Of Seven Pines, suggested by the
distance from the city, and not descrip-
tive of the number of trees, for they are
almost as sands on the sea-shore, sweep
ING over great breadth of ground down
10 the Chickahominy and over the barren
hills beyond. The ground known as
Seven Pines benrs no more impress OF
the terrible scenes once enacted upon it
than does Fair Oaks, and the two fields
are so contiguous as TO be blended in one,
ms the battles were so coincident in time
that only the pen of critical history can
draw the line between them. Our ac-
counts, indeed, if | remember rightly,
class them as one, under the name OF
Seven Pines but the Confederates seem
to consider them two separate and dis
tinet actions, and have ohristened them
Fair Oaks and Seven Pines.
IL matters little whether one or two,
there lies the ground to-day seven miles
away from this populous city, and 1t is
a wilderness and a solitude. | know not
whether before the war it bore the same
aspect or not, but as it looks now it does
not require a lively imagination to con-
slider the curse of the shedder of blood is
upon. On very few acres Of the entire
breadth has the pillow followed in the
track of havoc, and where it has, the
vegetation is stunted and has a siekly
appearance. Tie pines seem murmur
inc an everlasting requiem; the few OF
human kind ever to be seen about the
place wear a detected look; in short, the
whole scene brings vividly to mind that
painting of desolation, Hoods Haunted
House"