Battle of Fredericksburg • Tour the Battlefield • Monuments & Markers • Armies
The “A Picture of Desolation” wayside marker is at Chatham Manor, Stop Two on the Battle of Fredericksburg Auto Tour.
Text from the marker:
A Picture of Desolation
Every wall and floor is saturated with blood, and the whole house…seems to have been suddenly transformed into a butcher’s shamble. The clock has stopped; the child’s rocking horse is rotting away in a disused balcony; the costly exotics in the garden are destroyed….All that was elegant is wretched; all that was noble is shabby; all that once told of civilized elegance now speaks of ruthless barbarism.”
-The Continental Monthly, 1863
Union soldiers loll around Chatham in this February 1863 photograph. The scene here was not always so peaceful. Two months earlier, during the Battle of Fredericksburg, soldiers and wagons crowded the grounds; generals issued orders from the porch; surgeons converted the building’s interior into a field hospital. More than 130 soldiers who died from their wounds received a hasty burial on the grounds.
The Union occupation devastated Chatham and surrounding Stafford County. “Tis a perfect picture of desolation, and a sad illustration of the ravages of war,” commented one newspaper correspondent in 1863. It would take decades to recover.
Donated in memory of Timothy J. Franz
Location of the marker
The marker is about 100 feet from the west corner of the Manor.