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| Big Bethel battle-field.2 |
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almost level country, gradually rising from the coast.
Doctor McClellan was well acquainted with that region, and pointed out every locality of interest on the way. A few miles out from Hampton we passed a small freedmen's village.
Then we came to the place, in a wood, where the collision between Bendix and Townsend occurred; and a mile or so onward we came to the site of Little Bethel and the ruins of Whiting's mansion.1 A few miles farther brought us to the spot where the Union troops formed the line of battle for the final attack on the insurgents at Great Bethel.
Near there was a brick house, used by General McClellan for Headquarters for a day or two in 1862; and by the road-side was a more humble dwelling, occupied by some colored women, one of whom was over eighty years of age. They lived near there at the time of the battle.
“Law sakes alive!”
said the old woman, “we was mighty skeered, but we reckoned all de time dat it was de Lord come to help us.”
Half a mile farther on we came to the County Bridge at Great Bethel, where the stream, widening into a morass on each side, is only a few feet in width.
We visited the remains of Magruder's redoubts and intrenchments, and of Big Bethel Church; and from the embankments of the principal redoubt, westward of the bridge, made the accompanying sketch of the battlefield.
Returning we took the Back River road, which passed through a
1 See note 2, page 506.
2 in this view is seen the place of the County Bridge, occupied by a rude temporary structure. In the fore. Ground are seen the remains of the redoubt, and on the right a wooded morass. In the road, to the right of the tall tree, near the center of the picture, was the place of Greble's battery, and to the left is seen the wood in which the Union troops took shelter. In the middle of the sketch the open battle-field is seen, on which Townsend was checked by a misapprehension; and in the distance, the chimney of a house destroyed by a shell sent from the battery from which this view was taken.
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