Site Is Chosen For Vermont State Marker At The Wilderness
By Deborah Fitts
January 2005

THE WILDERNESS, Va. - A long-overlooked wooded area at the Wilderness will fall under the spotlight when Vermont erects a new monument to its troops in 2006.

"This was Vermont's greatest moment in the Civil War," declared Civil War historian Howard Coffin, the leading authority on Vermont in the war. "There has never been anything on the battlefield to commemorate what they did."

John Hennessy, chief historian at Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park, said it will be the first state-sponsored monument placed on any of the park's battlefields since the Civil War centennial in 1963.

The tradition of states erecting markers to their soldiers at the park "is an ancient one," Hennessy said. "It's a thrill to see a state in 2004 making such an expression to the men of the 1860s. That's very cool."

Coffin designed the monument to resemble Camel's Hump, a Vermont mountain that is the state's most prominent terrain feature. In his reading of thousands of letters home from Vermont troops, he said, the Camel's Hump was repeatedly referred to with nostalgia.

The monument will be of Vermont granite, 12 feet long, 9 feet high and 4 feet wide. Lettering in the stone will describe the battle action.

"It's worthy of a significant monument," said Coffin of the Vermonters' action. "Not one of the small monuments you often see."

On Dec. 14, Coffin, Hennessy, Superintendent Russ Smith, and former National Park Service Chief Historian Ed Bearss were among a half-dozen individuals who trekked into the woods to select the spot for the monument, driving into the ground a 5-foot stake of Vermont maple that Coffin had cut from atop Camel's Hump. Hennessy said they decided to site the marker about 150 yards from the road, "to get people literally into the Wilderness and away from road noise."

The monument will mark the area where the five-regiment Vermont Brigade was decimated May 5, 1864, as the troops advanced south of the Orange Plank Road into jungle-like second-growth forest. They had moved about a hundred yards in the southwest quadrant of the Orange Plank and Brock roads when "All of a sudden they were hit by a tremendous volley from Confederates they couldn't even see," Coffin said.

Their commander, Gen. Lewis Grant, "said he lost hundreds of men in that volley." Of 2,800 Vermonters, 1,000 were casualties.

But the Vermonters' action against overwhelming odds, at the southern flank of the Federal line, saved the crossroads for Union commander Ulysses Grant and prevented his army from being cut in two. "It's a great moment in the Civil War," Coffin said.

The Vermonters fought again May 6, advancing nearly a mile before being hit with a devastating flank attack by Confederate Gen. James Longstreet. They fell back to the same crossroads area and dug in, once again helping to secure the vital intersection.

According to Hennessy, the park's mile-long corridor of the Orange Plank Road has had "virtually no access." He quoted Bearss as saying that the area was "the most significant, under-interpreted landscape of all the Eastern battlefields."

Through Coffin's efforts, the State of Vermont has provided $40,000 for the monument, while the park will use $200,000 in federal funds already on hand to create a parking area, trail and exhibit.

The notion of a monument was sparked several years ago when a 500-acre tract southwest of the intersection was proposed for development. Coffin, former press secretary to U.S. Sen. James Jeffords (I) of Vermont, approached Jeffords who then led an effort to secure $5.6 million in federal funds to buy the property and donate it to the park.

"At the top of my list was simply to preserve the land, to stop that development," said Coffin, who served on the congressional Civil War Sites Advisory Commission.

He said Vermont would go out to bid for the monument in January. Since it will be finished before the parking area and trail are completed, it will be placed on temporary display in Montpelier, the Vermont capital, "so Vermonters can see it." The park's goal is to install the monument on the battle anniversary in 2006.

According to Hennessy, three monuments sponsored by groups or individuals have been erected at the park in the past decade, all approved before a moratorium was instituted in 2001. The legislation creating the park specifically gives states the right to memorialize their troops, however.

The last state-sponsored monument at the park, in 1963, was to the Texas Brigade, marking the "Lee to the rear" episode at the Wilderness's Widow Tapp field.