like Fredericksburg, Atlanta, Charleston, and Columbia, and war-damaged regions like the Shenandoah Valley to argue its cataclysmic nature. Others contend that with the advances in war-waging technology and the enmity that usually accompanies civil wars, the amount of destruction visited on America’s landscape could have been much worse when compared to other period conflicts. Regardless of the destructiveness endured by any particular area, it is difficult to argue that for those who lost homes, buildings, and businesses due to the unhappy circumstance of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, the Civil War was a life-altering experience.
The battlefields that the Central Virginia Battlefields Trust works to preserve certainly witnessed their fair share of material damage during the war years. Many notable houses and buildings referred to in primary source accounts and in the histories written since those momentous events occurred no longer remain on the landscape as visual landmarks to modern battlefield visitors. Other structures vanished in the years and decades following the war due to accidents, neglect, or relocation.
This essay will examine several area structures that once stood on historic and hallowed ground. They bore silent witness to the terrible nature of Civil War combat, but unfortunately, no longer exist in their wartime form or place.
Mannsfield (The Bernard House)
Mannsfield, the Arthur Bernard home, a notable landmark on the southern end of the Fredericksburg battlefield, was constructed in the mid-1760s. Situated south of the lower pontoon bridge crossing site along the Rappahannock River, and near the “Slaughter Pen Farm” portion of the battlefield, Federal troops deployed into battle within eyesight of the mansion and fought across its expansive 1,800-acre grounds that were bisected by both the Bowling Green Road and the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad. Before the war, the Mannsfield complex included numerous outbuildings that housed and supported the work of the 77 enslaved individuals listed in the 1860 census.
During the fighting, the homes of many of the Mannsfield enslaved population, which were located on high ground west of the railroad tracks, were destroyed. Capt. Greenlee
By Tim Talbott
current thread in Civil War scholarship debates the destructiveness of the conflict. Some historians cite numerous examples of ruins-filled cities
The Battle of Fredericksburg:
Davidson chose that location as the place for his Confederate artillery battery. Davidson’s cannoneers drew counterbattery fire from Federal artillery that pummeled the rise along with these three two-room cabins.
Mannsfield’s stone grandeur received many comments in the letters, diaries, and memoirs of soldiers and officers who fought on that end of the Fredericksburg battlefield. The 6th Wisconsin Infantry’s Maj. Rufus Dawes remembered that on the evening of December 12, 1862, “We reached a stone house, known as ‘Barnards’ about dark. We bivouacked for the night in the grounds around this house.” The 77th New York Infantry’s Surgeon George T. Stevens, wrote, “A fine stone mansion of large dimensions, situated on the south bank of the river, and a little below the bridge, was taken by the surgeons of our Second division for a hospital. The position was exposed to rebel fire but was the best that could be found.” Stevens also mentioned that Gen. George Bayard, who was in command of the cavalry for the Left Grand Division, was mortally wounded there, and “Others, some of whom had been previously wounded, received fatal shots at the very doors of this house.”
While serving on picket duty near the Rappahannock River, Texan Pvt. Waters Berryman had an opportunity to view Mannsfield’s once opulent interion and wrote about it in a letter home a month after the battle. “Inside it is decorated with the most magnificent paintings. I suppose they were bought in Europe, most of which are now destroyed, some of them must have cost several thousand dollars apiece,” Berryman penned.
