From Little Round Top, the view across the Valley of Death toward Devil’s Den and the Wheatfield remains as splendid and sublime as ever: a one-time landscape of violence juxtaposed against a panorama of modern natural beauty. It’s a beautiful spot to watch a sunset.

Of particular interest to my seven-year-old son, though, was the sprawling wetland that has now spilled across the valley floor. 

Once upon a time, Plum Run ran without incident through the bottom of the valley. During the battle of Gettysburg, the water ran red with soldiers’ blood, earning it the appropriately grim nickname “Bloody Run.” 

Today, folks call its waters “Lake Crawford”—at least informally.

Lake Crawford gets its name from Federal Brig. Gen. Samuel Crawford, the Philadelphia surgeon-turned-soldier whose statue stands near the north end of the wetland. A few years ago, a family of beavers moved in behind him, dammed up the run, and they have been living large ever since. 

The beavers have become controversial, and there’s tension between history-minded purists who want the landscape returned to its wartime appearance and nature-minded folks who say the beavers have a right to be there. If I had to guess, I would suspect there are Federal wetland protections involved somehow, plus there’s just the general idea that we need to share the world with the furry and feathered creatures who were, after all, here first.

When my son and I finished our walkabout on Little Round Top, he asked to visit the beaver pond. We drove down and parked, and we walked over to the pond’s edge. The muddy grass marking the former high-water mark was easy to see, but the week’s hot weather and lack of rain had dropped the water level.

About twenty feet away, a family of mallards sat on a rock. A second family sat atop a second rock about twenty feet beyond. Five or six red-winged blackbirds skittered about from cattail to alder to shrub. Frogs croaked, and some kind of slimy brown thing surfaced in the water near shore before vanishing. It might have been a muskrat—or a small lake monster—but I saw no telltale V-shaped wake.

“Where are the beavers?” my son asked. I pointed to the large green mound in the middle of the pond. “That’s the lodge, right there,” I told him. It had been there long enough that grass grew on its exterior, making it look more like a knoll than a pile of sticks. I pointed to the short mud dam the beavers had constructed downstream; there might be a stereotypical dam of sticks and twigs somewhere among the bushes, although I couldn’t see it from where we stood. It looked as though foot traffic had worn a path along the front edge of the dam, but I didn’t think we should go trekking through the wetlands.

We had a lovely time admiring the beaver flowage and wondering about the secret life of beavers. Perhaps Lake Crawford is not part of the historical or cultural landscape of the Valley of Death, but it has imprinted itself indelibly as part of the sublime experience this battlefield has to offer.

— Chris Mackowski, Ph.D.

Editor-in-Chief, Emerging Civil War

Congratulations to the rehabilitation and restoration team at Gettysburg National Military Park for their successful completion of work atop Little Round Top!

After a two-year project, LRT reopened to the public on Monday, June 24. The restored landscape looks fantastic. ECW offered a look-around here.

The rehabilitation project was made possible by major funding from the American Battlefield Trust, the Gettysburg Foundation, and the National Parks Foundation. Photos from Kris White (left) and Chris Mackowski (right)

Bert Dunkerly did a book tour through New Jersey for his "Unhappy Catastrophes" book, with stops in Trenton, Princeton, Perth Amboy, Morristown, and Plainfield. He managed to avoid left turns the entire time.

Jon-Erik Gilot has been busy preparing a slate of speakers for next year's 2nd Saturday Civil War Lecture Series at the Andrew Carnegie Free Library and Music Hall in Carnegie, PA. Ticket sales will open later this summer for their April 11-12, 2025 symposium, featuring an outstanding lineup of eight historians, raffles, book sales, and tours of the Captain Thomas Espy Grand Army of the Republic Post. More information is available on their website. 

Dwight Hughes spoke to the Western North Carolina CWRT in Cullowhee, NC, and to the North American Society for Oceanic History Annual Conference, Ontario, CA, both on “The Sailor and the Soldier at Vicksburg: Unprecedented Joint Operations.”

Evan Portman traveled to Valley Forge National Historical Park this month to help with an American Battlefield Trust Generations Event.

June is turning out to be quite the busy month for Tim Talbott. He attended a fantastic Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College (June 7-11) and the Society for Civil War Historians biennial conference in Raleigh, NC (June 21-22). He also guest-hosted an episode of "The Road to Now" podcast with Dr. Ben Sawyer by interviewing Dr. Robert K. D. Colby about his fantastic and recently released book, An Unholy Traffic: Slave Trading in the Civil War South. He will be ending the month by leading a "Summer Sunset Tour" (June 29 at 6:00 p.m.) of the Battle of Jones Farm, which occurred on March 25, 1865. The tour is in conjunction with Petersburg National Battlefield and the Petersburg Battlefields Foundation.

ECW Bookshelf

We’re proud to announce that the latest Emerging Civil War book, The War in the Western Theater, is now available!

Often relegated to a backseat by action in the Eastern Theater, the Western Theater is actually where the Federal armies won the Civil War.

In the West, General Ulysses S. Grant strung together a series of victories that ultimately led him to oversee Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House and, eventually, two terms in the White House. In the West, the fall of Atlanta secured Lincoln’s reelection for his own second term. In the West, Federal armies split the Confederacy in two—and then split it in two again.

In the West, Federal armies inexorably advanced, gobbling up huge swaths of territory in the face of ineffective Confederate opposition. By war’s end, General William T. Sherman had marched the “Western Theater” all the way into central North Carolina.

In the Eastern Theater, the principal armies fought largely within a 100-mile corridor between the capitals of Washington, D.C., and Richmond, Virginia, with a few ill-fated Confederate invasions north of the Mason-Dixon Line. The Western Theater, in contrast, included the entire area between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River, from Kentucky in the north to the Gulf of Mexico in the south—a vast geographic expanse that, even today, can be challenging to understand.

War in the Western Theater: Favorite Stories and Fresh Perspectives from the Historians at Emerging Civil War revisits some of the Civil War’s most legendary battlefields: Shiloh, Chickamauga, Franklin, the March to the Sea, and more.

Co-edited by Chris Mackowski and Sarah Kay Bierle, War in the Western Theater is available from Savas Beatie.

Shrouded Veterans

Captain Lorimer L. Graham, brevetted for gallant and meritorious service during both the Mexican and Civil Wars, turned to crime during peacetime. Under the alias of his valet, "John Spreadbury," Graham served on the staff of Maj. Gen. Wesley Merritt as an assistant inspector general during Maj. Gen. Phil Sheridan’s Shenandoah Valley Campaign.

This hero in war and swindler in peace died impoverished roughly four months before the outbreak of World War I in England.

Find out more about Graham (Spreadbury) and his life in our monthly Emerging Civil War column.

July

14: Tim Talbott, “The United States Colored Troops at Richmond and Petersburg,” Camp Nelson, KY

15: Bert Dunkerly, “Appomattox and Other Surrenders of the Civil War,”James Monroe Museum 

21: Brian Swartz, “The 20th Maine and Maine Units at Gettysburg,” Town Common Monument Re-Dedication, Union, ME

24: Phillip Greenwalt, “A Nation Torn and A State Divided: Maryland in the First Two Years of the War,” Pipe Creek CWRT

24: Kevin Pawlak, “New Yorkers at Bull Run,” Holland Land Office Museum, Batavia, NY

August



2-3: Bert Dunkerly, “The French & Indian War in Western Pennsylvania,” Bushy Run Battlefield 

8: Bert Dunkerly, “1774: Year of Resolve,” Belmont Community Center, Richmond, VA

8: Doug Crenshaw, “The Battle of Bull Run,”   Civil War Round Table, Fort Harrison

13: Jon-Erik Gilot, “John Brown’s Raid,” Rostraver Township Historical Society, Rostraver, PA

18: Bert Dunkerly, “Battle of Moores Creek,” Emerging Revolutionary War (Zoom)

19: Bert Dunkerly, “Civil War Railroads,” Inland Empire CWRT (Zoom)

24: Kevin Pawlak, “Never Such a Campaign: The Battle of Second Manassas,” Manassas Museum, Manassas, VA