BGuthrie Photos: MD -- Pleasant Valley

MD -- Pleasant Valley:

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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[1] PVALL_150802_01_STITCH.JPG

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PVALL_150802_02.JPG

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PVALL_150802_11.JPG

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[4] PVALL_150802_20.JPG

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[5] PVALL_150802_30.JPG

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. PVALL_150802_02.JPG: Battle of Maryland Heights Maryland's First Civil War Battle -- Antietam Campaign 1862 -- After Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's smashing victory over Union Gen. John Pope at the Second Battle of Manassas, Lee decided to invade the North to reap the fall harvest, gain Confederate recruits, earn foreign recognition, and perhaps compel the Union to sue for peace. The Army of Northern Virginia crossed the Potomac River on September 4, 1862. Lee divided his force, detaching Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson's command to capture Harpers Ferry. At Antietam Creek on September 17, Gen. George B. McClellan's Army of the Potomac fought Lee's men to a bloody draw. Lee retreated to Virginia September 18-19. On September 12-13, 1862, Maryland's first battle of the Civil War ranged on the mountain in front of you. Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee had ordered Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson to capture or destroy the Union garrison at Harpers Ferry that threatened the Confederate line of supply and communication during Lee's first invasion of the North. Jackson's subordinate, Gen. Lafayette McLaws, received the difficult task of seizing this mountain. Four miles to your left is the Potomac River and a gap in the mountains of the Blue Ridge, where Harpers Ferry is located. There, 14,000 Union soldiers threatened the Confederate flank, and the problem had to be eliminated for Lee's advance to continue. McLaws and 8,000 Confederates marched into Pleasant Valley past this spot to help surround and attack Harpers Ferry from the north. When McLaws encountered the Union soldiers defending Maryland Heights on Friday, September 12, skirmishing commenced. McLaws directed Gen. Joseph B. Kershaw's South Carolina Brigade and Gen. William Barksdale's Mississippi Brigade to ascend Elk Ridge at Solomon's Gap (the gap in front of you). The Confederates then turned left, encountering stiff resistance until nightfall. At dawn on Saturday, September 13, the Confederates attacked with fury. They faced "a most obstinate resistance" and "a fierce fire" from Federals behind log breastworks. After nine hours and more than 300 Union and Confederate casualties, the Federals withdrew into Harpers Ferry. Two days later, they capitulated to Jackson in the largest surrender of U.S. troops during the war. The pacifist Anabaptist German religious sect nicknamed Dunkers for their form of baptism arrived in Pleasant Valley in the late 1700s. Generations were baptized here in Israel Creek, where they were submerged three times in honor of the Trinity. The battles of Maryland Heights and South Mountain interrupted their peaceful way of life, but their church and farms were not wrecked like those of the Antietam Dunkers. The Dunkers still thrive in Pleasant Valley, worshipping here at the Brownsville Church of the Brethren (shown left as constructed in 1852).
2. PVALL_150802_11.JPG: March to Harpers Ferry Battle of Maryland Heights
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Wikipedia Description: Pleasant Valley (Maryland)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pleasant Valley is a small valley in Washington County, Maryland, United States. ...

History

Pleasant Valley is on the east side of Elk Ridge mountain. On the opposite (west side) of Elk Ridge is the historic Kennedy farm where John Brown and his followers stayed prior to their raid on nearby Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. A handful of John Brown's men escaped from the Federal soldiers after the raid was defeated, and the escape route that these men took went north to Pennsylvania following Elk Ridge and South Mountain. The escaping raiders crossed from Elk Ridge mountain to South Mountain in the area around Rohrersville, to the north of Pleasant Valley.

During the Antietam Campaign of the American Civil War, Pleasant Valley was the site of a Confederate picket line, intended to prevent General George B. McClellan's Union Army from coming to the rescue of the Union garrison in Harpers Ferry. Later, after the Battle of Antietam, the farmland of Pleasant Valley was filled with tents of soldiers from the Union Army—Pleasant Valley was a designated bivouac for rest and recovery after the battle.
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Same Subject: Click on this link to see coverage of items having the same subject: [Civil War]
2015 photos: I retired from the US Census Bureau in god-forsaken Suitland, Maryland on my 58th birthday in May. Yee ha! Trips this year: a quick trip to Florida. two Civil War Trust conferences (Raleigh, NC and Richmond, VA), and my 10th consecutive San Diego Comic-Con trip (including Los Angeles). Ego Strokes: Carolyn Cerbin used a Kevin Costner photo in her USA Today article. Miss DC pictures were used a few times in the Washington Post. Equipment this year: I mostly used my Fuji XS-1 camera but, depending on the event, I also used a Nikon D7000. Number of photos taken this year: just over 550,000.
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