Virginia Museum of the Civil War at the Newmarket Battlefield State Historic Park is nostalgic. It reminds you of a time period in the nineteenth century, the Victorian era, when terms like “Hall of Valor”, “hero”, and “field of honor” still meant something. Battles and wars were perceived as to be won or lost decisively. No one questioned that they were worth it. Lately I’ve been writing a series on World War 1 and World War 2 when such terms went the way of the dinosaur. After WW1 no one believed in war anymore, and after the A bomb, they became impossible. I felt like a school boy looking at the nineteenth century clothes and uniforms this museum leaves literally lying on the floor to try on. There was a statue to Jefferson who had a descendant in the battle. Paintings of heroes abounded. And the gift shop was a classroom in itself. They sold replicas of the buttons of the fallen cadets who fought in the battle on May 15, 1864. They sold a Hollywood film I’ve never heard of before called Field Of Lost Shoes. The shop clerk said they tried to make the film at the battlefield, but it was so close to I-81 that the interstate noise interfered too much. Best of all, we got to step out on the battlefield where the heroes fell and imagine we were there, pretending we didn’t see big rigs flying past in the near distance.
