Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in to episode 272 of our Civil War podcast. I'm Rich.

And I'm Tracy. Hello y'all. Welcome to the podcast.

As you guys were recall, we used the last episode to talk about the fighting at Salem Church,

East of Chancellor'sville, on May 3rd, 1863. And so by the time the sun set on day 7 of

the campaign, there had been ferocious fighting at Chancellor'sville, at Fredericksburg, and

at Salem Church. The human cost of the three clashes that day was staggering. The butcher's

bill of 21,357 men for the two armies together would make May 3rd second only to Antietam

as the bloodiest single day of the war. During the fighting at Chancellor'sville itself,

casualties came at a rate of one man every second for five hours.

We didn't have a chance to talk about it in the last show, but we did want to mention

this week that as Chris McCalsky and Christopher D. White point out in their book on Chancellor's

ville, but sadly, Salem Church now serves as the poster child for lost opportunities

in the ongoing struggle to preserve civil war battlefields.

The church itself built in 1844 by a Baptist congregation sits on less than three acres

of property now owned by the National Park Service. In 1958, the congregation built

a new church which sits on the far side of the adjacent cemetery. In 1962, they donated

the old church to the park service.

At about that time, plans for the new interstate highway, I-95, got underway, triggering

population growth, and commercial development in the area. When the property around Salem

Church came up for sale in 1977, at a price tag of $300,000, the park service claimed

it was $25,000 too high and so let the property slip away. By 1981, a gas station appeared

on the ground across from the old church, and the flood of development has gone on unabated

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