This is the memory palace, the Mnate de Mayo.

They packed light for an overnight, for a quick adventure to break the monotony of daily life

in the capital. Their destination was 25 miles away. By carriage, it would take them about

seven hours to get there, less if the weather didn't get too hot and they could really push their

horses. They picked out their traveling outfits. They packed lunches. They wrapped linen around

their telescopes in spy glasses so the ruts in the road wouldn't crack the lenses. They made pies.

And they set out south on the road to Manassas, Virginia toward a creek called Bull Run.

They rode alongside the marching men of the 79th New York Infantry. They shouted

encouragement to the boys of the Third Connecticut and their new uniforms and their boots still

free of holes. They waved their handkerchiefs to the men of the Second Wisconsin who held flags that

still had 34 stars, despite the fact that 11 of those stars now pledged allegiance to another flag

entirely. South Carolina had seceded in January, then Fort Sumter fell in April, then Jefferson

Davis and the government of the Confederate States of America set up shop and Richmond.

May in June saw skirmishes and naval engagements. And by July, what was left of the US government

was being pushed to go on the offensive, to roll down through Virginia and take Richmond.

Before things really get out of hand. There were hundreds of road trippers, we think, on the road

that day. On their way to watch 30,000 trained soldiers whooping up at the insurrection and squash

the damn thing once and for all. Seven hours in a buggy wasn't once around the park. It was 25

miles of hard road, but to the people who set out on that summer day from Washington, it would be

worth it. After being raised on stories of Waterloo and William the Conqueror and the War of the

Roses, to get a chance to see brave men as stride horses head once more into the breach, to watch

600, 700, 800 more, charging into the valley of death like the man in that Tennyson poem,

...