Sacred Soil - History Channel Special

Raymond to be Featured on
The History Channel’s “Sacred Soil”

Terry Winschel, Vicksburg National Military Park Historian,
on the Raymond battlefield during the filming of “Sacred Soil.”

Photo courtesy of Trevor W. Klump - inFOCUS Media Productions, Inc.

Raymond’s battlefield, listed by the Civil War Preservation Trust as one of the Ten Most Endangered Civil War Battlefields, will be featured in a documentary entitled “Sacred Soil” tentatively scheduled for a November telecast on the History Channel. A Take 2 Entertainment film crew from Pittsburgh, PA, visited Raymond on June 26 to conduct interviews as to the importance of the Battle of Raymond in the Vicksburg Campaign and the efforts of Friends of Raymond to preserve and interpret Raymond’s history.

“The progress of Friends of Raymond has been significant, but we have much more to do,” stated FOR president Parker Hills during the taping at the Raymond Courthouse and at the battlefield. “Raymond has a key place in the history of the Vicksburg Campaign—a campaign that, in Grant’s own words, ‘sealed the fate of the Confederacy.’ Thus, the Vicksburg Campaign is a signal moment in history. We, as Americans, are obligated to remember and to learn from our history. If we don’t know where we have been, we cannot know where we are to go.”

Terry Winschel, historian for the Vicksburg National Military Park, was also filmed on the Raymond battlefield, and stated that, “Vicksburg was Ulysses S. Grant at his very best. Flexibility and adaptability were Grant's strengths as a battle captain. Once he crossed Fourteenmile Creek, the last major geographic obstacle between his army and the railroad that connected Jackson to Vicksburg, he planned to strike the railroad and sever Confederate General John Pemberton’s line of communications. The Battle of Raymond was fought on May 12, 1863, as the right of Grant’s army attempted to cross Fourteenmile creek. The unexpected aggressiveness of the Confederate forces at Raymond, coupled with the strength of the Confederate position south of Edwards, caused Grant to change his scheme of maneuver. Showing great flexibility, instead of striking north to the railroad at Edwards and Bolton, Grant pivoted to the northeast and struck the railroad at Clinton on May 13 and Jackson on May 14.”

The film will stress that problems of preservation of America’s “sacred soil”—its battlefields--are not limited to the metropolitan areas of Washington, DC and Richmond, Virginia. The urban growth of Mississippi’s capital city is affecting Raymond, while residential housing demand is affecting Port Gibson, Big Black River Bridge, and Champion Hill. And the very same roadways that led the armies to the battlefields are the ones we use today, but now they are widened concrete and asphalt ribbons instead of narrow dirt paths. With these highways comes traffic and commercial and residential development.

What, then, is the solution? Is it necessary to destroy our military heritage in order to grow? This documentary will show that growth and heritage can prosper together. Battlefields can be preserved and their preservation can greatly enhance commercial growth while maintaining the beauty of our residential countryside. Americans want more than strip malls and asphalt, and the preservation of our history and the fields on which it occurred can work in a symbiotic relationship with progress and growth. This will be the message of “Sacred Soil,” tentatively scheduled for a November airing on the History Channel.