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Fredericksburg's fields still speak. I pray that America will listen to freedom's echo
By Corey Brooks
Published November 04, 2025
I’ve been walking across this great nation for months now. There is something beautiful about walking — you notice details along the road, you have conversations with strangers, and sometimes it’s just breathing the air that makes each place come alive. As I headed into Fredericksburg, Virginia, I was eager to walk across some of America’s most historic battlefields — until the road got a whole lot harder. A doctor diagnosed a pyogenic granuloma — a medical term for a growth — on my heel after days of endless walking.It’s bleeding, it’s throbbing, but I know the temporary pain I feel is nothing compared to the suffering of the past that has taken place on these battlefields.
Fredericksburg was a slaughter pen during the Civil War, where Union soldiers charged into Confederate fire and paid the ultimate price. Spotsylvania, Chancellorsville and the Wilderness — the soil here is soaked with the sacrifice of men who believed freedom was worth dying for. My heel throbs as I walk, and I think of how insignificant it is compared to the pain and death endured by those soldiers -- men like me – so that others could walk these same roads in hope, not in chains.
I'm walking not just for myself, but for a generation of kids who still need to believe that opportunity is worth fighting for. Many of them have been failed by their schools and parents, and they have no idea of the history that came before them.
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A stranger who stopped me pointed to nearby fields and told me that runaway slaves trudged through those paths in secret, risking everything for freedom. They traveled by night, often barefoot, and depended on the kindness of strangers.
As I walked through the Fredericksburg Battlefield, I read signs and visited monuments detailing the bravery of those who fought for America. It grounds the reality that freedom is not free. We didn’t have to fight and put our lives on the line for freedom as those who came before us did. That is why it is all the more prudent and necessary that we do everything in our power to preserve freedom. We cannot allow freedom to die in our time -- we must pass it along.
I sat on a bench to rest my foot for several minutes. A man named Ben came up to me. He was from South Carolina and asked if I’d ever heard of the Battle of New Market Heights. I hadn’t. He told me it was a battlefield about two hours east of here — where former slaves, now United States Colored Troops, stormed Confederate fortifications on September 29, 1864.
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They were part of a diversionary offensive orchestrated by Union Major General Benjamin F. Butler under the broader direction of Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. The aim was to draw Confederate reinforcements away from the besieged city of Petersburg and weaken General Robert E. Lee’s defenses around the Confederate capital.
Ben explained that Butler, a staunch believer in the capabilities of the Black soldiers, placed these former slaves at the forefront to prove their mettle — especially after the disastrous Crater assault earlier that summer, where Black troops had suffered due to poor White leadership. In a poignant moment before the advance, Butler rode among the regiments and instructed them to charge with the cry "Remember Fort Pillow!" — invoking the brutal 1864 massacre of surrendering Black Union soldiers by Confederate forces in Tennessee. Facing them were roughly 8,700 Confederates, including the veteran Texas Brigade under Brig. Gen. John Gregg, entrenched along a line that had repelled previous Union attacks.
On the day of the battle, at 5:30 a.m., they charged uphill through unforgiving terrain into withering artillery and musket fire — over 200 casualties in the first minutes. As White officers fell, Black soldiers seized command. They grabbed the regimental colors from the dead and continued the charge into the fire. Finally, at 8 a.m., the Black troops surged over the hill, routing the Confederates and capturing the heights.
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Fourteen Black soldiers received the Medal of Honor for their valor in this battle — the most ever awarded to Blacks in a single engagement, and nearly all the medals given to Black troops during the entire war. Ben paused. He said the sight of that bloodied field, of men who had been slaves only yesterday now dying for freedom, moved the living to tears.
I had to imagine it. The strength and faith of these men who were slaves only yesterday and were willing to fight to the death for a freedom they’d only just tasted. What higher calling is there? These men fought to bring freedom to us all.
I’m walking today because I’ve seen far too many who have squandered this gift. I got up and thanked Ben with a long hug. He, a stranger, gave me a gift. I had never heard of these soldiers, and now I am determined to let their heroism be a lesson to us all.
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As I resumed my walk, I forgot about the pain in my heel. All I could think of was what a gift freedom truly is.
But this is not the end of the story — it’s the beginning of the fight.
In our time, the battle for freedom is not with muskets or bayonets, but with ballots, books, and bold faith. The enemy is not across a ridge or up a hill — it’s in the mirror, in the complacency that lets schools fail, families fracture, and hope fade in the hearts of our children.
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I will keep walking. One step at a time. Not because the road is easy, but because the cause is just. Because every child in every forgotten neighborhood deserves to know the names of Powhatan Beaty, Christian Fleetwood and Miles James — men who proved that freedom is not given, it is taken — by courage, by sacrifice, by faith.
Let their victory on that hill become our vow today: We will not let freedom die on our watch.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM PASTOR COREY BROOKS
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/fredericksburgs-fields-still-speak-pray-america-listen-freedoms-echo