The Wilderness and Wal-Mart

The following should go directly to the heart of Civil War buffs and American History lovers everywhere. Wal-Mart, over the last several months has been persistently trying to place a new store on the Wilderness Battlefield.

Now if you are reading this you are most likely in favor of park preservation. Upon reading a few articles and other blogs on the issue, all Civil War buffs seem to be in agreement that Wal-Mart needs to find an alternative location.

If you think about it, why does Wal-Mart need to build here? Yes, the unemployment rate may be high, but can Wal-Mart really help that? A 2005 documentary entitled Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices,employees complain that the wages Wal-Mart pays are not substantial. Former store managers admit they cannot pay their employees any more under company regulations, and are often forced to leave the store short-staffed for many shifts because the company simply will not let them bring any more people in. Is this really worth building on a site where men gave their lives to keep this country whole?

A series of maps have been posted on the web site of the Civil War Preservation Trust that show the close proximity the proposed Supercenter is to the battlefield. It is clear, when you look at these maps, that Wal-Mart is pushing their limits. They plan to build directly across route 3 from the land protected by the National Park Service. Now, I have been to most of the Civil War battlefields along the east coast and realize what happens when one business moves in.

The battlefield at Fredericksburg, Virginia is a great example where, over the years, the town has expanded right to the very edge of the historic fields and even consumed a good portion of it. We as Americans cannot let Wal-Mart have their way, for as the old saying goes; without a past, we have no future.