How Did Wilmer Mclean Escape The Annoying War?

Wilmer McLean and the Annoying War
Wilmer McLean could not escape the Civil war. His plantation ravaged by battle twice, forcing him to move south, only to have General Lee surrender in his front parlor. He could rightfully claim, “The war began in my front yard and ended in my front parlor.” Not much is known about Wilmer McLean’s early life, as he was, in history’s eye, mostly insignificant. He operated the Kerr & McLean wholesale and retail grocery in Yorkshire, a county in Virginia named after home county of English native Richard Blackburn who had established the plantation in the early 1700s, and was unmarried until he was 38. Not once did he expect to have himself and his household haunted by an upcoming war. Never did he picture himself moving 2 times in futile

After marrying wealthy widow Virginia Mason eight years prior, McLean moved his family to his wife’s small plantation in Manassas Junction, Virginia, nearby a little river called Bull Run. It was here where the first major engagement of the Civil War would take place. As Union soldiers began marching from Washington, D.C., to confront the Confederates, General P.G.T. Beauregard commandeered Wilmer McLean’s little farmhouse to serve as his headquarters. A day after McLean and his family fled from their farmhouse, the Civil war hit home—literally. At the Battle of Blackburn’s Ford, an artillery shell tore through McLean’s kitchen, demolishing his oven and effectively ruining the dinner that was being prepared for General Beauregard and his staff. Three days later, the first major encounter of the Civil War, The Battle of Bull Run, took place, and wounded soldiers from both sides shared McLean’s house, which had been temporarily modified into a makeshift military hospital and jail. Thus, the Civil War began with Wilmer