M.A. Kleen

A black, iron cannon points menacingly toward the distant horizon, its barrel slick with wet snow, chained and silent on the bluff at Chatham Manor. Beyond the low brick wall, the Rappahannock and the town of Fredericksburg lie blurred in a white curtain, streets and rooftops softened into a ghost of themselves. A church steeple pricks the gray sky, barely visible through the falling flakes. It’s a quiet, almost tender scene—yet the cannon’s dark silhouette reminds you this view once framed fire and smoke instead of snow, and that beneath the winter hush, the memory of war still looks across the river.