Annapolis, Antietam & Confederate Capital

The 1779 State House is the oldest continuously operating state capitol in the country and served as the national capital for 14 months following the Revolution — it is where Washington resigned his commission as commander-in-chief on December 23, 1783, and where the Treaty of Paris was ratified on January 14, 1784. The surrounding streets follow the 1695 Baroque street plan radiating from Church Circle; the brick rowhouses on Maryland Avenue constitute one of the finest concentrations of 18th-century domestic architecture in America.

Built 1763–1765 by William Paca — signer of the Declaration of Independence and three-term governor of Maryland — the five-part Georgian mansion is among the finest colonial houses in Maryland. The terraced 2-acre pleasure garden behind it was restored through systematic archaeology to its original 18th-century layout, including the fish-shaped pond, the parterres, and the wilderness garden at the lower terrace. The restoration is considered one of the most rigorous examples of colonial garden archaeology in America.

Dinner on Spa Creek with views of the Naval Academy across the water and the sailboat anchorage that makes Annapolis the sailing capital of the Chesapeake. The menu is built around Chesapeake seafood prepared seasonally — steamed crabs in summer, oysters in fall, rockfish year-round — and the sunset view from the dining room across the harbor is one of the most pleasant in the region.

September 17, 1862 produced 22,717 killed, wounded, or missing in a single day — more American casualties than D-Day, Iwo Jima, and Normandy combined. The battle stopped Lee's first northern invasion and gave Lincoln the political context to issue the Emancipation Proclamation five days later. The visitor center's fiber-optic battle map clarifies the sequence of attacks; the 8.5-mile auto tour covers the Cornfield (four hours of fighting changed control six times), Bloody Lane (a sunken road that became a killing ground), and Burnside Bridge (where Union troops spent hours taking a bridge that could have been forded in minutes).

The 50-block historic district was founded in 1745 and retains one of the most intact concentrations of 18th and 19th-century commercial and residential architecture in Maryland. Lee's army marched through twice; the wounded from Antietam filled every church, school, and public building in September 1862. The Francis Scott Key Museum (Key was born in Carroll County and practiced law in Frederick) and the National Museum of Civil War Medicine are the two most specific cultural stops.

The 2019 museum in Richmond's historic Tredegar Iron Works building (where Confederate cannons were cast) is the most sophisticated Civil War museum in the country, presenting the war through three perspectives simultaneously: Union, Confederate, and African American. The Tredegar building itself is part of the Richmond National Battlefield Park and sits at the James River fall line where the city began. The museum's approach to the war's causes and consequences is unusually direct for a Virginia institution.

Scott's Addition is Richmond's 20th-century industrial district — automotive dealers, cold storage, light manufacturing — that has been comprehensively colonized by craft breweries and cideries over the past decade. Ardent Craft Ales, Väsen Brewing, and Hardywood Park (the district's anchor) all operate within a four-block radius. The concentration of quality and the industrial architecture make this the most compelling brewery district on the East Coast south of Portland, ME.

Richmond's Hollywood Cemetery (1847) occupies a bluff above the James River rapids and contains the graves of two U.S. Presidents (James Monroe and John Tyler), Jefferson Davis, and 18,000 Confederate soldiers — the largest Confederate burial ground in the nation, with a 90-foot granite pyramid erected in 1869 as a monument to the Confederate war dead. The cemetery's hilly topography and river views make it one of the most dramatically situated burial grounds in America, and the Victorian-era monuments are extraordinarily varied.

A beloved Fan District institution in Richmond serving creative Southern-influenced comfort food — biscuits and gravy, shrimp and grits, and seasonal specials in a cozy, unpretentious dining room on a classic Richmond residential street.