quarters at Brandy Station, Virginia. Mine Run had been Meade's final opportunity to plan a strategic offensive before the arrival of Ulysses S. Grant as general-in-chief the following spring. Lee also regretted the inconclusive results. He was quoted as saying, "I am too old to command this army. We never should have permitted those people to get away." Confederate hopes of repeating their Chancellorsville triumph had been dashed. The Mine Run Campaign was Meade's last and failed attempt in 1863 to destroy Lee's Army of Northern Virginia before winter halted military operations. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote the 1863 poem "Christmas Bells", which became the carol "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day", in response to learning of his son Charles Appleton Longfellow being severely wounded in the battle. Battlefield preservation Attorney, historian, and publisher Theodore P. Savas, together with Paul Sacra of Richmond, Virginia, set out to locate and map the Payne's Farm battlefield in the early 1990s. Savas believed published articles and books had incorrectly located the fighting area and was determined to test his theory. Armed with extensive primary sources and battle reports, he and Sacra located what they believed was the field and, with the permission from several landowners, used metal detectors to prove it. Within a couple days Savas and Sacra had unearthed hundreds of artifacts, including bullets, a ramrod, bayonet socket, a partial harmonica, belt buckles, buttons, and much more. Savas drew maps of the field and the general location of the artifacts and delivered them to The Association for the Preservation of Civil War Sites (or APCWS), and its director, A. Wilson Greene, in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Greene, who had no idea the field was in such pristine condition, was excited by the find and affirmed its importance. Saving the land was a slow process for a variety of reasons, including the fact that the majority landowner wanted to develop the land. At that point, Savas and Sacra presented him with proof that the land contained at least one mass grave (which they had not detected or recovered anything from), and that to develop it would be a travesty. The Civil War Trust (a division of the American Battlefield Trust) and its partners later acquired and preserved of the battlefield. The battlefield today features a wooded, 1.5-mile interpretive trail with historical wayside markers. It is located on Virginia highway 611 across from the Zoar Baptist