Thursday, July 16, 2009
Metro columnist Dan Casey: A Yankee takes a look at monument controversy
Photo Courtesy of Mark Day
This monument to Union soldiers who died in the Battle of Lynchburg, installed June 20 on the Lynchburg College campus, has sparked outcry in the region.
Dan Casey is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.
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It was mid-June 1864, and the Union seemed to have the upper hand as the "War of Northern Aggression" raged in Virginia.
Lexington was in flames at the hands of troops commanded by Union Gen. David Hunter. But Hunter's superior, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, had his eye on Lynchburg, an important shipping point in the South because three railroads converged there.
Grant estimated that if the Union could take Lynchburg and cut off those railroads, the war might end as many as six months sooner. So he ordered Hunter to head east with his men toward the town.
But the Confederacy prevailed in the Battle of Lynchburg because of quick thinking by one of its most aggressive and wily fighters, the Franklin County-born Gen. Jubal Early.
As Union soldiers camped outside town and prepared for a June 18 attack, Early ordered the Confederates to run a noisy but empty train back and forth along the railroad tracks all night long.
The ruse, along with fortifications the Confederates already had erected, convinced Hunter that legions of Rebel soldiers guarded the town and that his attack could not succeed. (Actually, the Union troops outnumbered Confederates by almost 2 to 1.)
Every place the Union soldiers probed, they met resistance. Union casualties numbered about 250 while about 100 Confederate soldiers were killed or wounded. So on June 18 Hunter withdrew and Lynchburg was mostly saved.
That is the guts of a pretty neat little history lesson I got Tuesday from Dr. Clif Potter, a historian and professor at Lynchburg College.
It's also the genesis for a monument to -- gasp! -- Union soldiers erected less than a month ago on the college's campus.
The notion that some cheeky Yankees could invade Lee's hallowed ground and drop a monument to some marauding invaders has raised a few eyebrows in these parts.
The (Lynchburg) News & Advance published one letter to the editor that compared it to erecting a statue of Hitler at Auschwitz, or something like that. A caller to The Roanoke Times voiced his outrage in a voice mail, too.
Red Barbour says he can understand those feelings.
"These people came down here, invaded our country, burned our homes, raped our women," said Barbour, commander of the Fincastle Rifles Chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. "Myself, I wouldn't honor no Union soldiers down here they should be honored up North."
I guess you could say I'm one of those cheeky Yankees. I was born in New York and my residential resume lists a mere 15 years of habitation in the South. So I thought I'd look into this land-sullying affront to the Old Dominion.
I picked up the phone and gave Potter a call.
He's taught history for 45 years. Though his area of expertise is 14th- to 18th-century English history, Potter is Lynchburg born and bred, and therein lies his interest.
"I'm what is known down here as an S.O.B," he cheerfully acknowledged. That means "son of both." His mother was from Rome, N.Y. while his father was Southern-raised.
One of the surprising things Potter relayed in our conversation was that Lynchburg's residents opposed secession (so, initially, did Jubal Early).
Another was that Lynchburg was founded by slavery-hating Quakers, and at the time of the Civil War more free blacks lived there than in any other Virginia city.
The marker was erected by Taylor-Wilson Camp #10 Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War. It honors 13 Union soldiers from the 54th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. Twelve were killed or wounded along Blackwater Creek on land where Lynchburg College now stands, trying to take a piece of field artillery, Potter said.
The other soldier honored, Pvt. John Mostoller, actually captured the gun. Mostoller received the only Medal of Honor bestowed for the Battle of Lynchburg, Potter said.
Barbour said it's hard to for me to fathom Southerners' continuing resentment to the monument because my ancestors' land wasn't invaded, ruined and confiscated in the way much of the South was.
But come on, folks.
The Civil War's been over for 144 years.
Isn't it time we gave the hard feelings a rest?
Dan Casey's column runs Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday.
