It's time to honor Virginia's Unionists
Richmond, Virginia -- December 29, 2006
Earlier today Snoopy at River City Rapids hailed the Byrd Theatre's planned New Year's Eve celebration as "[a]nother sign of Richmond breaking from its mold and moving briskly from the 19th to 21st Century." I agree that this is a great idea, and I am certainly considering Carytown as a possible destination for my partying on New Year's.
An even greater leap forward, one that would truly show that the zeitgeist of our city has truly caught up with the 21st century, would be for us to begin honoring Virginia's Unionists. Virginia's Unionists stayed loyal to the United States during the American Civil War, often at great personal costs to themselves. In doing so, they ensured that the United States remained a unified country committed to the ideals of freedom. Because the United States remained unified, we were able to intervene effectively in both the First and Second World Wars, saving the Western World not once, but twice.
One of our city's many nicknames is "The City of Monuments," yet when visitors drive through our city, they see no monuments raised to celebrate the lives and sacrifices of Virginia's Unionists. Ironically, we see all too often that the party of Lincoln has, in the South at least, been infiltrated by neo-Confederates who wish to undermine Lincoln's supreme achievement.
Here are some of the individuals and groups I would like to see commemorated with Richmond monuments in the coming years.
Born in Fairfax, Rear Admiral Samuel Phillips Lee was a third cousin of Robert E. Lee. Rear Admiral Lee stayed loyal to the United States and led Union naval forces in the the Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico, the inland waters of Virginia, and on the Mississippi River.
Major General George H. Thomas ("The Rock of Chickamauga") was a native of Southampton County, Virginia. He stayed loyal to the United States and rose to become one of the Union's most effective Army commanders.
Elizabeth Van Lew was a wealthy Richmonder who stayed loyal to the United States. She spent her entire inheritance freeing slaves and running a Union spy ring in Richmond during the Civil War. One of her agents even managed to penetrate the Confederate White House.
Sergeant Major Christian Fleetwood of the 4th USCT was awarded the Medal of Honor for combat while serving in Virginia. A total of 5,723 Virginians of African American descent served in the USCT: more than New Jersey, New York or even Massachusetts.
This is just a short and incomplete list of Virginia Unionists. Am I leaving anyone out who deserves a monument?
These monuments could be added to Monument Avenue or, perhaps more appropriately, they could be displayed in their own "Union Square" or "Union Park."
Only after we as Virginians and Richmonders begin to honor Virginia's Unionists for their loyalty and fidelity to the United States can we truly claim to have left the 19th century behind.
Earlier today Snoopy at River City Rapids hailed the Byrd Theatre's planned New Year's Eve celebration as "[a]nother sign of Richmond breaking from its mold and moving briskly from the 19th to 21st Century." I agree that this is a great idea, and I am certainly considering Carytown as a possible destination for my partying on New Year's.
An even greater leap forward, one that would truly show that the zeitgeist of our city has truly caught up with the 21st century, would be for us to begin honoring Virginia's Unionists. Virginia's Unionists stayed loyal to the United States during the American Civil War, often at great personal costs to themselves. In doing so, they ensured that the United States remained a unified country committed to the ideals of freedom. Because the United States remained unified, we were able to intervene effectively in both the First and Second World Wars, saving the Western World not once, but twice.
One of our city's many nicknames is "The City of Monuments," yet when visitors drive through our city, they see no monuments raised to celebrate the lives and sacrifices of Virginia's Unionists. Ironically, we see all too often that the party of Lincoln has, in the South at least, been infiltrated by neo-Confederates who wish to undermine Lincoln's supreme achievement.
Here are some of the individuals and groups I would like to see commemorated with Richmond monuments in the coming years.
Born in Fairfax, Rear Admiral Samuel Phillips Lee was a third cousin of Robert E. Lee. Rear Admiral Lee stayed loyal to the United States and led Union naval forces in the the Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico, the inland waters of Virginia, and on the Mississippi River.
Major General George H. Thomas ("The Rock of Chickamauga") was a native of Southampton County, Virginia. He stayed loyal to the United States and rose to become one of the Union's most effective Army commanders.
Elizabeth Van Lew was a wealthy Richmonder who stayed loyal to the United States. She spent her entire inheritance freeing slaves and running a Union spy ring in Richmond during the Civil War. One of her agents even managed to penetrate the Confederate White House.
Sergeant Major Christian Fleetwood of the 4th USCT was awarded the Medal of Honor for combat while serving in Virginia. A total of 5,723 Virginians of African American descent served in the USCT: more than New Jersey, New York or even Massachusetts.
This is just a short and incomplete list of Virginia Unionists. Am I leaving anyone out who deserves a monument?
These monuments could be added to Monument Avenue or, perhaps more appropriately, they could be displayed in their own "Union Square" or "Union Park."
Only after we as Virginians and Richmonders begin to honor Virginia's Unionists for their loyalty and fidelity to the United States can we truly claim to have left the 19th century behind.
Labels: Military, Monument Avenue, New Mexico, Richmond Virginia, U.S. Army, Virginia Unionists, War, Wikipedia
11 Comments:
Great suggestion. I remember reading that General Thomas's decision came at great personal cost. When he sent word to his beloved sisters during the war to inquire about their well-being they replied that they had no brother George. He paid a heavy price for his loyalty to the Union.
A very interesting post. I'll have to remember to suggest Elizabeth Van Lew to my kids if they're ever assigned to do a paper about an heroic Virginian. Sounds like she would be a very interesting subject.
Great post. As a transplant to Virginia, I wasn't aware of these heroic people or the sacrifices they made to remain loyal to the United States.
I would support adding them to other monuments. It's past time to honor them.
Thanks for pointing this out.
This is quite an insight into the "dark side". ("Massa had no principles.")
Let's put up monuments to honor traitors and spies in the Capital of the Confederacy?
First, let me state I am not in favor of slavery, even though, for the African Americans brought to this country in shackles, their supreme sacrifice and suffering has allowed their decendants to live in the country with the most freedom in the world. Quite a tribute to their pererverence and fortitude, and one they should surley be proud of and claim a great and honorable stake in building this Great Nation. As well as a person I see as one of the Greatest Americans, we hear so little of, George Washington Carver. What an example of a humanbeing he was!
I don't see the majority of African Americans wanting to go back to the poverty, suffering, and present day slavery of the motherland.
And all races and peoples have been slaves at some point in world history, so, African Americans hold no special place in "that" relam of human autrocities. It's just the one that comes to mind first for most of the uninformed masses, who read the winning armies version of history.
Remember Lincoln wanted to send all the slaves back to Africa and pay their owners $800 a piece for them, but was turned down by Congress. THIS IS WHO YOU WANT TO HONOR WITH MONUMENTS? AND LINCOLN WAS CERTAINLY GUILTY OF MANY WAR CRIMES, (I'll list if anyone is interested.)
Why do you think Honorable Southerners wanted no parts of their Ruthless Northern Neighbors?
I guess, it's time to repost Walter Williams (an educated Black American) great piece on
"Black Confederates"
http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/wew/articles.html
Black Confederates
During our War of 1861, ex-slave Frederick Douglass observed, "There are at the present moment, many colored men in the Confederate Army doing duty not only as cooks, servants and laborers, but as real soldiers, having muskets on their shoulders and bullets in their pockets, ready to shoot down . . . and do all that soldiers may do to destroy the Federal government."
Dr. Lewis Steiner, a Union Sanitary Commission employee who lived through the Confederate occupation of Frederick, Maryland said, "Most of the Negroes . . . were manifestly an integral portion of the Southern Confederacy Army." Erwin L. Jordan's book Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia cites eyewitness accounts of the Antietam campaign of "armed blacks in rebel columns bearing rifles, sabers, and knives and carrying knapsacks and haversacks." After the Battle of Seven Pines in June 1862, Union soldiers said that "two black Confederate regiments not only fought but showed no mercy to the Yankee dead or wounded whom they mutilated, murdered and robbed."
In April 1861, a Petersburg, Virginia newspaper proposed "three cheers for the patriotic free Negroes of Lynchburg" after 70 blacks offered "to act in whatever capacity may be assigned to them" in defense of Virginia. Erwin L. Jordan cites one case where a captured group of white slave owners and blacks were offered freedom if they would take an oath of allegiance to the United States. One free black indignantly replied, "I can't take no such oaf as dat. I'm a secesh nigger." A slave in the group upon learning that his master refused to take the oath said, "I can't take no oath dat Massa won't take." A second slave said, "I ain't going out here on no dishonorable terms." One of the slave owners took the oath but his slave, who didn't take the oath, returning to Virginia under a flag of truce, expressed disgust at his master's disloyalty saying, "Massa had no principles."
Horace Greeley, in pointing out some differences between the two warring armies said, "For more than two years, Negroes have been extensively employed in belligerent operations by the Confederacy. They have been embodied and drilled as rebel soldiers and had paraded with white troops at a time when this would not have been tolerated in the armies of the Union." General Nathan Bedford Forrest had both slaves and freemen serving in units under his command. After the war, General Forrest said of the black men who served under him "[T]hese boys stayed with me . . . and better Confederates did not live." Southern generals owned slaves but northern generals owned them as well. General Ulysses Grant's slaves had to await for the Thirteenth Amendment for freedom. When asked why he didn't free his slaves earlier, General Grant said,"Good help is so hard to come by these days."
These are but a few examples of the important role that blacks served, both as slaves and freemen in the Confederacy during the War Between the States. The flap over the Confederate Flag is not quite as simple as the nation's race experts make it. They want us to believe the flag is a symbol of racism. Yes, racists have used the Confederate Flag, but racists have also used the Bible and the U.S. Flag. Should we get rid of the Bible and lower the U.S. Flag? Black civil rights activists and their white liberal supporters who're attacking the Confederate Flag have committed a deep, despicable dishonor to our patriotic black ancestors who marched, fought and died to protect their homeland from what they saw as Northern aggression. They don't deserve the dishonor.
Walter E. Williams
c6-00January 21, 2000Return to Articles Page
Tom:
It's precisely that kind of attitude that makes people from elsewhere in the country regard Virginians as backwards.
The people that I listed were not traitors: they stayed loyal to the United States. While I hesitate to call the Confederates traitors (I have many Confederate ancestors) I don't think there can be any question that they were rebels.
George H. Thomas' decision to remain loyal does not make him a traitor. If the actions of certain other Southerners does not seem as praiseworthy by comparison, perhaps you shouldn't make that comparison.
--J.C.
I think your idea is marvelous. Even though my Great Grandfather fought for the Confederacy, and I have a few cousins who are obsessed with his having participated in the "Great" cause, I have ended the cycle of insane pride about the Civil War in my own immediate family and my children understand what a horrible affair it was. (And this is due to my own views, not because I married a Yankee from Ohio). I have belonged to a book club of interesting women for a number of years, and we call ourselves (tongue in cheek) the "Van Lew Literary Society"...We wanted our table for the Richmod Junior League Book and Author's dinner to list our name, but they did not. Since moving to Richmond five years ago I have been shocked that so many people cannot get over the Civil War, and also shocked to learn that some people believe the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery. SURE. I love your suggestion about honoring Virginia's Unionists. I am also heartened to have attended the new Civil War Center down at Tredegar Iron Works with my children. I presents a SORELY NEEDED balanced view about the whole affair. There is a wall where people can post "post it notes" about how they feel about the war, and it was cathartic to write "My Great Grandfather fought for the South and I am not Proud of It" and stick it right up there!!!
Richmond is changing thank God.
Re: Black Confederates
The complex psycological and sociological factors involved in why some blacks fought for the South is addressed in the book March, which won the Pulitzer Prize last year. The book doesn't support the notion that blacks fought for the South because the cause was just.
Richmond is changing, and those who don't want to face that fact are in for a rude awakening.
Backwards?
:>) That's interesting. The facts are backwards? Please be specific.
It seems a city with such a crime rate as Richmond, with the vast knowledge and resources a Great State like ours has, is much more Backward. Destroying and repressing the facts and history of our great city is backward.(renaming bridges and schools, etc. because they are named after Virginias native sons and daughters who fought and died for a cause they saw as just, "States Rights"! That's not backward and akin to burning books and rewriting history?
Ambulances not being able to get to a State Hospital, in the Governors and legislatures backyard, because the city public utilities constuction crews are violating their permits, is as Backward as a state and Nation can get.
If the terrorist or a private citizen were to impede the access of ambulances and the public to an emergency room and hospital it would be a national and state emergency.
I think you folks really need to examine reality and take your rose colored glasses off and look where you live.
Those that don't understand history are doomed to repeat it.
If we're going to honor traitors to the state of Virginia during the Civil War, when in the future do we honor the terrorist that all of you seem so willing to aid and embrace in the name of freedom of religion?
Yes our Great City has changed much in my lifetime. It has fallen into decay and become overrun with crime and corruption. I was born here, have traveled much and lived in numerous places all over the US.
Yes our Great City is changing much for the worse!
And the "come here's" that don't know what a wonderful city this once was need to keep your "come here" attitudes and uninformed comments to yourself! Because you have no idea how wonderful a city this once was until vermin took it over and ran it in the ground. And before you jump on the racist boat, the vermin are all shapes, sizes, and races!
How about John Minor Botts, one-time Congressman and a Unionist Jeff Davis considered so much a threat, that he banished Botts to his rural farm to keep him out of Richmond during the war? His marker at Shockoe Hill Cemetery reads, "I know no North, no South, no East, no West, only my Country, my whole Country, and nothing but my Country."
I think by honoring the big-name, more well-known Unionists, there would be a great disservice to the majority of Virginians who remained loyal to the Union. I'm talking about the more simple people with nominal means for getting by - the basic poor dirt farmers. If one takes the time to go through the Loyalist Claims (which includes free blacks as well as whites), they would not find one of the more popular names that are mentioned here, but, in fact, would find that the incredible number of people (actually a fraction of those who were Unionists) stand as a staggering number against the Unionists named here. If a monument is to be raised, it should portray the common men and women who would otherwise, with monuments to people like Gen. Thomas, Van Lew and others, remain forgotten - which would be a real injustice.
Robert
Jeffrey -
It is interesting to see what you said about Botts. Another Virginian who sided with the Union and was an officer in the army, David Hunter Strother, wrote (a bit stronger than Bott's language) after the war, "I abhor the South, I despise the West, I ignore the East, and damn the North, I acknowledge nothing but nationalisty and the American people, no country but the United States."
Robert
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