USA > Virginia > City of Lynchburg > City of Lynchburg > Historic and heroic Lynchburg > Part 2
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terians, not only compelled to pay, but to have their ministers declared disturbers of the peace and thrown into jail like common felons.
It may not be pleasant to a Virginian and an Episcopalian, like myself, to review such a state of affairs, but I am com- forted, nay, more, I am filled with pride, when I think that Jeffer- son, too, was a Virginian and an Episcopalian, and that he fought these abuses to their downfall. Believing in God himself he never- theless believed just as firmly that other men had the right to believe in Him, or not, as they chose, or to believe in and worship Him, or any other god or gods, or none, according to the dictates of their own hearts and consciences, and pursuant to any doctrines of theology they might accept with their minds. "Believing that religion is solely a matter that lies between a man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith and worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only and not opinions," he strove with all the power of his mighty intellect and all the zeal of his earnest soul for the enactment of a law which should guarantee the free exercise of man's right to choose for himself the manner in which he should believe in and worship his Maker, and in this strife he was successful. He drafted this Statute several years before it became a law, and when it was finally brought before the Legislature, the battle raged for months before it could be enacted. But when the victory came it was com- plete. In the very words in which Jefferson wrote it, it remains today a Statute of Virginia, Section 34 of the Code, and not only in Virginia is it the law, but to all intents and purposes it is a part of our Federal Constitution, embodied in Article VI and in the first clause of the First Amendment, as well as in the Constitution and Bill of Rights of every State in the Union. In every revision of the laws of Virginia, from the time of its enactment until now, it has been retained, preamble and all, in its original form, and Legislature after Legislature has reenacted it, and solemnly pro- claimed in the language of Section 35, "The General Assembly doth now again declare that the rights asserted in the said act are of the natural rights of mankind." May the time never come when impious or fanatical man shall alter or amend one syllable of its sound and beneficent provisions.
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The language of that immortal Statute is concise and clear, containing not a superfluous word, yet embracing all that is neces- sary to guard and protect religious liberty: "Be it enacted by the General Assembly, That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested or burthened, in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argu- ment to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capacities."
More than half a century after its passage, this act came under review by the General Court of Virginia, in considering the admiss- ibility to testify of a witness who did not believe in a future state of rewards and punishments, and in Perry's case (3 Gratt. 632), it was eloquently said by Judge John Scott, who delivered the opinion that it "wholly and permanently, separated religion, or the duty which we owe our Creator, from our political and civil govern- ment; putting all religions on a footing of perfect equality; pro- tecting all; imposing neither burdens nor civil incapacities upon any; conferring privileges upon none. . . Placing the Christian religion where it stood in the days of its purity, before its alliance with the civil magistrate; when its votaries employed for its ad- vancement no methods but such as are congenial to its nature; when, to use the language of an eloquent divine, its advocates, 'By the force of powerful arguments convinced the understandings of men, and by the charm of superior virtue captivated their hearts.' Proclaiming to all our citizens that henceforth their religious thoughts and conversation shall be as free as the air they breathe; that the law is of no sect or religion; has no high priest but justice. Declaring to the Christian and the Mahometan, the Jew and the Gentile, the Epicurean and the Platonist (if any such there be among us) that so long as they keep within its pale, all are equally objects of its protection; securing safety to the people, safety to the government, safety to religion; and (leaving reason free to combat error) securing purity of faith and practice far more effectually than by clothing the ministers of religion with exclusive temporal privileges; and exposing them to the corrupting influence of wealth
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and power." Time and again have our courts followed this opinion and quoted its language, and rueful will be the day, if ever our people depart therefrom. As was said by the late Judge Martin P. Burks, of the Supreme Court of Virginia, (In the case of Pirkey Bros. v. Commonwealth, 134 Va. 720), "It will be observed from these declarations that while there was a fixed purpose to sever Church and State, and to give the fullest freedom of conscience, and to abolish tithes and spiritual Courts, there was no assault upon Christianity, or any other religious faith." There is no danger to Christianity, or to Protestantism, either, but rather a strong bulwark of protection to them both, in Jefferson's Statute of Religious Freedom, and it may, therefore, well cause amazement to thoughtful minds that in this day of enlightenment there should be those so fatuous in their folly as to desire to proscribe the candidacy for office, high or low, of any man because of his religious belief. To such let me commend the language of the Preamble to the Statute of Religious Freedom: "The proscribing of any citizen as unworthy of the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriv- ing him injuriously to those privileges and advantages to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right; that it tends only to corrupt the principles of that religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing, with a monopoly of worldly honors and emoluments, those who will externally profess and conform to it; that though, indeed, those are criminal who do not withstand such temptation, yet, neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way."
Hearken, O, Americans, to these words of wisdom, and let not the serpent of intolerance entice you from the counsel of the Father of American Democracy! If the American people had listened to the political preachers of that day, Jefferson would never have been President of the United States, and we may well take warning and beware lest bigotry light again the fires of fanaticism, which, having gotten beyond control, may burn down the entire Temple of Liberty. The union of Church and State, the enforcement of religion or morality by law instead of by education and persuasion, the domination of political parties or legislative bodies by religious
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sects or ecclesiastical politicians, are all alike illogical and danger- ous. As was said by one whose orthodoxy as to fundamentalism or Protestantism could never be questioned-the late William Jennings Bryan: "Jefferson pointed out that God had it in His power to control man's mind and body, but that He did not see fit to coerce the mind or the body into obedience to even the divine will; and that if God Himself was not willing to use coercion to force man to accept certain religious views, man uninspired and liable to error ought not to use the means that Jehovah would not employ. Jefferson realized that our religion was a religion of love and not a religion of force." In that great Preamble to the Statute which I have already quoted from, Jefferson paid the highest tribute to the power of truth to overcome error by its own strength without the aid of man-made law. "And finally," it says, "that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist of error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition, disarmed of her natural weapons-free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them." Again, let me say with Bryan, "Tell me that Jefferson lacked reverence for religion! He rather lacks reverence who believes that religion is unable to defend herself in a contest with error. He places a low estimate upon the strength of religion, who thinks that the wisdom of God must be supplemented by the force of man's puny arm."
To conclude, then, let me say again, that, bearing in mind all of his other great deeds and services, the Master of Poplar Forest rendered his supreme service to mankind in giving us the Statute of Religious Freedom. Without it Civil Liberty and Universal Education would lose their strongest support and be unable to live ; tyranny over the soul would soon extend its hold to mind and body, and all the fair fabric of freedom would crumble into dust. I cannot better, therefore, bring this humble tribute to an end than by quoting still again from that prince of orators and Jeffersonian disciple, speaking at the height of his great career and in the full- ness of his splendid mental powers, William Jennings Bryan: "It has been said that it marks an epoch in history when God lets loose a thinker in the world. God let loose a thinker when Jefferson was
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born. Carlyle says that thought is stronger than artillery parks; that thought moulds the world like soft clay; that it writes and unwrites laws, makes and unmakes parliaments-and that back of every great thought is love; that love is the ruling force in the world. I believe it is true. I believe that Jefferson's greatness rests more upon his love of humankind than upon his intellect-great as was his intellect, and that he was great because his heart was big enough to embrace the world. And the people loved him 'because he first loved them.' He wanted our religion to rest on the basis of love and not on the basis of force; and when we get down to the foundation of our government, and the foundation of our religion, we find that they alike rest on the doctrine of human brotherhood- on the doctrine that 'all men are created equal,' 'that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,'-rights that government did not give, rights that government cannot take away; that the object of government is to secure to the individual the enjoyment of his inalienable rights, and that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. But all of these things rest upon that conception of human brotherhood which one cannot have unless he has the love that is back of every great thought. I believe that when Jefferson assisted in establishing religious freedom, he assisted in giving to our government its strongest support. Chain the conscience, bind the heart, and you cannot have for the support of our form of government the strength and the enthusiasm it deserves. But let conscience be free to commune with its God; let the heart be free to send forth its love, and the conscience and the heart will be the best defenders of a government resting upon the consent of the governed."
III.
HEROES OF THE BATTLE OF LYNCHBURG
ADDRESS BEFORE THE FORT HILL CLUB APRIL 9, 1924
It is certainly a pleasure to respond to the kind invitation of the Fort Hill Club to address them on this anniversary of that fateful day when fifty-nine years ago the heroic Army of Northern Virginia, reduced to a ragged fragment of its former invincible legions, but still animated by its dauntless and deathless spirit of valor, succumbed to the pressure of "overwhelming numbers and resources."
At such a time you will naturally expect me to speak upon some subject connected with that cause to every Southern heart so dear, the cause of the Southern Confederacy, "the storm cradled native that fell," but whose memories grow in glory and in fame as its heroes one by one depart. So indeed I shall, but in a way especially connected with this City of our home and affections and more particularly with the memories of that dread day when its existence was threatened by a cruel foe, and when it was saved by the blood of heroes shed in large measure upon this very spot where you have erected this splendid memorial to their bravery and devotion.
The Battle of Lynchburg, which occurred on the 18th day of June, 1864, does not loom very large upon the pages of history, written, as it has been, too largely, by Northern historians, but nevertheless, it was an action of no small importance, and the Confederate victory won that day served no doubt to postpone the inevitable downfall of the Southern cause for nearly a year. For so important was Lynchburg as a depot of medical and commissary supplies, as a railroad centre, and hospital post, that it was a strategical point of vital necessity to the Confederacy and its capture by the Union forces at that time would have exposed the armies of the South to unavoidable doom and disaster. In his orders for the taking of this City General Grant wrote to his subordinate to whom the task was given, It would be of great
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value to us to get possession of Lynchburg for a single day, thus ominously foreshadowing the fate which would have befallen our town had it come into the possession of the enemy.
Of that subordinate, General David Hunter, it would be a greater charity than can be shown him to speak not at all. The mildest terms that can be applied to him are renegade and coward. In a war characterized on both side, for the most part, by deeds of unsurpassed valor and noblest chivalry, his name stands out almost alone as an exponent of a style of warfare that was thought to have passed with the Dark ages until it was revived by him and then, later on, by the leaders of Germany in the Great War of 1914-18. His orders from Grant did indeed contemplate a rigorous campaign so far as the rules of civilized warfare would permit, for he was told that his troops should "eat out Virginia as far as they could, so that the crows flying over it for the balance of the year would have to carry their rations with them," but he was expressly forbidden to burn houses, an order he most ignominiously ignored and exceeded when he burned the residence of Governor Letcher and the V. M. I. at Lexington, as well as in numberless other cruel and unnecessary depredations. Even one of his own division commanders, Gen. Crook, a real soldier, said in one of his orders, "I regret to learn of so many acts committed by our troops that are disgraceful to the command." Gen. Early in his memoirs says: "The scenes on Hunter's route to Lynchburg were truly heartrending; houses had been burned and helpless women and children left without shelter. The Country had been stripped of provisions and many families left without a morsel to eat. Furniture and bedding had been cut to pieces and old men and women and children robbed of all the clothing they had except that on their backs. Ladies trunks and been rifled and their dresses torn to pieces in mere wantonness; even the negro girls had lost their little finery. Hunter's deeds were those of a malignant and cowardly fanatic who was better qualified to make war upon help- less women and children than upon armed soldiers. The time con- sumed in the perpetration of these deeds was the salvation of Lynchburg, with its stores, foundries and factories, which were so necessary to our armies at Richmond." Thus did the vengeful and malicious spirit of rapine and plunder overreach itself, for if Hunter
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had not delayed at Lexington he would have reached Lynchburg before Early could possibly have come to the rescue, and the City would have fallen without a blow being struck in its defense except the feeble blows of boys, old men and cripples, composing the home guard, and who could have offered only the mildest kind of resistance. I have devoted this much time to Hunter, not because it is pleasant to speak of such a wretched character, but in order that you may realize from what sort of fate our City was rescued. He was a man of inferior ability, who with every advantage in his favor and a heart desperately intent upon his mission of destruction, yet failed to accomplish it because of a lack of soldierly qualities for which the spirit of pillage and loot and ruthless vandalism could not make up.
Let us now turn to a nobler and more congenial picture and contemplate some of those who, on the other side of the battle, fought for the protection of homes and loved ones and drove the vicious invader back beyond the mountains into the wilds of West Virginia.
First of these must be mentioned Lieut .- Gen. Jubal A. Early. Like Hunter, Early was an officer in the United States Army at the beginning of the war, and like him might have had military promotion and opportunity on the Northern side, but unlike him (for Hunter too was a Southerner whose family had often been honorably connected with Virginia's history), Early, along with Robert E. Lee, though strongly opposed to secession, preferred to fight on the side of his own State and endure poverty and hard- ship in a losing cause than to achieve success and distinction at the cost of the blood of his own people.
When on the tenth of June, Hunter left Staunton at the head of his army of about 25,000 men, with drums beating and colors flying, Gen. Early with his little army of 8,000 was at Gaines Mill, near Richmond, having taken a prominent part in the bloody battle there as well as in the Wilderness, at Spotsylvania Court House and at Cold Harbor. Two days later he was ordered by General Lee to proceed to the Valley and attack Hunter in the rear. He reached Charlottesville on the sixteenth, having marched eighty miles in four days, well sustaining the soubriquet his troops had won under Jackson of "foot cavalry." Hunter was now at Liberty
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(Bedford City) only twenty-five miles from Lynchburg, while Early with his tired battallions had three times that far to come, the plight of his home town having required him to change his plan of campaign and meet Hunter on his front. Despite the lack of transportation facilities General Early reached here with about half his command on the afternoon of the seventeenth, and with Ramseur's Division succeeded in checking Hunter's advance until darkness closed the engagement for that day. The next day, June eighteenth, General Duffie's division of the enemy's forces, at- tacked General Early's right which was composed of two small infantry brigades under General Gabe C. Wharton, and a small detachment of the cavalry of General John McCausland. The fighting took place mostly between here and the Quaker Church. Hunter's headquarters being at Colonel Hutter's house, and his line extending northwardly across and beyond the Forest Road, and the Confederates, though outnumbered more than two to one, held their line of which this fort was one of the main defences. One of Wharton's brigades was commanded in this fight by Colonel August Forsberg, afterwards for many years a loved and honored citizen of Lynchburg. The same day a reconnoissance was made by the Yankee cavalry, under General Averill, in the direction of Campbell Court House, but it was of small importance. About two-thirty in the afternoon the main attack of the enemy was made upon Early's center, by two infantry divisions under Generals Sullivan and Crook, and for a short while there was sharp fighting, but late in the evening the Federals fell back into a new line, and both sides apparently rested on their arms for the night. In fact, however, the repulse of the enemy had already been effected, and the retreat of Hunter had already begun before the falling of the shades of night. Early could not know this, however, and awaited the arrival of the rest of his command under Rodes before beginning the pursuit. Rodes did not arrive until late in the evening, and not before midnight did it become clear to the Confederates that Hunter's forces were in motion. Even then it was thought he was merely changing lines. At daylight on the nineteenth Early was prepared to attack, but the enemy, although more than twice as numerous, was now in full flight and confusion. "Old Jube" at once put out after him, but Hunter was running like a scared rabbit
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and never stopped until he had put the Alleghanies behind him and was resting upon the banks of the Ohio at Parkersburg. On July fifth when Hunter reached Parkersburg, General Early had given up the chase and was crossing the Potomac into Maryland where his campaign threw the authorities at Washington into a fever of fear and uneasiness.
General Early has been criticized by some for allowing Hunter to escape, but his delay on the evening of the eighteenth was wise and prudent. He know that he was vastly outnumbered, and to have pressed the pursuit without the aid of the rest of his forces under Rodes would have been foolhardy. Besides, when Early noticed the movement of Hunter away from his immediate front, he naturally concluded that he was only changing front for another attack, and it was necessary to wait for daylight and keep his troops in hand until the enemy's purpose was developed.
Of General Robert E. Rodes, it may be said that although one of the youngest he was one of the most brilliant general officers developed by the war. It was a bitter disappointment to him that he was not here in time to take a more active part in the defence of his native City. When he was at Charlottesville with Early he asked to be sent forward with the first troops to Lynchburg, but transportation was limited and for some unknown reason Ramseur was sent instead. This denial of his request to be among the first to defend his home town is said to have led to high words between General Early and himself. He was in time, however, to aid in the repulse and chase of Hunter and conducted himself with his usual vigor and gallantry. After that his command was in constant motion and ceaseless fighting for the rest of the summer, marching and counter-marching from battle to battle, always seeking and finding the foe, and invariably striking him with the force of a thunderbolt.
Before the battle of Lynchburg Rodes had won undying fame on many a bloody field. At Chancellorsville his gallantry won high praise from the dying Jackson who recommended his promotion to Major-General. When Jackson fell, General Hill also being disabled, the command of Jackson's Corps justly devolved upon Rodes, but with magnanimity as rare as it was generous he gave way to Stuart "the flower of cavaliers," who was then in the
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zenith of his fame, an action of which only a lofty-minded, chivalrous unselfish patriot could have been capable. At Gettys- burg in the first day's battle the charge of Rodes' Division was mainly responsible for the victory of that occasion. General Lee was an eye witness to this charge and sent a message to General Rodes, declaring him a "gallant, efficient and energetic officer" and saying "I am proud of your division." In this battle Iverson's Brigade, of Rodes Division, suffered terribly, so that its dead lay in a distinctly marked line of battle, so uniform that it was thought they were lying down in position, as General Iverson said in "a line as straight as a dress parade," but its shattered remnants, which were rallied and reorganized by a young staff officer, still pressed forward and made under his guidance what General Rodes de- scribed as "a dashing and effective charge, just in time to be of considerable service." It is a matter of inexpressible pride and satisfaction to me that the young officer who led that charge was another of Lynchburg's valorous sons, my own honored father, who fairly won and justly deserved the honor, which was his, of being mentioned by General Rodes, in his report among those whose conduct on that occasion was such as to "entitle them to the admiration of brave men and the gratitude of a good people."
On the eighteenth of September, 1864, Rodes' Division was hurried to Winchester to assist Ramseur in meeting the advance of Sheridan. Rodes arrived on the field at a critical moment, and swept forward at once carrying all before him. General Early is credited with having said that this splendid charge saved the Confederate Army that morning. But, alas, at what a cost ! As says Major Peyton, "In the full flush of success, while cheering his men on to victory, Rodes was struck in the head by a musket ball and fell from his horse, never to rise or speak again. From that moment fortune seemed to desert the Army of the Valley. The sun of Winchester set in gloom and defeat, and never rose again to victory." When he fell General Rodes was only thirty- two years of age. Brave, dashing and impetuous, yet modest, unassertive of self, tenderly considerate of his men and loyal to all that was noble and true, this lion-hearted son of Lynchburg may be likened in all Knightly attributes to Lancelot of the Lake, or to the noblest of the Crusaders.
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