[Inspired by my
annual Virginia pilgrimage with the boys, this year’s series will focus on
AmericanStudying interesting places in the Commonwealth. Leading up to a
special weekend post on my presentation at the Historical Writers
of America conference in Williamsburg!]
Two prominent
histories that echo in the tiny
Western Virginia city, and one lesser-known but very telling complement.
1)
Revolutionary renamings: Named in 1778 (upon its
incorporation as a town) by the Virginia Legislature, Lexington was one of
the first American cities named after the Massachusetts site of the
Revolution’s first battle. In 1796, President
George Washington donated a substantial gift of James River Canal stock to
the city’s struggling Augusta Academy, which changed its name to Washington Academy
(later to become Washington & Lee University, as I’ll detail below) in
appreciation. Besides providing interesting historical trivia answers, these
renamings remind us of the breadth of the Revolution’s and Early Republic’s
effects and legacies, the ways in which those founding periods and their
prominent moments and figures changed the trajectory of every American
community (even one with a population that as of the 2010 census
still hadn’t come close to 10,000) in a variety of ways.
2)
Confederate memories: Lexington saw even less
Civil War action than Lynchburg, although the same Union general (David Hunter)
from the Battle of Lynchburg did also lead
a raid on the city’s Virginia Military Institute (VMI). But in the war’s
aftermath, few Virginia spaces became more crucial to the South’s evolving
collective memories of the conflict and the Confederacy than Lexington. The
city hosted General Stonewall Jackson’s house, which quickly became and remains
a museum to the controversial
Confederate (who is also buried there). But it was the process of deifying
Jackson’s boss, Robert E. Lee, in which Lexington participated most
centrally. Shortly after the war’s end, Lee
became President of what was now known as Washington College and remained
in the role until his 1870 death, leading to the final renaming of the
institution as Washington and Lee University. Due to that connection, the
university constructed Lee
Chapel, the final resting place for both Lee’s body and (just outside) the
remains of his
famous horse Traveller. These are quite literally sacred sites for the Lost
Cause narrative of the war and the South, making Lexington one of the holiest
places in that belief system.
3)
A different story: Revolutionary and Civil War
histories obviously occupy a central place in Virginian and American history
overall, and those connections thus make tiny Lexington a significant part of
our collective memories. Yet while Washington, Jackson, and Lee were of course
hugely prominent players in those histories, they were also wealthy white
landowners, and ones closely
linked to the system of slavery
at that. Providing a provocative and necessary complement to those histories,
in terms of both race and class, is an award-winning Young Adult novel written
by Lexington’s own William H.
Armstrong: Sounder
(1969), the classic story of an African American sharecropping family and their
faithful dog. While Armstrong purposefully leaves his novel’s setting ambiguous
in both place and time, he also based it directly on a
local story he heard as a child; Armstrong family were poor white farmers in the Lexington area, and writes in the book's "Author's Note" that he learned the story from his "teacher, a gray-haired black man who taught the one-room Negro school several miles away." So it’s fair to say that in every way, Sounder reminds us of Lexington histories and communities that
contrast with, complicate, but ultimately can complement those of the
Revolutionary and Confederate leaders.
Next VA place
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Interesting places (in any state) you’d highlight?
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