Lexington, Virginia

“ Another route, via Staunton, to the springs, is to Lexington, 35 miles. This is the prettiest town in the valley of Virginia. Here are located Washington College and the "Virginia Military Institute," both flourishing institutions. The Natural Bridge is 15 miles southwest of Lexington; and 17 miles west of Lexington are the
ROCKBRIDGE ALUM SPRINGS.
On the stage road to the Bath Alum and the Warm Springs, in Bath County. The improvements here are new and comfortable, sufficient to accommodate about one hundred persons. ”

“ Lexington, Virginia, January 29, 1866.
“My Precious Little Agnes: I have received your letter of the 17th, transmitting the photographs, for which I am very much obliged. I returned the one for Miss Laura Lippett, whom I wish I could see once again. It would be more agreeable to me than any photograph. I had quite a successful journey up, notwithstanding the storm. The snow increased as we approached the mountains, and night had set in before we reached Staunton. ”

“ What is it the gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, GIVE ME LIBERTY, Or GIVE ME DEATH!"
Within the following month occurred the battle of Lexington.
Washington, Jefferson and Patrick Henry were members of the committee appointed to arrange a plan for preparing Virginia to act her part in the struggle. ”

“ The Scotch-Irish were determined to have the best schools and colleges for their children. The Hanover Presbytery, which in 1776 embraced all the Presbyterian churches in Virginia, established a school which they called Liberty Hall Academy. This was built in Lexington, Virginia, with the Reverend William Graham, a native of Pennsylvania, as its first president. George Washington, in 1796, gave the school a regular endowment, the first of its kind. ”

“ As a place of residence, I should hope you would find Lexington agreeable, as the population is moral, intelligent, and religious. Our college is supplied with able professors. We are just reviving our Female Academy under favorable auspices, and if our Military Institute shall sustain the character which we hope to give to it, we will as regards education be the most favored spot in the State. ”

“ After returning to Richmond from this excursion, the cadets embarked for their homes, and regular duties were resumed on the 14th of March, 1850.
Telegraphic communication did not exist in those days. Mails were slow, taking two and a half days from Richmond to Lexington. Upon the passage of the Act of March 8, 1850, I immediately hurried home, to communicate the good news. My horse, “Old Coaly,” met me in Staunton, so that I rode on horseback from Staunton to Lexington on the 10th of March, reaching Lexington at 4 P.M.
No one knew of the passage of the bill. ”

“ The moment the news of Lexington reached Virginia he took the lead in organizing an armed force, and in the Virginia Convention of 1775, according to Lynch, he “made the most eloquent speech ... that ever was made. Says he, ‘I will raise one thousand men, enlist them at my own expense, and march myself at their head for the relief of Boston.’” At fifty-three, in speaking of war, Washington said, “my first wish is to see this plague to mankind banished from off the earth;” ”

“ The Military Institute, founded twelve years previously on the model of West Point, was attended by several hundred youths from Virginia and other Southern States. At Lexington, in the county of Rockbridge, a hundred miles west of Richmond, stand the castellated buildings and the wide parade ground which formed the nursery of so many Confederate soldiers. To the east rise the lofty masses of the Blue Ridge. To the north successive ranges of rolling hills, green with copse and woodland, fall gently to the lower levels ”

“ The fort surrendered in a few days, and Hamilton was sent prisoner to Virginia on the charge of having instigated the Indians to cruelty against the colonial settlers.
Security being thus given against the Indians north of the Ohio, the settlement of Kentucky began rapidly to increase, and in April of this year a log-erection formed the commencement of the present city of Lexington. By the Virginia land system, all who had settled west of the mountains before June of the preceding year were entitled to 400 acres, merely for the payment of the taxes on that 144quantity of land. ”

“ Jefferson was the only man in America, whose talents he highly respected.
HENRY CLAY
Henry Clay, the most famous Kentuckian ever born, first saw the light in the "Slashes," Hanover county, Virginia, April 12, 1777. When twenty years of age, he settled in Lexington, Kentucky, as a lawyer; and Lexington was his home henceforth. In 1803 Henry Clay was elected to the State legislature; and before he was [Pg 40] thirty years old he was filling an unexpired term in the United States Senate. In 1811 he was sent to the National House of Representatives from the old Lexington district. ”

“ The Ruffners were among the largest landowners in the Valley, their property extending twelve miles on both sides of Hawksbill Creek. They received a part of the land through inheritance and bought other tracts. Dr. Henry Ruffner, a member of this distinguished family, was at one time President of Washington College, now Washington and Lee University at Lexington.
Fighting during the War Between the States occurred near the town of Luray and about two miles south on the Lee Highway there is an old oak tree which marks the place where Sheridan's famous Valley ride was halted for a time. ”

“ There is no need of such an institution as its officers contemplate making the Virginia Miliary Institute.
“4. It is not good policy in the State to establish at Lexington a rival institution to Washington College.
“5. The Legislature never intended to establish such an institution as the Virginia Military Institute is becoming. ”

“ The benefits resulting from the new system of furnishing clothing and other needed articles to cadets soon became apparent to the Board of Visitors, and was altogether satisfactory to the cadets. The operations of the military store then established have been continued ever since.
Still, these satisfactory results to the Institute did not allay the prejudices of the merchants of Lexington. After failing in all their remonstrances, an indictment was made by the Grand Jury of the Circuit Court against the Superintendent for “selling goods without license.” ”

“ At the last, she stands above the Chronicler’s throne and, on either side of her, two youths kneel, who have followed her down from the Choir. When she has come to the bottom of the slope and when the darkness has taken all else but her figure, she turns her back upon the audience and her hands go out as though she evoked one further image out of the past. We see it, as light scatters the darkness above her—the Common of Lexington in the cold dawn of the Glorious Morning and the line of Minute Men drawn up across it. ”

“ Nature has done much to make it a paradise; art very little. The farm-houses are in the Kentucky style,—piazzas, great chimneys outside, negro cabins,—presenting at one view and in close contrast the extremes of wealth and poverty, power and weakness, civilization and barbarism, freedom and slavery.
The city of Lexington is a place of the past. Before railroads were projected, when Henry Clay was in the prime of manhood there, it was a place of enterprise and activity. The streets were alive with men. It was the great political and social centre of Central Kentucky. ”

“ Holmes has remarked, American cities and villages all like to think of themselves as the “good old” this and that; but at Lexington more than anywhere else out of Italy I felt that the village was to its people the patria. With us the great Republic is repeated and multiplied in several smaller and diminishing republican governments, each subordinate to the larger, all over the land; and ever since its separation from Cambridge, Lexington has, like other New England towns, had its little autonomy. Twice a year the citizens convene and legislate in town meetings ”

“ It is traversed by the Boston & Maine railroad and by the Lowell & Boston electric railway. Its area is about 17 sq. m., and it contains three villages—Lexington, East Lexington and North Lexington. Agriculture is virtually the only industry. ”

“ Born of an old and distinguished Philadelphia family, so proud of its name that in his instance they had doubled it, the usual bluntness and roughness of the sea were tempered by this gentle birth and breeding, and by frequent attrition with men and women of the politest society of the largest and most important city of the colonies. Offering his services as soon as the news of Lexington precipitated the conflict with the mother country, he had already made his name known among that gallant band of seamen among whom Jones, Biddle, Dale, and Conyngham were pre-eminent. ”

“ THE citizens of Lexington, the Birthplace of American Liberty, realizing they are custodians of America’s greatest shrine, extend a welcome to EVERYONE, not only on the 19th of April and Pageant Week, June 15th to 20th, 1925, BUT EVERY DAY OF THE YEAR, to visit our battlefield, the historic buildings, and at all times to feel at home. This historic spot belongs to the Nation, and we want all Americans to feel they are part owners so that on leaving the town they may have a better realization of the struggles made by our forefathers and become better and more patriotic citizens. ”

“ Lexington is really nothing more than a great big country town, but we love it. I reached the suburbs in half an hour, then took the pike, and walked briskly. The day had been like one huge bloom of some tropical orchid. Contrasted with the biting winter only a few weeks back, it was something to exult the heart and uplift the soul. Rain had fallen the night before. Day came with a world-wide flare of yellow sunshine; her dress a tempered breeze. By noon a coat was uncomfortable, and the air was full of music; the droning, charming, ceaseless litany of the bees. ”

“ I was very glad that the Lexington people gave the singing and playing family a good house, and I fancy that they do not refuse any fit occasions for amusing themselves. The young men seem not to go away from home so generally as they do from most country towns in New England; it is perhaps because their pleasant village is so near the city; at any rate they remain at home even after being graduated at Harvard. They have sleigh-rides, and dances at the Town Hall during the winter; I was told that the Lexington “germans” are not despised by the undergraduates of Cambridge ”

“ Lexington is commercially important as the market for the ‘blue grass’ district, and is well known also for the manufacture of Bourbon whisky. The manufactures include also flour, saddlery and harness, carriages and wagons, canned goods, and planing-mill, foundry, and machine-shop products. The government is administered under a charter of 1894, by a mayor, elected every four years, a bicameral council, and subordinate officials, the majority of whom are chosen by the people. ”

“ Gradually during this change—notwithstanding the talents, ability, and fame of our Brown, Dudley, Caldwell, Cooke, Short, Yandell, Bartlett, Mitchell, Smith, and others, and the generous support of the city—the school declined; more especially because of the establishment of rival colleges at more eligible points, in growing and populous cities. Lexington lost its pre-eminence as the "Metropolis of the Western Country," and Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis, and other places which had been villages supplied with her manufactures, rapidly became great cities ”

“ The ladies used to bring out their sewing or knitting, and chat round the fire; the men had their newspapers and cigars; as the evening wore on there was whist or euchre at the tables; sometimes people from the outside world dropped in; and if you went down late (as hours go with us in the country) , you were likely to find the landlord and his brother smoking before the fire and telling stories of Lexington as they remembered it when boys. ”

“ It is worst, of course, on the shore, and delicate people who cannot live in it there are sent to Lexington, and thrive. The air is very dry and pure, and that is perhaps the reason why even the east wind is tolerable. Lexington Common, they say, is as high as the top of Bunker Hill Monument in Boston; and the locomotive pants with difficulty up the heavy grade of the road near the village. Perhaps there is something in the grouping of the low hills — in the embrace of which the village lies on an ample plain — that gives it peculiar shelter ”

“ There is very little religious excitement of any sort in New England, now; the church in small places becomes more and more a social affair; and perhaps it was chiefly in the social way that the Baptist body was rehabilitated in Lexington. ”

“ This alone is enough to keep the men of her family busy, and to prevent the commonwealth from lapsing into decay; the civic virtues fall naturally to the care of the trained patriots who are “inside politics” . . .
I perceive too late that by an infrangible chain of reasoning I have been proving that we too are governed and refined by a leisure class, and that there is only the trifling difference of sex between the American and the European aristocracies. At the same time I have got rather far away from Lexington, where life seemed to be still very unambitious and old-fashioned. ”