Strasburg, Virginia

“ Here, and within fifteen miles of this city, in Spotsylvania county, more great armies manœuvred, more great battles were fought, more men were engaged in mortal combat and more officers and privates were killed and wounded than in any similar territory in the world. More men fell in the battles of this one small county during the Civil war than Great Britain has lost in all her wars of a century; and more men were killed and wounded in four hours at the battle of Fredericksburg than Great Britain had lost in killed, wounded and prisoners in her eight months’ war in South Africa. ”

“ It was James Madison, of Orange county, a Virginian, born a few miles below Fredericksburg, at Port Conway, in King George [Pg 302] county, who gave that wonderful instrument, the Constitution of the United States, to the country, that has been described as the “grand palladium of our liberty, the golden chain of our union, the broad banner of freemen, a terror to tyrants and a shining light to patriots.” ”

“ Some Distinguished Men Buried in Fredericksburg—A Remarkable Grave Stone—Three Heroic Fredericksburgers, Wellford, Herndon, Willis—The Old Liberty Bell Passes Through Town—Great Demonstrations in its Honor—What a Chinaman Thought of it.
A town is not less renowned for the noble, heroic dead who sleep within its borders than it is for its gallant soldiers, Statesmen and others who are yet on the stage of action. Indeed its renown may be more enduring because of its dead than of its living. ”

“ Here was the home and birthplace of men who commanded armies, controlled navies, swayed statesmen, electrified assemblies, and many of those homes and birth-houses are still standing, and it will appear but natural if they shall be pointed out and written about by the inhabitants of Fredericksburg with patriotic pride. Notwithstanding the quaint architecture of many of them, and the ravages of time upon them, they are dear to us and are regarded as heirlooms of the town which have witnessed the advent and exit of many generations. ”

“ The ducking stool for Fredericksburg was erected on the bank of the Rappahannock river, at the foot of Wolfe street, near where the old Stafford bridge spanned the river. There are several of our old citizens now living who remember when it was in use, and when it was dispensed with, nearly seventy years ago. A “ducking” always brought together a large crowd, most of whom were rude and disorderly, and jeers at and ridicule of the party “ducked” would rend the air, while the sentence of the court was being carried out. ”

“ All of these advantages belong to Fredericksburg, with many others that we have probably inadvertently omitted, that make it one of the most desirable residential cities in the country; and we can readily agree with Captain John Smith, the great explorer, “that Heaven and earth never agreed better to frame a place for man’s habitation,” than the beautiful valley of the Rappahannock, and Fredericksburg is located on the most beautiful, picturesque and healthy spot of that far-famed valley. ”

“ And as Fredericksburg is not wanting in her church privileges and accommodations, so she is not deficient in the number of her charitable and benevolent societies. The oldest of these societies is the Masonic institution. ”

“ The stern pressure of military necessity made it impossible, properly, to care for the remains of the gallant dead who fell on the bloody fields of Fredericksburg, Wilderness, Chancellorsville, Spotsylvania Courthouse and in scores of skirmishes which, in a war less terrible, would have been reckoned as battles. ”

“ The Common Council that took charge of municipal affairs in 1870 had many grave and difficult questions to meet and determine. Debts had accumulated against the city, while the taxable values had greatly diminished by the destruction of property during the war and the emancipation of the slaves. A large portion of the inhabitants had recently returned home—the women and children from refugeeing and the men from the army—almost penniless, to find their homes in ruins or badly damaged and despoiled of what had been left in them. Nearly everybody had to commence life anew. ”

“ TROOPS RAISED AND EQUIPPED.
There was never any doubt as to the part the citizens of Fredericksburg would take in the war. It is true the town was always conservative and loyal to the government; it had sent a Union man to the State Convention, which was to consider and pass upon the question of union or disunion; he had received almost a two-thirds vote of the qualified voters of the town, but all this was done with a strong hope that the political differences of the two great sections of the country—North and South—could and would be settled without a separation. ”

“ The Union officers were thought to have neither the wisdom to fight at the right time nor the discretion to retreat when fighting was worse than useless. In consequence thousands of brave men were believed by many to have died in vain once more on the ill-fated field of Bull Run.
One morning, the last of August, Strahan galloped to the Vosburgh cottage and said to Marian, who met him at the door: "Orders have come. I have but a few minutes in which to say good-by. Things have gone wrong in Virginia, and every available man is wanted in Washington." ”

“ Fredericksburg is regularly laid out and compactly built; many of its buildings are brick. The principal public buildings are a courthouse, clerk’s office, a jail, a market-house, an orphan asylum, one Episcopal, one Presbyterian, one Methodist, one Baptist and one Reform Baptist church. ”

“ As time progressed population increased. The old citizens who had refugeed returned to their homes; young and middle-aged men, who had faithfully served their country in the army, exchanged their weapons of war for the implements of peace, and business began to assume its legitimate channels and the old town was well nigh restored to its wonted activity and prosperity. The census of 1870, very imperfectly taken, gave Fredericksburg at that time a population of about four thousand inhabitants. ”

“ It is true that those who estimate a place solely by the number of industrial enterprises which it encourages, or the amount of traffic which comes to it, would not rank Fredericksburg as highly as some of the more busy or bustling towns of other parts of the country, but those who recognize other agencies besides water wheels and steam engines, and other earthly products, besides dry goods, groceries and general merchandise, will find much here to admire and interest them. ”

“ If the morals and correct lives of the people of a town are to be judged by the number of churches within its borders, giving due consideration to the number of inhabitants, the people of Fredericksburg would be rated with the best. One of the first things that received the attention of the founders of the town, under the charter granted by the House of Burgesses in 1727, was the building of a house of worship and its dedication to the service of the Almighty, and since that time Fredericksburg has been blessed with regular divine services. ”

“ What spot so appropriate for the last resting place of these heroes, as some commanding eminence overlooking the memorable plain of Fredericksburg? And what nobler work for the hearts and hands of Southern women, than upon its summit to rear a monument to the unrecorded Confederate dead, which, through all time shall testify to the gratitude of the people for whom they so gloriously died? ”

“ Fredericksburg has one peculiarity that tradition gives her, which is worthy of a place in this sketch, and that is, that in every city of any size in the civilized world a native of Fredericksburg, or some one who has lived in Fredericksburg, can be found. This is said to have been an old saying of tourists, sailors, marines and naval officers, who candidly declared that they were always able to find a Fredericksburger in every place of any size they had visited. ”

“ In the hurry and confusion every thing had been in the night before, the bakers had all forgot to lay their leaven—there were no butter'd buns to be had for breakfast in all Strasburg—the whole close of the cathedral was in one eternal commotion—such a cause of restlessness and disquietude, and such a zealous inquiry into that cause of the restlessness, had never happened in Strasburg, since Martin Luther, with his doctrines, had turned the city upside down. ”

“ Impartial history will record that the Union soldiers who fought at Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, the Wilderness and at Spotsylvania Courthouse were not only brave men, but that their valor on those immortal fields decorated the Stars and Stripes with imperishable glory. And no American army of the future, composed of those who wore the blue and the gray, or their descendants, will ever permit that glory to be tarnished!
It was the brilliant prowess of the Confederate army on the battlefields of Spotsylvania that shed such dazzling lustre on the Union arms at Gettysburg. ”

“ His advance through the counties of Fauquier and Culpeper to Fredericksburg, when he took command of the army, caused great consternation because of his unreasonable and cruel exactions. Many private citizens, who had never entered the Confederate service, were arrested upon their refusal to take the oath of allegiance to the United States government, and were ruthlessly dragged from their homes and confined in Northern prisons. ”

“ With a climate unsurpassed, an immunity from epidemics, a situation enviable because of its surroundings, water as pure as ever came from mountain springs, with all the advantages as we have before said [Pg 331] of tidewater, without its malaria, with all the benefits of the mountains, without the mountain fevers, together with a refined and elevated society—if these, with the additions of home virtues and home joys, be regarded as valuable in life, then Fredericksburg must rank much higher than many a place that has more outward show of prosperity. ”

“ It is with feelings of heartfelt delight that we welcome it within the corporate limits of Fredericksburg, connected inseparably, as she is, like your own great and proud city of Philadelphia, with the events proclaimed in that glorious past by that sacred bell; for it was in Fredericksburg, on the 29th of April, 1775, that the first resolutions breathing the spirit of the Declaration of Independence were offered; it was in Fredericksburg that Hugh Mercer lived, whose ashes rest in your beloved soil, in whose defence he died ”

“ Soon after the citizens of Fredericksburg returned to their desolated homes at the close of the Civil war, and had gotten their dwellings in a condition to be occupied, the thoughts of the patriotic ladies were at once turned to the Confederate soldiers who had fallen and were buried in Fredericksburg and on the several adjacent battle-fields. ”

“ The scenes incident to the evacuation of Fredericksburg are well remembered to the present day by those who were present and witnessed them. They are indelibly impressed upon their minds and can never be forgotten, and are often related with great interest. In describing this stirring event and the reoccupation of the town in the Fall of 1862, we use the eyes of citizens, who were present and witnessed the scenes described and the words of another, who wrote of them years afterwards. ”

“ Strassburg he found a society whose ways of living and thinking were equally different from those of Frankfort and of Leipzig. Strassburg had not the bounded intellectual horizon which made him feel himself an alien in his native town, nor, on the other hand, did it offer the opportunities for frivolous distraction which he found in the "little Paris." Strassburg had been a French town for a hundred years, but there was no town in Germany more intensely German in its sympathies and aspirations. ”

“ It is the first time that your society has held one of its annual reunions on southern soil, and, in making this new departure, it was preëminently fit that you should honor Fredericksburg with your choice.
A French philosopher has written, “Happy the people whose annals are tiresome,” but the far nobler and more inspiring thought of the Anglo-Saxon race is that “character constitutes the true strength of nations and historic glory their best inheritance.”
As American citizens you are proud of the grand traditions and heroic memories that crowd your country’s history ”

“ When the news of the battle of Lexington, and of the removal of the powder, reached Fredericksburg, great excitement prevailed. Over six hundred men armed themselves, from the town and surrounding country, assembled at the Courthouse in town and offered their services to George Washington, who was then in Williamsburg, to defend that city from Lord Dunmore’s threatened attack, and the country from his tyranny. ”

“ The town referred to in the county of King George is the town of Falmouth, on the opposite side of the river, and a mile and a half above Fredericksburg. The act that made Fredericksburg a town also gave Falmouth a legal existence. At the time of the passage of the act that territory belonged to King George county, but now to Stafford county. ”

“ About the year 1832 the religious movement, in which Alexander Campbell was the leader, began in Fredericksburg. A number of citizens, adopting the views held by Mr. Campbell, were organized into a Christian or Disciples church. With commendable energy and zeal they went to work, purchased a lot and erected quite a comfortable church building on Main street, between Amelia and Lewis streets. The church prospered until the breaking out of [Pg 214] the Civil war, when, like those of the other churches, its members were scattered and church services were suspended. ”