When we learn our history, we see things that reflect our past. Paintings of famous battles and statues of men who were heroes to some. But how we interpret our legacy changes. Time can warp our notion of a once righteous cause.
There are examples around the world of ways we have edited our past. In the U.S., recent decisions to move Confederate monuments and take down Confederate flags. But the effort to cleanse the past is global. And in places with a much longer history, the disagreements can be more contentious and complex.
For this episode, Trey travels to Skopje, North Macedonia to speak with locals about controversial statues honoring Alexander the Great. He also visits a cemetery in Corinth, Mississippi to visit the graves of soldiers decorated with the Confederate battle flag. Trey also examines the origins and evolution of the song Dixie.
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Credit e-wv, The West Virginia Encyclopedia online. / Droop Mountain Battlefield State Park, General William Averell, General John Echols, Pocahontas County, Lewisburg, Civil War
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Droop Mountain Battlefield State Park, General William Averell, General John Echols, Pocahontas County, Lewisburg, Civil War
The Battle of Droop Mountain opened with nearly six hours of artillery fire, musketry, and hand-to-hand combat. Averell’s infantry finally broke through the Confederate left. The Rebels retreated, and the battle turned into a Union rout.
On November 6, 1863, one of the most important Civil War battles in West Virginia occurred in Pocahontas County. In August of that year, Union General William W. Averell had launched a series of raids to disrupt the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad in southwestern Virginia.
During his second raid, Averell hatched a scheme to trap Confederate troops around Lewisburg. His overall plan failed. But, he was able to attack some 1,700 Confederates under General John Echols at Droop Mountain, just south of Hillsboro. The battle opened with nearly six hours of artillery fire, musketry, and hand-to-hand combat. Averell’s infantry finally broke through the Confederate left. The Rebels retreated, and the battle turned into a Union rout.
At first glance, the battle might not have seemed that significant because Echols’s forces managed to escape. Plus, Averell failed to achieve his ultimate objective. However, Droop Mountain marked the last large-scale battle of the war fought on West Virginia soil. It was also the last time the Confederacy made a push to control the new state. The site of the battle is now preserved as a state park.
Harpers Ferry, Jefferson County is well known for its American Civil War history. The town was the site of John Brown’s Raid, the Battle of Harpers Ferry, and the town changed hands from Union to Confederate several times.
Harpers Ferry saw so much destruction during the war that many now say it’s a town home to ghosts and hauntings.
This story is part of a Halloween episode of Inside Appalachia, which features ghost tales and legends from across Appalachia.
Up a series of steep, stone steps and just beyond a screeching gate is the entrance to the historic St. Peter’s Roman Catholic Church in Harpers Ferry.
Built in 1833, it still holds mass on Sunday, and is open for special occasions like Christmas. But at night, and year-round, its courtyard is the meeting place for the Ghost Tours of Harpers Ferry – said to be the oldest ghost tour in America at nearly 50 years old.
On a recent night, about 50 people have gathered to attend the two-hour tour. There are parents with young children, older couples, and a handful of teenagers. Many tour attendees are from out of town, like Melanie Ray, from Baltimore, Maryland. Ray said she and her boyfriend were visiting the area and looking for something to do.
“I love anything that has anything to do with history, and Harpers Ferry has a lot of pretty bad history, like a lot of bad things happened,” Ray said.
That history is what makes Harpers Ferry a pretty cool backdrop for spooky tales, and tourists like Ray are intrigued by that.
Not everyone believes in the stories, but some do.
Rick Garland took over the Ghost Tours of Harpers Ferry 10 years ago. He’s a local historian and tour guide. During the day, he runs a four-hour historical tour in Harpers Ferry, but at night he tells tales of hauntings.
The Ghost Tours of Harpers Ferry was originally run by a woman named Shirley Dougherty, who started the tour in 1970. She has since passed away. Garland continues Dougherty’s legacy because her family asked him to, and because he loves history. Garland also believes in ghosts, but he has a sense of humor about it.
“Is there anybody here who does not believe in ghosts? What are you doing here? I’m only kidding,” Garland said to the laughing crowd.
Credit Liz McCormick / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Garland telling one of his ghost stories to a large crowd in Harpers Ferry, W.Va.
With his lantern in hand, Rick takes the large group around the town, highlighting spots that are known for ghostly sightings. He encourages folks to take photos – just in case they might catch something paranormal.
Rick tells many ghost stories on the tour. One of them describes how in the 1980s, a man and his three children moved into an apartment in town, but every night, the father heard a crying baby in his bedroom.
“A few minutes later, the crying sound started up for a third time,” Garland said to the crowd. “It was louder this time, and he’s getting very fed up with this. So, now [he] says louder, ‘I told you, you have to shut up,’ and the moment that got out of his mouth, he saw something flash across his bedroom.”
But when the father goes to check it out, there’s nothing there. Later, the crying starts again, but this time, when the father yells, there’s a crashing sound almost like an explosion of bricks.
Rick describes a possible explanation for the haunting. Apparently, a diary was discovered, written by a little girl named Anne, who lived in that building during the Battle of Harpers Ferry in 1862.
“Anne continues to write, ‘when the Confederates are bombing our town there’s a woman upstairs in this house on the top floor with a newborn baby, a little infant in her arms, rocking the baby back and forth,” Garland tells the crowd.
Garland said the diary entry describes how a cannonball smashed into the house killing the baby and severely injuring the mother.
The crowd is silent.
Credit Liz McCormick / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
A section of the town of Harpers Ferry, W.Va. as seen during a recent ghost tour.
A lot of the ghost stories Rick tells are connected in some way to the Civil War.
By the end of the tour, many who came out, chat with Rick, ask questions and share photos of what they captured, including one woman, Cindy Rhodes from Charlotte, North Carolina.
Rhodes and her husband travel all over the country to check out ghost tours like the one in Harpers Ferry. The history, for them, is the biggest draw.
“That’s what they’re more fun for, you know what I mean?” Rhodes said. “There’s a ghost here and there, but they’re more fun for the history, I think.”
And for some who come out to tours like this one, like Brandon Schaefer of Baltimore, they like to be scared and to run into something spooky.
“I like the haunting stuff, and I always hope to see a ghost, so that’s mainly why we came out here,” Schaefer said.
Being a tour guide is Rick Garland’s full-time job, and though he does other historical tours, the ghost tour, is his favorite.
“It’s great to see how this affects other people,” he noted. “So, if you can entertain them, whether it’s with the history part of it, or with the ghost tour part of it, or the spooky part of it, or with a joke, the fact is, that they want to be entertained; they came out to be entertained, and if you can do that for them, they feel good, you feel good, everybody has a good time.”
State founder Waitman Willey was born near Farmington in Marion County on October 11, 1811. He opened his first law practice in Morgantown in 1833 and served as Monongalia County Court clerk for more than a decade.
Willey gained statewide attention for his “Liberty and Union” speech at the 1850-51 Virginia Constitutional Convention. At the start of the Civil War, he spoke passionately against secession and war. After Virginia seceded from the Union, Willey was elected to represent the loyal citizens of Virginia in the U.S. Senate.
Although he initially opposed breaking away from Virginia and forming a new state, he gradually switched his views and negotiated a key compromise on slavery, known as the Willey Amendment, that allowed West Virginia to join the Union. He then served as one of West Virginia’s first two U.S. senators from 1863 to 1871.
Although Willey had owned slaves before the war, he moderated his views on the subject and spoke eloquently for African-American suffrage at West Virginia’s Constitutional Convention in 1872.
Sometimes called the Father of West Virginia, Waitman Willey died in Morgantown in 1900 at age 88.
On the night of August 21, 1861, more than 2,000 Confederate troops under General John B. Floyd crossed the Gauley River at Carnifex Ferry and entrenched at Keslers Cross Lanes in Nicholas County. Four days later, about 850 Union troops from the 7th Ohio Infantry, led by Colonel Erastus Tyler, advanced from Gauley Bridge and ended up three miles from Floyd’s camp at Keslers Cross Lanes. Tyler failed to scout the area properly or post sufficient pickets.
During breakfast on the morning of August 26, Floyd’s Confederates caught the Ohioans by surprise. At first, the men of the 7th Ohio fled for their lives, but several companies finally made a stand. During the battle, which lasted less than an hour, the Ohioans were completely routed from their position and lost two men killed, 29 wounded, and 110 missing. Meanwhile, the Confederates lost only a handful of men and a regimental flag. The Confederate victory at Keslers Cross Lanes temporarily severed Northern communications between the Kanawha Valley and Union headquarters in Wheeling. However, two weeks later, Floyd abandoned the area following the Battle of Carnifex Ferry.
On August 7, 1864, the Battle of Moorefield was fought in Hardy County. The Civil War skirmish occurred shortly after Confederate General John McCausland’s cavalry had burned the town of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, in retaliation for a similar Union raid on Lexington, Virginia. The evening before the clash at Moorefield, McCausland and General Bradley Johnson had camped at nearby Old Fields. They ignored warnings from McNeill’s Rangers—a local Confederate guerrilla group—that their position had been exposed.
At dawn on August 7, Union troops under General William Averell moved south from Keyser along the path of today’s Route 220. Averell’s forces overran the Confederates, capturing 500 men and 400 horses. Confederate General Jubal Early—the overall commander above McCausland and Johnson—wrote that the battle had a, quote, “very damaging effect upon my cavalry for the rest of the campaign.” Moorefield was part of a long summer of defeats that would push the Confederates from the Shenandoah Valley and help ensure President Lincoln’s reelection.
Three months later, in November 1864, another minor skirmish occurred near Moorefield—this one going in the Confederates’ favor.
