Hidden History of Northern Virginia

Northern Virginia is Washington, D.C.’s front porch, and while the history of the entire nation has been made in Washington, Northern Virginia has a rich regional history flowing from its connection to the capital. For example, there would be no Washington, D.C., if General George Washington had not lived in nearby Mount Vernon, Virginia.

Included here are the often-overlooked stories of Northern Virginia from colonial to modern times—stories such as the Rebel blockade of the Potomac River, the imprisonment of German POWs at super-secret Fort Hunt during World War II and the building of the Pentagon on the same site and in the same configuration as Civil War–era Fort Runyon. And then there are the people—Alexandria-hometown boy Robert E. Lee, Annandale’s “bunny man” who inspired one of the wildest and scariest urban legend, slaves in Alexandria’s notorious slave pens, suffragists dragged from in front of the White House and imprisoned in the Occoquan Workhouse and many other folks who have left their imprints on the region and the nation.



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Murder in Colonial Virginia

Violence and murder between masters and slaves in colonial Virginia was not a one way street. Blacks sometimes found ways of quietly settling the score with cruel masters. The most common forms of black resistance were arson, poisoning and running away. Poisoning was especially terrifying to slave owners. The closeness of house servants to their masters, for whom they cooked and washed in the very house where the master slept, made the threat of poisoning terrifying. Nor was this fear groundless. The records of colonial Virginia document the trial of 180 slaves tried for poisoning.

In 1737, a case of poisoning in Orange County, Virginia, involved the murder of a master by a slave named Peter. The slave Peter was not only executed for the crime but subsequently, had his head cut off and displayed on a pole at the courthouse building, “to deter others from doing the Like.” Nine years after this, in January 1746, also in Orange County, a female slave named Eve was convicted of attempting to kill her master Peter Mountague by poisoning. Mountague suffered severe illness from August through December 1745 before recovering (and living until at least 1771). Although Montague recovered, Eve was convicted of poisoning him and was sentenced to death. The sentence was medieval. She was condemned to be burnt alive, a sentence carried out shortly after her trial. The case of Eve was considered particularly diabolical because she put the poison in Mountague’s milk. Virtually one hundred percent of the slaves living in central Virginia at the time were from eastern Nigeria, and were genetically predisposed to be lactose intolerant. No slaves would be drinking milk, there could be no unintended victims when milk was poisoned, only slave masters and their kin were in mortal danger. This was a calculated and premeditated attempt at murder stemming from deep hatred.

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Mormon Polygamy

In 1862, Congress passed a law prohibiting polygamy (plural marriage). This law was aimed directly at the troublesome religious sect that had settled Utah, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the Mormons). The Mormons migrated to the Valley of the Great Slat Lake in 1847 to escape religious persecution brought about, in part, by the practice of polygamy.

Although prohibited in the Book of Mormon, the sect's underlying holy book, the idea of polygamy was accepted by the group's founder Joseph Smith and was pronounced by Smith's successor, Brigham Young, as "necessary for salvation." Brigham Young preached that polygamy was divinely sanctioned to enhance the church's population and to eliminate prostitution and adultery. Some women were dubious, coming to regard polygamy simply as a tool to satisfy the lusts of the older, more powerful male members of the sect. One woman wrote, "If Salt Lake City were roofed over, it would be the biggest whorehouse in the world."

Brigham Young practiced what he preached, having some twenty seven wives during his lifetime. Most of Young's wives lived in a New England style structure called the Lion House located in a central block of Salt Lake City. When Young decided upon a bed partner for the night, he made a chalk mark on the selected wife's bedroom door. He fathered fifty six children (the last when he was 69).

Young had an eye for the younger and prettier members of the flock. He used his position of leader to pressure these women into marrying him, "You cannot be saved by anyone else...If you refuse, you will be destroyed, body and soul." Twenty four year old Ann Eliza, Young's 27th wife, initially rejected the 68 year old patriarch's advances. Under heavy pressure from family and friends she finally gave way. In this case, however, Young got more than he bargained for. Ann Eliza nagged incessantly. She complained about inattention, of Young's cheapness and of his cruelty. Finally she fled Salt Lake City and filed for divorce.

The law passed by Congress in 1862, banning polygamy, was fanatically prosecuted. Men and women were fined and imprisoned until the Mormon's finally submitted in 1890 in a manifesto issued by the church's President, " Inasmuch as laws have been enacted by Congress forbidding plural marriages, which laws have been pronounced constitutional by the court of last resort, I hereby declare my intention to submit to those laws, and to use my influence with the members of the Church over which I preside, to have them do likewise."



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Virginia Moonshine

After the American Revolution, the new federal government faced the problem of paying off the national debt incurred in fighting the war, and of generally paying its ongoing bills. Among other things, a new federal tax was imposed on liquors and spirits. People were not pleased. Several hundred were so angry about the new tax that they openly rebelled, threatening an attack on Pittsburgh. President George Washington personally led an army of thirteen thousand which crushed the so called Whiskey Rebellion.

Resistance to the tax went underground. Farmers, especially in Kentucky, Virginia and the Carolinas could survive a bad year by turning their corn into profitable whiskey. Small stills sprang up and were operated at night by the light of the moon (hence the name “moonshining”). The ongoing battle between moonshiners and federal revenue agents became legendary throughout the South.

On January 29, 1919 the Eighteenth Amendment to the Untied States Constitution was ratified and one year later on January 17, 1920, in accordance with the provisions of the implementing law, America went dry. Moonshiners were delighted to find that prohibition furnished a large market for their product. It was colorless, it looked like water, and it was often one hundred proof. High school boys, flaunting the law, went out into the woods, met moonshiners, and then brought a pint of moonshine to the school dance. More staid citizens were able to get a prescription from the family doctor for a bottle of liquor. Local drug stores stocked pints of scotch and bourbon for medicinal use.

By 1932 most in the country were ready to repeal Prohibition. The promised benefits, such as the elimination of crime, never emerged. In fact things got worse as the growth of organized criminal gangs produced just the opposite result. In the 1932 presidential election, Franklin Roosevelt promised to end Prohibition. Prohibition was overturned at the national level by the 21st amendment to the U.S. Constitution. As America became more urbanized moonshining largely died out, but is still even now practiced in remoter rural areas.


 
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Is Washington Burning? (The War of 1812)

Link to: History's Ten Worst Generals

America was rushed into war. “War Hawks” in Congress hungry to conquer Canada while England was pre-occupied with war against Napoleon, whipped up patriotic passions and plunged the country into a war it wasn’t ready to fight. On August 6, 1814, a British fleet consisting of nearly fifty vessels sailed into the Chesapeake.

The main British army landed at Benedict, Maryland. British forces routed American troops at the Battle of Bladensburg on August 24, 1814 and marched into Washington City. The British commander reported to London, “I reached [Washington] at 8 o’clock that night. Judging it of consequences to complete the destruction of the public buildings with the least possible delay, so that the army might retire without loss of time, the following buildings were set fire to and consumed: the capitol, including the Senate house and House of representation, the Arsenal, the Dock-Yard, Treasury, War office, President’s Palace, Rope-Walk, and the great bridge across the Potomac: In the dock-yard a frigate nearly ready to be launched, and a sloop of war, were consumed.” The glow from the burning city could be seen forty miles away in Baltimore.




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Terrorism in the Civil War (New York City 1864)

The threat of terrorism is nothing new in American history. In 1864 the 814,000 people of New York City faced a terrorist threat by Confederate agents angered over the Union army’s ravaging of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. The plot was formulated by Robert Martin, a Confederate officer who had once served under the famous Confederate raider John Hunt Morgan. Martin, with six others, planned to set fire to large hotels on Election Day, November 8, 1864, while Southern sympathizers would simultaneously begin an uprising similar to the Draft Riots of 1863 among the large teeming immigrant population living in poverty around the slum of Five Points. The Draft Riots of July 1863 shut the city down for three days as rioters burned, looted and killed. Union troops marched straight from the battlefield of Gettysburg to put down the riot. Some 118 people died.

Missing their target date by two weeks, the terrorists struck on November 25, 1864, planning to set New York ablaze with an incendiary mixture of sulfur, naphtha, and quicklime that bursts into flame when exposed to air. Over a dozen buildings were set on fire in a four hour period. The incendiary mixture did not perform as predicted and all of the fires were quickly extinguished.

New Yorkers were outraged by the attack. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper called it “The most diabolical attempt at arson and murder of which there is any record in the history of our country.” The New York Times called the plot “one of the most fiendish and inhuman acts known to modern times.”

None of the Southern agents were ever apprehended.


Link to: Secrets of American History



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Cuban Woman and Confederate Soldier (Women in the Civil War)

Link to:

The Confederate Woman: Soldier and Spy

Civil War re-enactors have been challenged by some women in recent years to allow them to “join the ranks”. If re-enactors today find this problematic, how must men have reacted in the Civil War? But life and history are both complex.

Cuban-born Loreta Velasquez, disguised as a man, enlisted in the Confederate army as Lieutenant Harry T. Buford in 1860. According to military records, under the name Harry T. Buford, she raised a company of volunteers from Arkansas and fought in the battles of 1st Manassas, Ball’s Bluff, and Fort Donelson. In 1862 her disguise was discovered and she was discharged from the army. Velasquez then enlisted with the 21st Louisiana Infantry regiment and went on to fight at Shiloh. Velasquez's disguise was discovered yet again and she was once again discharged. The resourceful Velasquez then became a spy for the Confederacy, often posing as a man.

After the war the now widowed Velasquez moved to Nevada, where she authored a book, "The Woman in Battle", a non-stop thriller patterned after the tales about famous gunfighters. She was married and widowed three more time before her death in 1897 at the age of fifty five (?) .

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The Emancipation Proclamation of 1775

Link to: Secrets of American History

On November 7, 1775 the Royal Governor of Virginia, John Murray, Earl of Dunmore issued a proclamation offering freedom to all slaves and indentured servants belonging to rebels and willing to bear arms in the service of the Crown. The Earl of Dunmore’s proclamation anticipated Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation by some four score and seven years and was done for much the same reason, to cripple the ability of rebels to resist.

Lord Dunmore armed hundreds of runaway slaves in Virginia and formed an all black unit called the “Ethiopian Regiment” which performed distinguished service. The regiment marched under the banner, “Liberty to Slaves”. An estimated twelve thousand ex-slaves served with British forces during the American Revolution in such units as the Ethiopian Regiment and the Black Pioneers.

Some four thousand blacks who had served the Crown were evacuated to England at the end of the war. The presence of the black loyalists on British soil helped swell sentiment in Britian for the end of the slave trade and laid the groundwork for British abolitionism, which eventually spread to America.



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The Plot to Overthrow Franklin D. Roosevelt

The Plot to Seize the White House: The Shocking True Story of the Conspiracy to Overthrow FDR
by Jules Archer

In 1934, Colonel Smedley Butler, the most decorated Marine in the nation, and recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor not once, but twice, (for separate engagements) testified before Congress that he had been approached by a cabal of businessmen to enlist his support in the overthrow President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Butler, a hero to hundreds of thousands of disillusioned World War I veterans, was to lead the veterans on an armed march on Washington which would strip Roosevelt of power and install a fascist government.

The planned coup was allegedly designed to protect the interests of businessmen and Wall Street financiers disenchanted with the New Deal. There was ample precedent for this type of coup in 1934. Mussolini had successfully seized power by a daring march on Rome in 1922. Hitler had initially tried to seize power in Germany by using a popular military figure (General Erich Ludendorff) to march against the government.

A Congressional Committee investigated Smedley Butler’s claims and found them credible but no action was ever taken against the alleged plotters.

Link to: Secrets of American History

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Auto Fatalities in America

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, since the end of the Vietnam War in the mid-1970’s, approximately 43,000 Americans have died annually on the nation’s highways. The total number of casualties over the last thirty five years amounts to some 1.5 million men, women and children. The number of Americans killed in automobile accidents during this period is larger than the total number of American military casualties (both combat related and non-combat related) suffered in all of the wars ever fought by the United States (approximately 1.3 million).

While American military casualties are a hot topic of debate by politicians, pundits, and the public, the annual slaughter on America’s highways is accepted without a murmur. No foreign enemy has ever inflicted as much damage on the American people as they have inflicted upon themselves. The trend continues. The National Highway Traffic Highway Safety Administration now estimates that nearly 6,000 Americans will die annually in car crashes involving distracted drivers texting, and talking on cell phones.

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American War Casualties

As America ponders its role as a superpower in the world, and the price this entails, a little historical perspective may illuminate the discussion. The following chart presents total military deaths (both combat & non-combat deaths) suffered in America’s wars.


The American Revolution (1775-1783): 25,000

The War of 1812 (1812-1815): 20,000

The Mexican American War (1846-1848) : 13,000

The Civil War (1861-1865): 600,000 (As a percentage of total population this would be equivalent to five million deaths in present day America)

The Spanish American War (1898): 2,500

World War I (1917-1918) : 116,000

World War II (1941-1945): 405,000

Korean War (1950-1953): 36,000

Vietnam War (1957-1973): 58,000

Post Vietnam (1973-2009): 6,500* / **
(This figure includes the twelve military involvements America has had since the end of the Vietnam war: (1) El Salvador,(2) Beirut, (3) Persian Gulf escorts, (4) Invasion of Grenada, (5) Invasion of Panama, (6) Gulf War, (7) Somalia, (8) Haiti, (9) Bosnia-Herzegovina, (10) Kosovo, (11) Afghanistan (approximately 1,000) , (12) Iraq (approximately 4,500)

* 2,740 Americans also died in the September 11, 2001 attack…these casualties are not included in the 6,500

** In the thirty six years since the end of the Vietnam War, approximately 3,600 uniformed police officers have died in the line of duty according to the “Officers Down Memorial Page” http://www.odmp.org/

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Civil War Romance: J.E.B. Stuart Conquered!

In 1855, J.E.B. Stuart met Flora Cooke, the daughter of the commander of the 2nd U.S. Dragoon regiment, Lt. Col. Philip St. George Cooke. They became engaged in September, less than two months after meeting. Stuart humorously wrote of his rapid courtship in Latin, "Veni, Vidi, Victus sum" (I came, I saw, I was conquered).





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Cocktail History: American Culture at the Paris Exposition

The Cocktail is, perhaps, America’s mot important contribution to the culture of the world. The first cocktail known to history was described in an American periodical of 1816. The American display at the Paris Exposition of 1867 featured a genuine American bar dispensing New World concoctions. Two British critics, Henry Porter and George Roberts, deplored the, “…sensation drinks which have lately traveled across the Atlantic. We will pass the American bar, with its bad brandies and fiery wine, and express gratification at the slight success which, ‘Pick-Me-Up’, ‘Corpse-Reviver’, ‘Chain Lightning’, and the like have had in this country.”



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Are Taxes too Low?

No one likes taxes (or death), but here is a little historical context when you are forced to listen to the political rhetoric:

Top income tax rates in the United States:

1913: 77 %

1932: 63 %

1945: 94 %

1963: 90 %

1964: 77 %

1988: 28 %

1991: 31 %

2009: 35 %





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Cars and the Environment

In September 1895, the Duryea brothers established the first American company to manufacture gasoline-driven cars, the Duryea Motor Wagon Company. In 1904 the Ford Motor Company produced 1,695 cars, and by 1907 had increased its production to 14,887. America’s love affair with the automobile had begun in earnest and has never stopped, as demonstrated by the fact that by 2006 there were some 251 million registered passenger vehicles in the U.S. owned by a population of 298 million. There is now a car for virtually every man, woman and child in America. Overall passenger vehicles have been outnumbering licensed drivers since 1972 at an ever increasing rate. New York City is the only place in the country where more than half of all houselholds do not own a car.



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The Civil War “Marrying Craze”

The diaries of hundreds of women of the time attest to the “marrying craze” sweeping the South. "Every girl in Richmond is engaged or about to be”, wrote Phoebe Pember Yates in February 1864. Fear of spinsterhood and natural desire heightened by the immediacy of war led to many unconventional matches, many reflecting the truth of a phrase common to the time, “The blockade don’t keep out babies.”

Things in the North were somewhat better, but single men were still scarce. Mary Livermore wrote, "Wisconsin and Iowa are run by women". Women were doing jobs previously performed by men. Women were in the fields, behind store counters and manning factories. Recuperating soldiers were eagerly sought after.






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Senator Charles Sumner Beaten on Floor of the Senate!

Today’s partisan bickering, even a Congressman hooting “You lie” at the President, seems mild compared to some of the political feuds of the past. In 1826, Virginia Senator John Randolph, a bitter opponent of President John Quincy Adams’ “creeping nationalism” made a fiery speech on the floor of the Senate denouncing the President’s foreign policy. Randolph insinuated the Secretary of State, Henry Clay, was a scoundrel. For this insinuation, Clay challenged Senator Randolph to a duel.

Duels among prickly partisan rivals were not unusual in the young republic. Andrew Jackson fought over one hundred duels before becoming President. In those days, if you called the President a liar you were likely to have to back up your words with a sword or a dueling pistol.

One of the most egregious cases of politician on politician violence was the severe beating of Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts in 1856 by South Carolina Representative Preston Brooks on the floor of the Senate. It took Sumner years to fully recover from the beating.

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The Confederate Economy: Inflation

The Confederate treasury could probably have raised more gold and silver from the population if it had embarked on a vigorous policy of taxation rather than trying to finance the war through the issuance of bonds. The Confederate treasury indulged, ultimately, in the perilous device of issuing unsupported paper money. In 1861 the treasury issued $100 million in paper Confederate notes and $100 million in 8 percent Confederate bonds. By 1863 the treasury was pumping out $50 million in notes a month. The Confederate public sensed that there was too much money being issued and that it was becoming progressively more worthless. Wits were soon saying, "An oak leaf will be worth just as much as the promise of the Confederate treasury to pay one dollar."

To increase its hard cash reserves, before loosing the flood of paper money on the country, the Confederate Congress made U.S. silver coins legal tender up to $10, and gave full standing, with fixed values stipulated, to English sovereigns, French Napoleons and Spanish and Mexican doubloons. This helped somewhat, and a small treasury shipment in 1862, for example, was made up of the following coins: 28 Spanish dollars, 24 Spanish quarter dollars, 8 Spanish half dollars, 8 English sovereigns, 3 Napoleons, 385 U.S. half dollars and 988 U.S. quarter dollars.

No halfway measures, however, could make up for the mismatch between revenue and the issuance of currency. Many people hoarded their hard money. Less than a month before the final collapse of the government, the Confederate Congress, seeming to believe that there was an abundance of hard money in private hands, passed a law trying to raise $30 million in gold and silver. Other estimates indicate that there may have been $20 million in U.S. coins remaining in the pockets of Confederate civilians. These coins were hoarded and did not come out except in rare instances. A Richmond editor in 1864 wondered why more copper and nickel coins did not make their appearance, "There must be any quantity of them stored away", he observed.

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Alexandria, Virginia in the Civil War

Alexandria and Northern Virginia were the first areas to feel the fury of the Civil War. Alexandria, Virginia was the longest occupied Southern city during the Civil War. The New York Herald war correspondent observed, “Many hamlets and towns have been destroyed during the war, Alexandria has most suffered. It has been in the uninterrupted possession of the Federals. . . . Alexandria is filled with ruined people; they walk as strangers through their ancient streets, and their property is no longer theirs to possess. . . . these things ensued, as the natural results of civil war; and one's sympathies were everywhere enlisted for the poor, the exiled, and the bereaved.”




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Cinema and Immigration

The movies were an important cultural bridge, mediating the immigrant’s transition into broader American culture. The movies were a collective experience where diverse groups experienced the same public phenomenon. Going to the movies was a common bridging experience between groups. The movies also allowed immigrants (and especially immigrant women who were very limited in their interactions with people outside of the family and “neighborhood”) to broaden their experience outside of the family and immigrant group. The movies helped immigrants organize exposure to new cultural experiences in their own terms in a benign environment. The movies also served as the catalyst for breaking down traditional immigrant norms among the younger generation who were now exposed to a broader range of options.

Cinema and other forms of mass communications helped to define the public and public opinion. In an earlier time this had been the province of the written word, but emerging technologies made “public spaces” (opinions about common ideas) accessible to virtually everyone. To be a public figure was to be someone who was before the public in a mass communications format. The public person (movie star, commentator, politician) because of his public presence came to define the norms, symbols, and values of the society. The consumption of the products of the mass media constructed the mass public.



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