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Blog entries | Lee-Jackson Day
State and local offices closed today for the Lee-Jackson holiday, remembering two icons of the American Civil War – Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.
Civil war holidays – and just about everything else associated with what my grandfather called “the recent unpleasantness†– usually start heated debates. Some say we should stop honoring a war that they feel was fought over whether or not the South could own slaves. Others argue that the war erupted over more than slavery – the continuing struggle of states’ rights in a society controlled by an ever-increasing federal bureaucracy.
Whatever your point of view, the Lee-Jackson Day holiday today gives state and local employees the luxury of a four-day weekend because they join the feds on Monday in closing for Martin Luther King’s birthday.
And most of our views of the Civil War, or War Between the States, or as some around here put it “The War of Northern Aggression,†depends on where you’re from. Amy, born and raised in Illinois – the “Land of Lincoln†learned an entirely different view of the war than my education in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Shortly after we moved from Illinois to Northern Virginia, we were driving one Saturday afternoon along U.S. 50 near Middleburg when she noticed that the road was named “The John S. Mosby Highway.â€
“Is that the Mosby from the Confederate Army?†I assured her it was.
“They named a highway after a terrorist?â€
I assured her that here in the South, we didn’t consider the leader of Mosby’s Rangers a terrorist. After all, one person’s terrorist is another one’s freedom fighter.
Back when I took a sabbatical from journalism, put on a suit and ran the political programs division of the National Association of Realtors, I ran into a problem with an employee who didn’t like the holiday schedule.
“I’m particularly upset that we aren’t closing for Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday,†he said (the association didn’t close for President’s Day either).
“I know just how you feel,†I responded. “I’m from Virginia and I don’t like us not closing for Robert E. Lee’s birthday either.â€
For a brief moment anger flashed in his eyes, then he smiled.
“I guess it all depends on where you come from,†he said.
“Yes,†I replied. “It does.â€
Amy, being the Yankee she is, still finds our fascination with the “recent unpleasantness†amusing.
When we first visited Manassas Battlefield National Park, she looked around, shook her head, and said: “My God, how many memorials would you have if you’d actually won the war.â€
To which I put on my best face of shock and replied: “We lost?â€
Doug Thompson
January 13, 2006 at 6:59 pm
Yeah, it is “S and it would have been if I could type.
Jim Brodhead
January 13, 2006 at 9:14 pm
I feel your pain…
I always liked the way that name scanned…John Singleton Mosby…it has a ring to it, does it not?
Of course we are smack in the middle of four major battlefields: Fredericksburg,Chancelorsville, Wilderness and Spotsylvania Court House/Bloody Angle. Nice to have some history around but it does get tiresome at times.
Nice blog, I enjoy reading it.
M Lawless
January 15, 2006 at 1:59 am
I live down here in the Land of Displaced Yankees (aka Florida). Any time my neighbors, a sweet couple native to Rhode Island, do something very atypical for a Southerner (like skimming their pool at 6:30 AM, hooded and gloved, with steam rising from the pool into the still frigid air) I tell them, “That’s why y’all won the war!” They never get tired of hearing it.
One of these days, I’ll be able to move back up South. (grins)
Jim Brodhead
January 13, 2006 at 6:29 pm
Good Morning, Your Floydness!
Earl Hamner in his scripts for the Waltons had the Baldwin sisters (the geriatric moonshiners of “The Recipe” fame) refer to the war as “The Recent Unpleasantness”.
Here in Fredericksburg we look at it as a set up event for the National Park Service to acquire a minimum of a 500 yard scenic easement around every tree where a Civil War soldier answered the call of Mother Nature.
By the way, wasn’t Mosby, John Singleton Mosby as opposed to John H or do I have him confused with another Mosby?
Sean Pecor
January 14, 2006 at 5:05 am
Bah, this Green Mountain Boy thinks we have too many damn holidays already. Blood has been spilled in battle on thousands of acres, in thousands of counties and over thousands of years on lands now collectively known as the USA. We could all have a hell of a time working one day a year and having the rest off on holiday praising this general, that cavalry or those chiefs. All I know is that it seems that on the Mondays and Fridays when I’ve got the most pressing business to conduct, banks and government offices are closed up
Sean
Native Son
January 16, 2006 at 4:00 pm
It’s certainly nice for this old Southern boy to see such respect paid to our beloved Generals. Living also in the land of displaced yankees (FL), where no one even knows who Lee or Jackson were, it’s good to know that my homeland still honors our past.