Volume 15 , Issue 6

History of Rockbridge County, Virginia - 1868-1917

This week we continue our "History of Rockbridge County, Virginia," as written, compiled by Oren F. Morton during the part of the 1900's. We shall see the progress during the period, and how local politics affected Rockbridge county. We shall learn what the economic and social changes that the citizens of Rockbridge county, Virginia went through.

More than half a century had elapsed since the great war of the 1860's. In Rockbridge county the period had brought a progressive transformation.

In October, 1868, a local paper remarked that greenbacks were becoming fairly plentiful and that the merchants were laying in heavy stocks of goods. It was also in this same month the Rockbridge Agricultural and Mechanical Society roused itself from its war eclipse and held a fair continuing for three days. This new beginning was kept up, and the whole country was in 1874 in the throes of a severe business depression. The fair of that year was quite successful, though.

In 1890 Rockbridge fell a victim to the speculative mania known as a boom. The visitation created an important town at Buena Vista and was not entirely unsuccessful at Glasgow or at the county seat. The amount of money that was forthcoming to be invested in development stock and town lots was a significant commentary on the rapid recuperation that had taken place in twenty-five years.

During the reconstruction episode the "Yankee" was not a popular personage. In 1869 there was a complaint that peddlers from the North were representing themselves as Englishmen. But when Colonel Waite came from Batavia, New York, in 1873 to visit his old friends the Davidsons, he reported that he was treated in the most friendly and courteous manner, although he saw many ex-soldiers who were lame or dialed. He observed that the negro was inclined to flock to the towns, thus causing a scarcity of labor, although many were still in the employ of their former masters. He found slavery unregretted, yet found the opinion general that the enfranchisement of the blacks, in the way it was accomplished, was a political blunder.

Two years after the visit of Colonel Waite, John Leyburn remarked that "no well disposed Northerner need fear as to a kindly reception." Two years later yet, a county paper was wishing that more results might come from efforts to attract immigration from the North. It remianed for the dastardly shooting of President Garfield to elicit the following remark from the Gazette:

"No event in American history has so unified the people as the shot at Garfield. We have discovered all at once that we are Americans. The Union has been restored. The Republic lives. Guiteau's bullets have done more to show the people of these United States what manner of men they are than anything that has happened in their history. The spontaneous outburst of Southern indignation speaks too plainly to be misunderstood."

With the announcement of the death of the president, C. M. Dold, mayor of Lexington, requested that business be suspended for the day, and that at four o'clock the citizens should assemble at the Presbyerian church, the largest in the town. The schools were also suspended, minute guns were fired at the institute, and the religious services at the church were largely attended.

Politics of Rockbridge

By a majority of 45 votes, one precinct not reporting, Rockbridge declared itself adverse to the Constitutional Convention of 1902. But the changes embodied in the state constitution of that year met with general approval. Three years later the County News deprecated airing the race issue on the stump.

During the few decades that the Whig party was a factor in American politics, Rockbridge gave majorities for that ticket. They were without precise knowledge back then of the political complexion of the county in the early period of the nineteenth century.

The close of hostilities in 1865 found the Whig party in high favor in the South because of its far-sighted attitude respecting secession in 1860-61. Its opponent, generally in the lead in these states, was under some reproach because of the results of its sponsorship of that issue. The way seemed open for two strong parties to exist in the South as well as in the North.

With a profound lack of broad vision, the ultra partisan element that came to the front after the assassination of Lincoln pursued a course which almost solidified the whites of the South in a support of the Democratic party. In 1873 the Democratic candidate for the governorship had more than twice as many votes in Rockbridge as his opponent, the latter carrying only on precinct. In the presidential contest of 1876 Tilden had 2505 votes and Hayes only 903. When the Democracy of Virginia divided on the state debt issue, the Readjuster wing was the stinger in Rockbridge county, and it majority in 1879 was about 200. In 1881 the Readjuster candidate as governor ran behind his popular opponent by ninety-one votes, although he carried seven precincts.

Many Readjusters went over to the Republican party, and for more than twenty years Rockbridge lay in the doubtful column. In 1880 the Republican candidate for the governorship had a majority of 68. In 1884 the Democratic majority for Cleveland was 101, and in 1892 it was 230. But McKInley's majority was 660 in 1896, and 553 in 1900. In 1901 the state ticket showed a Republican majority of 142. In 1893, Yost for Congress had a majority over Tucker of 77.

The constitution of 1902 had in Rockbridge a twofold effect. It caused a great reduction in the aggregate vote, and as this reduction made a heavier inroad upon the Republican column than upon the Democratic, the county no longer stands in the doubtful list.

In 1894, 1900 and 1901, the combined votes for the two leading candidates were respectively 3,945, 3,968 and 3,450. It is therefore evident that the average election brought out fully 80%, of the voting population. The first election under the new system, that of 1903, the total vote had fallen to 1,895. In 1913 it was only 780. In 1912, it rose to 1,837, 1,106 votes going to Wilson, 474 to Taft, and 257 to Roosevelt.

In 1916 the Democratic candidate for the Assembly carried thirteen precincts and had 1,030 votes. His Republican competitor carried eight precincts and had 835 votes. In the same year Wilson had 1,205 votes and Hughes 678. The west side of the county remained a Republican stronghold.

This period had brought a number of important changes. The census of 1870 was defective in the Southern states, but on the face of the returns there was a significant loss in population in this county for the decade 1860-70 of 1,190. Between 1870 and 1910, there was a gain of 52%. If the figures for 1860 be compared with those for 1910, the gain was 42%. Much the greater share of this gain was absorbed by the increase in the town and village population. In the neighborhoods strictly rural the gain had been small.

The canal had gone into disuse, there had been great inroads upon the forest supply, and the smelting of iron kept in the closest touch with the railway siding. But with the exception of the old line of the Chesapeake & Ohio, all the railroad mileage in the county had come into operation since 1880. If mining had relatively decreased, manufacturing had greatly increased.

If there was no conspicuous increase in the tilled acreage, the local agriculture had advanced in output, and there was a more general recognition of scientific methods. The silo and the commercial orchard had appeared, and the canning industry was gaining a foothold. The log house was not extinct, and inhabited specimens will be found in Rockbridge about as long as anywhere in Virginia; but very many of the farm homes were roomy, comfortable, attractive, and modern.

The pay school had yielded to the free school, and the latter was efficiently administered. The higher educational institutions of the county were never in a more prosperous condition.

The telephone, the automobile, and the free rural delivery, unknown in the early years of the period, were deeply modifying the habits of the people. The taxable wealth was greater than in the most palmy days of the antebellum era, even with it slave valuation.

The colored laboring class was nearly one-third as numerous as the white population, there was necessarily a jar in the adjustment to the changed labor system that began in 1865. The whites went to work so manfully that in a few years the deeper traces of the war were obliterated. Hired service was no longer under any social ban. Between 1900 and 1910, the colored element decreased nearly one-third, and Rockbridge had assumed much of the appearance of a community that was wholly white. Yet it did not by any means follow that the negro would totally disappear. In the Rockbridge of today the colored people were, on the whole, orderly, industrious, and prosperous.

In a larger degree than was usual in the Valley counties, the old Rockbridge was noted for its fine country estates, owned by an old family element that was numerous, cultured, and influential. This class had relatively declined, much of it having been attracted to the cities and to other states. The less wealthy class of whites had perhaps come nearer to holding its own, and a new element had slowly yet steadily been coming in. There was a very perceptible difference between the Rockbridge of early and of that in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

The citizen of Rockbridge was industrious and hospitable, and was conservative in thought and action. The local patriotism was deep, and it lead the citizen to draw a distinction between the descendant of the early settler and the resident born in some other community. In 1914 the world was prosperous. With only one conspicuous exception al the members of the family of nations had a sincere desire to live in peace with one another. A rich and thriving country of Europe, acting through a subservient neighbor, deliberately provoked a general war, and waged it with a studied cruelty which would have shamed the North American Indian of the eighteenth century. There was a contempt for the good opinion of the world. No considerations of truth, honor, or humanity were permitted to stand in the way of the German program.

By means of a domestic propaganda, adroit and persistent, the German had for years been indoctrinated with the myth of his superiority to anyone else whomsoever. The clergyman, schoolmaster and journalist were permitted to teach only what would encourage the opinion that it was the god-given mission of the German to overcome other nations by the sword and rule the entire earth. The world was not to be conquered for the world's good, but that it might be plundered and domineered over. That nation the German saw fit to deem degenerate was to be blotted out. This propaganda developed the bighead in a most acute form. It led to an insufferable contempt for the rest of the world. This was the beginning of the War of 1917 and World War I.

This war was not a war in the ordinary sense of the term, though. It was the overpowering of an outlaw who was running amuck. A more righteous conflict was never waged. Germany was fought that the world might be made a decent place to live in.

The Untied States was forced into this war of 1917 to assist in the rescue of civilization. The people of Rockbridge had the consciousness that they loyally upheld their country, and that their sons were numerously represented on the battlefront that ended the war.   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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