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June 4, 2023 Editor, The News-Gazette: According to a map on their website, the Stonewall Brigade’s new Lee-Jackson Memorial Park in Rockbridge County will include a small, isolated patch of land labeled “Yankee Camp.”
I don’t know what they have in mind for that space, but I have some suggestions.
First, they could change the name from “Yankee Camp” to “Union Camp.” After all, not everyone who opposed the Confederacy was a Yankee. In fact many were themselves Southerners — both Black and white, enslaved and free.
Perhaps they would allow construction there of monuments to honor these Southern anti-Confederates.
As historian David Williams demonstrates in his important book “Bitterly Divided: The South’s Inner Civil War,” the Confederate cause was never widely popular in the South. And next to enslaved Blacks, the strongest opposition came from non-enslaving whites, mostly yeoman farmers and workers, who understood that secession and war to maintain slavery was not in their interest. It was, as many declared at the time, “a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.”
Perhaps one monument at the Union Camp could honor the hundreds of thousands of Southerners who fought against the Confederacy, in guerilla bands and as soldiers in the Union army. According to Williams, more than 150,000 Southern Blacks fought for the Union, as did roughly 300,000 Southern whites.
Another monument could honor the enslaved people who helped the flood of Confederate army deserters make it to Union lines or go home. A third could pay tribute to the Southerners who provided arms to enslaved people to support rebellions against their owners. And a fourth could recognize the poor Southern women who rose up against wealthy food speculators and raided warehouses to feed themselves and their starving children.
How about it, Stonewall Brigade? GENE ZITVER Lexington
