I9I23 In Rockbridge County 



astounded to hear from both sides alike the vilest arc' 

 most persistent profanity, a continuous ripping cf 

 obscene and fiendish oaths. 



Shortly before my arrival at Lexington Krehbiel 

 left, being due at Columbia University to deliver a 

 course of lectures, but the rest of us continued the 

 survey of Rockbridge. This district was not overrun 

 during the war, contrasting sharply in that regard 

 with Spottsylvania, almost every house of which was 

 burned. We had an interesting interview with General General 

 William A. Anderson of Lexington. Said he: ^"'^'"°" 



In 1 86 1 Rockbridge County had 16,000 people, white and 

 black. 2400 men voted to remain in the Union and only 94 for 

 secession, as they realized that war meant ruin, above all to 

 Virginia. Only a few held extreme views, and public opinion was 

 wholly against the conduct of South Carolina. But when 

 Lincoln called for soldiers to coerce the refractory common- 

 wealth, the situation abruptly changed. People who would have 

 been glad to abandon slavery, if possible, would not fight against 

 a sister state. All of Lincoln's Cabinet except Chase and Stanton 

 were opposed to coercion, and those two favored reinforcement 

 of Fort Sumter only. War could have been averted by patience. 

 Good families of the old days remain in Virginia, though sadly 

 thinned out. We should have done far better could we have had 

 the men who fell in the war, and we still feel the loss of our best.* 

 At the end the South was starved rather than beaten. 



John A. McNeal, an original Union man bitterly McNeai 

 opposed to the war, stated that he went into the 

 Confederate Army with all the rest from Rockbridge: 



When war starts, it is like a great rush of water; it carries 

 everything with it, all in the army together. The strong men 

 fell in battle, the weak died in camp. There was some gain in the 



' Concerning this, Anderson gave several illustrations, lamenting especially 

 Mr. Thomas K. Watkins, a man of supreme intelligence and energy, killed at 

 Spottsylvania Court House in 1864. 



n 433 :] 



