Trailing Thaddeus Stevens

October 10, 2011Posted inHistorical people, Historical sites

By Sharon Lakey, Direc­tor of the Danville His­tor­i­cal Society

Exchange of infor­ma­tion and gifts. Before the tour, the group had break­fast at the Choate-Sias head­quar­ters in Danville. Paul Chouinard (who brought some of Bernadet­te’s muffins) Ross Het­rick, Pres­i­dent of the Thad­deus Stevens Soci­ety, and Lois White are ready for the adventure.

Mary Pri­or was in the Dia­mond Hill Store, and a man walked in with a tee-shirt pro­claim­ing he was a mem­ber of the Thad­deus Stevens Soci­ety. Mary, who had been track­ing down what she called the “Thad­deus Stevens Trail” for the Danville His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety, intro­duced her­self. They had a nice con­ver­sa­tion about Danville being his birthplace.

She had already dri­ven a reporter from Burlington’s Sev­en Days and Howard Cof­fin around the area, show­ing them where she thought his birth­place might be. Lat­er, she direct­ed an auto tour with sev­er­al mem­bers of the Soci­ety to points of inter­est in Danville and Peacham to share what she had uncov­ered. So it was of inter­est to us last June when Ross Het­rick (the man wear­ing the tee-shirt) called and intro­duced him­self as the Pres­i­dent of the Thad­deus Stevens Soci­ety. He want­ed to dri­ve to Danville from his home in Penn­syl­va­nia with inten­tions of putting togeth­er a video of Thaddeus’s birth­place. With Mary’s prepa­ra­tion, we felt ready for the event. One fine morn­ing we met at the His­tor­i­cal House, ready to fol­low the foot­steps of our most illus­tri­ous native son.

News from the Civil War: The Spigot Starts to Open

October 10, 2011Posted inFrom the archives, Historical events

By Gary Far­row, Mem­ber of the Danville His­tor­i­cal Society

Jour­nal­ists, prob­a­bly from the New York Her­ald, are on-site, report­ing on the war through use of the telegraph.

Pri­or to the Civ­il War, rev­o­lu­tion­ary tech­nol­o­gy remade the news­pa­per busi­ness so that infor­ma­tion could be deliv­ered from far­away places faster and cheap­er than ever before. The Octo­ber ‘61 edi­tions of the North Star brought home opin­ion from a Boston Jour­nal cor­re­spon­dent, the sen­ti­ments of a Danville sol­dier at the Vir­ginia front, and news of mil­i­tary activ­i­ties on the Gulf Coast,

North Star October 5, 1861

The Gen­er­al who would­n’t fight. A draw­ing of Gen­er­al McClel­lan and his staff. The Gen­er­al is stand­ing on the left with his hand in his jacket.

Why McClellan Holds On

The Wash­ing­ton Cor­re­spon­dent of the Boston Jour­nal writes… It has been two months since the advance of the Fed­er­al troops from Bull Run to Washington.…the peo­ple are anx­ious to have some­thing done by the large army to blot out the dis­agree­able part of that affair…

…It was sup­posed that every­thing would be in readi­ness by the first of Sep­tem­ber and that by the present time we should have made a tri­umphant march towards the very heart of seces­sion, but instead here we are throw­ing up entrench­ments with rebels flaunt­ing their hate­ful burn­ing in our face with the great dome of the cap­i­tal in full view of their work at Munson’s. It is pro­vok­ing to the blood…

…But the beau­ty of his [McClellan’s] hang­ing on… He has, by remain­ing qui­et com­plete­ly frus­trat­ed the plans of the rebels. They intend to attack us, but found we are get­ting very strong… They have con­quered all in vain… When he sees that the prop­er time has come to let go, I am con­fi­dent that he will do it in a man­ner that will win admiration.

Thaddeus Stevens: “Old Commoner”

October 9, 2011Posted inDanville Green, Historical events, Historical people
The his­tor­i­cal mark­er on Danville Green has been Ver­mon­t’s only pub­lic acknowl­edge­ment of Thad­deus Stevens. Stevens was born in Danville and edu­cat­ed in Peacham.

By Paul Chouinard, Pres­i­dent of the Danville His­tor­i­cal Society

On Sun­day Octo­ber 30, The Danville His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety and the Danville Cham­ber of Com­merce will hon­or Thad­deus Stevens in a cer­e­mo­ny for the unveil­ing of an etch­ing of his por­trait that is being pre­sent­ed to the Ver­mont State­house. The cer­e­mo­ny will be held at the Danville Con­gre­ga­tion­al Church and begin at 2:00 PM to be fol­lowed by a recep­tion in the Church din­ing room.

Jan­u­ary 10, 2010, Ver­mont Civ­il War His­to­ri­an, Howard Cof­fin, addressed the Danville His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety at its Annu­al Meet­ing, focus­ing on Danville’s involve­ment in the Civ­il War. Fol­low­ing deliv­ery of his address, Mr. Cof­fin sug­gest­ed that he felt it would be a most appro­pri­ate sesqui­cen­ten­ni­al project for the Danville His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety to coor­di­nate an effort to raise funds for com­mis­sion­ing a por­trait of Thad­deus Stevens to be pre­sent­ed to the State­house for inclu­sion in its col­lec­tion of por­traits of promi­nent Vermonters.

It is iron­ic that in the 219 years since the birth of Thad­deus Stevens that the only memo­r­i­al in Ver­mont to his lega­cy as one of America’s great civ­il rights advo­cates is a State Depart­ment of His­toric Sites mark­er on Danville Green indi­cat­ing Danville as the place of his birth. There has nev­er been any pub­lic por­trait or piece of sculp­ture hon­or­ing the enor­mous con­tri­bu­tions he made on the nation­al lev­el to affect the eman­ci­pa­tion of the slaves and to grant them civ­il rights.

Worth the Wait?

September 24, 2011Posted inDanville Green, Historical events, NSM articles

Route 2: Pain now–Payback later

The green is a con­fus­ing mess at the moment.

By Sharon Lakey

Sen­a­tor Jane Kitchel was quot­ed in the Cale­don­ian-Record on July 1, 2011, at a meet­ing between the Ver­mont Agency of Trans­porta­tion and Danville res­i­dents and busi­ness own­ers. “Maybe this project is a lot like hav­ing a baby. When we get done we’ll be pleased with what we have, hopefully.”

There’s no doubt about the pain. Any­one try­ing to make it through and around Danville this sum­mer has expe­ri­enced it. Frus­tra­tion has some­times been high, but late­ly it seems peo­ple, at least local­ly, are wait­ing for the baby with more sto­icism. And while wel’re wait­ing, there is renewed inter­est in what the final prod­uct is going to look like. Over the past 20-plus years, the col­lec­tive mem­o­ry of how this project evolved has dimmed; per­haps a review of how we got here from there is use­ful. So, a lit­tle history…

Romance and Reality, Dissension and Dollars: The War News Trickles In

September 23, 2011Posted inFrom the archives, Historical events
A pho­to of a Civ­il War ambu­lance crew.
By Gary Far­row, Mem­ber of the Danville His­tor­i­cal Society

 

Sep­tem­ber of 1861, the Civ­il War was page two. It wasn’t all that unusu­al for the North Star to have no Civ­il War head­lines on the front page.

There was one item with polit­i­cal reper­cus­sions nation­al­ly. A Union Gen­er­al had tak­en it upon him­self to issue a procla­ma­tion about slav­ery. There was also a let­ter by a Ver­mont POW and a report about the Danville Com­pa­ny. That month, the read­er could also learn about what vol­un­teers were get­ting for pay.

North Star Sep­tem­ber 7, 1861

The Vermont Prisoners at Richmond

Let­ter from Cap­tain Drew
Rich­mond, VA Aug 19, 1861
 Edi­tors of the Free Press:

I am per­mit­ted by Gen­er­al Winders, the humane and oblig­ing com­man­der of this post to write you, giv­ing a list of Vt boys con­fined here, and some infor­ma­tion as to our cap­ture. For sev­er­al days before the bat­tle, I had been sick and on “Sun­day the 21st” [A ref­er­ence to the Bat­tle of Bull Run and its date July 21] was hard­ly able to move.

Born to Command

August 16, 2011Posted inDanville Green, Historical people, Historical sites, NSM articles

Addison W. Preston’s Call to Arms

By Mark R. Moore

Ver­mont Asso­ciate and archivist at the Danville VT His­tor­i­cal Society
Pre­ston in full dress uniform

How many times do we wish his­to­ry would come alive for us? The sweat of bod­ies and hors­es, the ting, clink and clang of accou­ter­ments , the deep glow and scent of bur­nished leather, shin­ing brass but­tons, the glint of bul­lion gold braid on sleeves and shoul­ders in the bright sun­light, pass­ing through a nat­ur­al arch­way of fra­grant lilac. Walt Whit­man put obser­va­tions like this into verse:

…the head of my cav­al­ry parad­ing on spir­it­ed horses,
With sabres drawn and glis­ten­ing, and car­bines by their thighs, (ah, my brave horsemen!
My hand­some tan-faced horse­men! what life, what joy and pride,
With all the per­ils were yours.)

This was undoubt­ed­ly the spir­it that then Cap­tain Addi­son Web­ster Pre­ston of Danville con­veyed to star­ry-eyed new enlis­tees as he recruit­ed them into Com­pa­ny D of the 1st Ver­mont Cav­al­ry in 1862. Here at the Danville His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety we have Addi­son Preston’s blue wool dress uni­form, his dress pants, his boots, car­tridge box, horse’s hal­ter, flask and McClel­lan saddle.

More impor­tant­ly, I think, we have a pho­to­graph of him at around the age of 33 that con­veys his image—his thin­ning hair is swept back, his mus­tache is fierce, his eyes are fiery and he grasps his sabre’s hilt as if ready to draw it and smite the enemy.

He was pro­mot­ed to Lt. Colonel by 1863 and com­mand­ed the entire 1st Ver­mont Cav­al­ry. Quot­ing from Joseph D. Col­lea, Jr’s book The First Ver­mont Cav­al­ry in the Civ­il War, upon his death the Ver­mont Record wrote, “Colonel Pre­ston was char­ac­ter­ized by quick­ness of per­cep­tion, thought and action which made him what he was as a sol­dier and an offi­cer. He nev­er found exact­ly his right place til he went into the army…Col. Pre­ston might not have achieved so sig­nal a suc­cess as he did in war. He was a born sol­dier, and found that out when the coun­try sound­ed the call to arms.”

But this does not mean he failed to attend to the needs of his men or their fam­i­lies. The record is replete with let­ters writ­ten by him to wid­ows and the Gov­ern­ment Pen­sion Board detail­ing a trooper’s last ill­ness or his hero­ism in bat­tle. His after-bat­tle reports are suc­cinct in con­trast to the dra­mat­ic accounts he sent back to the papers in Vermont.

His per­son­al let­ters to his younger broth­er, William Hen­ry Pre­ston (future Prin­ci­pal- 1867–1870- of Danville Acad­e­my), shows he also con­tin­ued to be atten­tive to mat­ters at home. In let­ters housed at the Kitchel Cen­ter, Fair­banks Muse­um, and tran­scribed by Lynn Bon­field, the read­er wit­ness­es his direct and com­mand­ing style.

“Hen­ry

“I have writ­ten to B. N Davis to day and I wish you to keep your eye out for Col Sawyer and also one Sgt Mitchel of Co D when he took home with him. Say to Esq Davis to look sharp for the Col. I fear he will try to injure me in Vt if you hear of it let me know. Are you going to teach this win­ter or study a profession?

“How much did you make last fall…

“Remem­ber Ener­gy is what can grow. I will write you often on this subject…

Addi­son”