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Richmond Civil War site gets attention
National group hopes listing of little-known Virginia battlefield will help preserve site of black soldiers' heroism
Date published: 3/23/2009
By CLINT SCHEMMER Unlike Fredericksburg, Manassas or Appomattox, New Market Heights isn't a household name, even among students of the American Civil War. But it deserves to be, say historians and descendants of some of the men who fought at the central Virginia battlefield. The Civil War Preservation Trust has thrust the less-well-known Henrico County site into the national limelight, ranking it last week among America's 10 most-endangered battlefields. "This is a story that needs to be told, about a hugely important place," Mary Koik, the trust's deputy director of communications, said yesterday. "What we're trying to do is to start to get the battle some of the recognition that it deserves and to get some of its land protected." TALE OF GREAT IMPORT Part of the Army of the James' campaign for Richmond and a harbinger of the war's end the following spring, the Union attack at New Market Heights established the fighting spirit of the African-American soldier once and for all, Koik said. "In the whole war, 16 Medals of Honor were given to African-American troops. Fourteen of them were given for bravery in this one battle," she said. Several of the medals were awarded to men who took charge of their units after all the white commanders had fallen. Though tactically a defeat, since the Confederate defenders turned back the Union effort to seize Richmond and loosen the Confederate army's grip on Petersburg, the black soldiers' daring at New Market Heights boosted Northern morale, historians say. The fight came just a few weeks after Atlanta, heart of the Deep South, fell to Union Gen. William T. Sherman and as President Lincoln stood for re-election in a political contest he had been expecting to lose. The Sept. 29, 1864, battle near Richmond was one of the most momentous of the entire war for the Union's black troops, said Hari Jones, assistant director of the African American Civil War Memorial and Museum in Washington. And for sheer heroism, it eclipses the far-better-known story of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry depicted in the movie "Glory," Jones said. The 1989 film ends with the 54th's valiant but unsuccessful attack on Fort Wagner at Morris Island, S.C., which guarded the southern entrance to Charleston's harbor. HEAVY LOSSES
Date published: 3/23/2009
The place where the Slavery Museum belongs
(posted by
MrZorro
, Mar. 23, 2009 9:30 am)
If not on the Washington Mall, or next to the Richmond Slave Prison, then New Market would be the next most appropriate place. It really does not belong in the Celebrate Virginia Shopping Complex. Cheers for these heroes at New Market, North and South.
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