Alexandria At War With ( Madeline Feierstein ) Episode Five Reclaiming Alexandria

Alexandria At War With ( Madeline Feierstein ) Episode Five Reclaiming Alexandria

In this episode of Alexandria at War, produced by the American Civil War & UK History podcast, host Daz is joined by historian Madeline Feierstein of Rooted in Place to explore the reclaiming of the city after the American Civil War had come to an end.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

To keep up to date with everything American Civil War and UK history, head over to our website ACW and UKhistory.com. And remember, this podcast has a PowerPoint presentation that goes along with the show. So if you would like to see the PowerPoint presentation, then head over to our YouTube channel at American Civil War and UK History. Cheers. Hello everyone, I'm Daz and welcome to American Civil War and UK History Podcast. This presentation is available as a video on our YouTube channel or as a podcast from wherever you get your podcast from. And if you're watching on YouTube, remember to hit that subscribe button and give us a big thumbs up. And check out our website at www.acwandukhistory.com for updates, blog posts, all of our podcasts and links to all of our social media pages. The link is available also via the podcast description. And joining me today is historian of Rooted in Place, Madeline Feisteen. Welcome Madeline.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

And this is the fifth episode of a series of five podcasts dedicated to Alexandria during the American Civil War, which we're calling Alexandria at War. And this episode is called Reclaiming Alexandria. How did Alexandria manage soldiers soldiers' burials from the hospitals and prisons, Madeline?

SPEAKER_00 1:17

A major part of how Alexandria comes back to being a municipal city away from the military occupation is kind of reckoning with the legacy of these hospitals and prisons, right? Alexandria before the war had churchyards within the city. So we have several very notable and important churches, including St. Mary's Catholic Church, Christ Church Episcopal, and then St. Paul's Episcopal. A few of them have churchyards on site. And those churchyards are very full to this day, thousands of people buried with unmarked graves in several of them. But the problem was, and a little bit of Alexandria history for you guys, in 1803, there was a very violent yellow fever epidemic in the city. And the city basically prohibited the burial of what they considered plague victims in the city limits. And so they went just outside the city to uh Wilkes Street, and each church started to essentially establish a cemetery in this complex. Now, to this day, the complex has 13 cemeteries, which includes the National Cemetery. So when we get to the Civil War, they're looking for a place to bury the soldiers. And when we discussed the hospitals episode, we understand, especially in summer of 1864, you're burying dozens, if not hundreds, of soldiers a day. And so the Wilkes Street Cemetery complex, which includes those 12 other essentially private cemeteries, they started to bury the soldiers adjacent. And it established in 1862 the Alexandria National Cemetery. And I want to emphasize, of course, that this is the first national cemetery in the United States. It predates the Gettysburg National Cemetery and it predates Arlington National. So in 1862, they start burying the soldiers and consecrated as the soldiers' cemetery, strictly for military personnel. So we're seeing that most of the soldiers, I mean, I want to take a gander that about probably 70 to 75% of the soldiers who died in Alexandria are going to be buried here. The reason is, if you can, as you can imagine, it was incredibly difficult to ship a body back home in those days. And many of these soldiers, especially the ones that were treated, came from very far away, upstate New York, they came from the Midwest, Confederate soldiers who were from Alabama and Florida. So getting them home would um place cost on the family themselves. And as we know, not every soldier was identified. So you can imagine the soldier would have been temporarily buried, interred in the National Cemetery. And then the family, upon receiving word of their passing, would come down, have to go to the newly dug graves, and then have to identify their loved ones. And it's a tough situation, even if we knew where they were buried. So a lot of families had to elect to leave their loved ones in Alexandria. Like many other national battlefields across the United States and Civil War battlefields, it was just nearly impossible to get them home. Not every soldier could afford to be embalmed and shipped in an iron coffin. Now, those practices were de-tabooed. They were destigmatized, of course, when Abraham Lincoln was embalmed, and when very notable figures like Dolly Madison was returned to her home in an iron coffin. But a lot of times the average soldier had to be buried where they died, which is, as we know, very common with the Civil War. So in Alexandria National, the burials, uh, there's about around 4,000 burials, and around 3,900 are Union soldiers. We do have burials in that cemetery from later wars, such as Spanish American, World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. Um, and there are no new burials happening there. The only new burials are dependents and spouses. So anyone's wife, husband, or child uh qualifying children could be buried there. But as of now, there's no there's no new soldier, no veteran being buried. Um and it's a very small space. So unlike Arlington, which has over 600 acres, Alexandria National is confined to the limits of what the Wilkes Street Cemetery Complex had. Um, and to this day, there's industry, there are um office buildings around it. I actually used to work in an office um on Duke Street, which is quite near Freedom House Museum, the slave pen jail from last episode. And my window overlooked the cemetery. And at the time, and looking back, this was quite silly. At the time, I didn't know what I was looking at. I understood this was a military cemetery, a national cemetery, but I didn't realize that a majority of it, 90-95%, were civil war burials. So the city essentially accommodated the thousands of soldiers who were dying by placing them next to the civilian burials. And then, of course, they walled it off later. And it's now run by the uh veterans of foreign wars. They have their own um kind of office there, their own post. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:30

Excellent, thank you. Okay, so um, what about the uh contraband population? Were they buried within the city?

SPEAKER_00 6:39

Yes, so the contraband population, when we talk about how did the city um reclaim itself, how did it um restore a lot of the damage that had been done, a lot of uh attention had to be paid to where would the contraband peoples be buried. Now, on the screen we have a very powerful image here. This is modern day, and actually another fun residence story. I used to live right across the street, so I would look at it from my window. So I have cemeteries flanking me wherever I was going in Alexandria. This is to today, in modern day, the contraband and freedmen's cemetery. Now, you notice that it was essentially kind of established in 1864, and then we restored it in 2014. Prior to 2014, there was a gas station over this land. And you can see on the grass these markers, and these are where uh ground penetrating radar has identified bodies. Um, and the the length of the plaque or the stone indicates, of course, the size of the person. So the smaller the stone, it is a child. Um, but yeah, there was a gas station actually right over this landscape. I mean, this is not really shocking to us. And we when we look at how black history has been commemorated in American history and of course the vulnerable contraband populations, they were buried essentially in this empty field. Um, and we're seeing here that there was a big skirmish in December of 1864. Okay, so it was established in 64, and we know from our past episodes that the contraband peoples got more rights, more amenities, more resources, thanks to people like Dr. Edwin Bentley providing them medical care. We see advocates like Julia Wilbur and Harriet Jacobs educating them, um, working with the military government. But the burials, again, were pretty haphazard. No one was there are some people who are identified, but of course, majority are not. Um in December of 1864, though, there was a big outcry by the United States Colored Troops because they were being defaulted, buried in the contraband and freedmen cemetery. They were being buried in a civilian manner, and they were not given military um honors at their burials and funerals. And in December of 1864, we're going to see the famous Louverture petition, which is named for the Louverture Hospital, which was a contraband hospital. Um, and then we see a big influx of USCT troops being treated there. It's a physically very large hospital. It bordered the slave pen gel and the barracks where the contraband folk were essentially allowed to stay. And in that petition, which was handed to the military governor by Dr. Edwin Bentley, the head surgeon, it stipulated we are part of the United States military. We deserve a military burial in the soldier cemetery. Well, if we back this up for a bit, this is 1864. We don't see desegregation on a federal level in the United States until 1964. It's a hundred years a little early, right? And we haven't even begun to discuss in United States history yet civil rights. Um, what does coexistence look like? We're trying to abolish slavery. So for a group of African-American soldiers to to protest burial in a black cemetery was very radical for the time. What was even more radical is that the military government listened to them. Not only did they start burying USCT in the Alexandria National Cemetery in January of 1865, they actually disinterred USCT buried at this cemetery, over a hundred of them, and reburied them with honors at the National Cemetery. So officially, the Alexandria National Cemetery is the first desegregated cemetery and the first desegregated cemetery on a military level in the United States. But because Alexandria is so small and our history gets overshadowed by DC very often, this fact and this story gets lost. Um and it's a fascinating piece of history, and it's all tied to, of course, the military government. So their uh military governor Slough and Provost Marshal Wells had to appoint actually what who they called a superintendent of contrabands, Albert Um Gladwin. And not only did he agree to, of course, disinter and then start interring folks in the National Cemetery, he started to write their names down. And there is a list at the Virginia Museum of History in Richmond of the black burials in the cemetery. So it's a it's a fascinating story. It's one that I want more people to know about. And then, of course, as the war ends, we start getting new industry in Alexandria. This entire contraband cemetery becomes a gas station. And we have lost, of course, many burials because of its conversion into a gas station. And in the early 2000s and then, of course, 2010s, there was a big petition to remove the gas station, which is a private company, right, that owns that property. And they won. The city won. And they because they proved the historical significance. And then over the few years before this officially opened, they of course had to restore it and make this incredible statue at the end. So that's how the city managed it. They kind of did it, but they made up for it with, of course, reckoning with the um USCT burials and giving soldiers proper burials.

SPEAKER_01 12:08

So when they obviously put the gas station in, they would have come across, of course, their bones and uh, you know, remains. Um, so how did the city handle that at the time? Because I know for a fact that here in the UK, um and even recently they find on the outskirts of London they're putting in a rail link and they find burial, you know, mass burials of from the plague, say for instance, everything has to stop. So is that something that happened at the time?

SPEAKER_00 12:37

No, uh not really. It's it's because everyone kind of knew that this was being used for a black cemetery, but at the time, this is turn of the 20th century, we're in the Jim Crow South. Um, so in a predominantly white city run by a white government, that history I I I don't think it I want to use the word intentionally was lost, but I don't think there was a big movement to be like, wait, halt all construction, we got bodies here, because people knew that it had been used as a historically black cemetery. Um, and then funding was a big matter. Of course, if we remove the gas station, then we can't put the gas station somewhere else, and then the money to restore it. There wasn't much interest on a bureaucratic level to deal with this. But because of uh, of course, recent efforts to document black history in Alexandria, um, this became such big headline news, especially when it became an official cemetery and a reflective space too. If you walk down to the end of this little path towards the statue, there are the names of those who have been documented and uh kind of a sitting uh silent space you can sit in. There's it's encouraged not to speak in that space.

SPEAKER_01 13:47

So well, thanks for answering that. Okay, can you explain the role of the Southern Claims Commission, please?

SPEAKER_00 13:55

Yes, so it quite unique to the Confederacy, um, the Southern Claims Commission uh was a federal agency run by the United States government, essentially for Southern citizens who were residing in the Confederacy at the time of the war, to uh ask for compensation to any damages to the property. Um, if the Union Army had been marching through and uh or if any of their items were confiscated for Union Army use, Southern citizens or those loyal to the Confederacy could apply for money back. Now, there's a couple of stipulations here, of course. It's that's not automatic because that'd be like thousands of people. The first requirement was that that citizen who was applying for compensation needed to take the oath of allegiance to the United States. Now, as a whole state, right, for states to be readmitted into the union, if they had seceded, over in some cases, about two-thirds of their citizens um needed to take the oath of allegiance for them to kind of get in. But it but for citizens who are filing for federal money for assistance, they personally have to sign an oath of allegiance. So it wasn't have to do with the state's readmittance into the union. It had to do with um, we're not gonna give you money if if you're gonna still want to be an open rebellion against us. Now, in 1865, even after Lee surrenders to Grant, there's still a concern. The, you know, making sure the war is truly over, making sure that there isn't another uprising or there isn't a resurgence of interest in secession. So taking that oath of allegiance was more of like a safeguard for the Union that if they hand over money, that money's not going to be used to finance the second Confederacy. Um, but let's talk about that for a second, because many citizens were very deterred by that requirement. And in Alexandria, this is very evident because, as we know, about 8,000 citizens left. You know, about two-thirds of the city was gone, but we only have a couple of hundred um requests for compensation, only a couple hundred claims that were filed with the SCC. There is no version of the Northern Claims Commission. So, a great example of this is in Gettysburg, with the uh Seminary Ridge Museum, which is uh which was once the Lutheran Seminary in Gettysburg, um, they, of course, were transformed into a number of things, a watchtower, a prison, a hospital, right? Um, and there's a whole bunch of damage done to the exterior by cannon blast and the interior by it being a hospital. And they had filed, they tried to file with the federal government to be like, hey, the union was here, uh, they used the space, the Confederacy actually blasted through our wall, and they're like, Well, we you're not in rebellion, we're not gonna compensate you for that because you're on our side, which again, that makes no logical sense, right? They said you have to file with your state. So the state of Pennsylvania needs to compensate you. So this is something very unique to the Confederacy. If you're a Southern citizen and you want compensation for union damage, you gotta take the oath. And maybe in their eyes, people in Alexandria, they needed um to take, like there was more of a focus on former rebels so that they took the oath because they know people in Pennsylvania, they're not gonna try and take up arms. But there is no version of this for union sympathizers or those residing in the union during the war. Um, now, as part of the SCC and filing your claim, uh, in addition to the oath, Alexandria's citizens needed to do an interview about their whereabouts during the war and what they were doing. So many citizens also possibly chose not to file because they would be essentially interrogated. Um, now this was part of the process because we wanted to see, hey, you left Alexandria. Why are you coming back?

unknown 17:45

Right?

SPEAKER_00 17:45

Remember, Alexandria is on the buffer of the Union and the Confederacy, it's protecting DC. The last thing we want is a former spy coming into town, coming back to town and trying to start up something again. So many citizens were denied because of their service in the war, or they were part of the Confederate Secret Service, or they had some other high-profile role that denying them made a statement. So while it was very nice of the federal government to offer compensation, not everybody got it and not everybody wanted it. So that's the main role uh for those who did come back to Alexandria. It was a tedious hassle to try and um reclaim their property.

SPEAKER_01 18:26

Okay, thank you. And did the majority of citizens return from uh from Dixie when the war Yeah, um a lot of them did.

SPEAKER_00 18:35

Um, I want to say we don't have a hard number because honestly, the the the main thing we're looking at here are the number of claims, but I will say that claim number, uh over 250, were filed. It was it's kind of misleading because whole families would file. So if you have a father and son, they would file together, um, or one household would file together, so it kind of is hard to measure it. Many people chose not to come back, mainly because if we if we look back at um more Alexandria history, Alexandria became the essentially the capital of the restored Virginia. So those in Virginia who were pro-Union, especially in northern Virginia, um, essentially created a proto-Virginia. It's very hard to explain, but they wanted to separate themselves from Confederate Virginia. And this is where we see Francis Pierpont, one of the founders of West Virginia, relocate the Virginia, like restore Virginia's headquarters to Alexandria. And a lot of people who had left Alexandria were really put off by this because they thought it meant that the city is not only captured and confiscated by the Union, it is Union, that Alexandria no longer belongs to the real Virginia in their eyes. So many did not come back because they thought that, and this is what I would assume their words would be, that the city was tainted by union politics, um, by the federal government politics, um, that it was no longer the Alexandria that they knew and loved. Many people also didn't come back because their industries were for naught. Many um Alexandria citizens lost a lot of money. Also, if their industry was built on slavery, you have to rebuild in some way. Um, one notable example of a family that came back were the Lees. Now, many people don't know that Alexandria was rife with Lees. Uh, many Lees had an urban town home or an estate in Alexandria, in addition to their countryside plantations. And most notably Robert Eagley, as we discussed in our first episode. Um, he moved here when he was four years old and stayed here until he went to West Point, so essentially grew up. Um, and many of the Lees chose to come back to Alexandria once the state was readmitted into the Union in 1868. Now, those Lees will help uh furnish the lost cause, and we'll get into that in a second. But um mainly we're seeing that uh I would say if I had to put a number on it, I would say about a thousand came back. I wouldn't be surprised if more came back, of course, towards the 1870s, as many of the Lees did. If we talk just about 1865 and 66, it's not many people. Two reasons. One, of course, money is a big aspect, filing with the SCC. Many did not want to come back until they got their house back. And second is that the military government was still there. They didn't just pack up and leave when Lee surrendered. So they're there maintaining order. The civil government had been reinstated, but troops are still there. Many of the businesses were still occupied by soldiers, they're still barracked. Um, so to many citizens, the war wasn't done yet. More citizens start coming back towards the end of the decade, like many of the Lee family members start coming back in 67, 68, and then they a lot of them are buying real estate again at the end of the decade. Um, so that's that's a big aspect. I want to give one more example of um a situation with the citizen. We have a guy named William McVeigh, and his house no longer stands. It's at the corner of Cameron and St. Asaf. There's a parking lot there now. But William McVeigh had left for Richmond. He had left for the Confederacy, like many other people. When he came back, uh he found out, of course, that his house had been converted into a hospital, the McVeigh House Hospital, and just utterly destroyed on the inside. The thing is, though, when he was in the Confederacy, he asserted that he was paying his property taxes, which he was not, and that because his house, it's kind of confusing in the legal terms, but that he had federal bonds and that he was assuming he could use his bonds to override the lack of tax payment. Um, he took it all the way to the Supreme Court, McVay versus United States, 1870, and he fought against um having to go through the FCC. He did not take the oath of allegiance, he fought against the property confiscation in general, and the Supreme Court sided with the U.S. government, saying, Sir, you were in active rebellion against the United States. You were not paying your taxes, we don't care that you had bonds here in Washington. We seized those bonds. You you couldn't you cannot tap into them because you have not taken the oath of allegiance and you fought and fought and fought and lost. And he was extremely bitter about it. Um, people went very far, but William McVeigh was went the farthest of any citizen because he took it all the way to the highest court in the land. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:30

Okay, cool. And so what was the reaction of the other good people that came back to Alexandria? And of course, they're they're gonna find their homes, most of them, you know, in ruins, aren't they?

SPEAKER_00 23:40

Yeah. Yeah, I'll give another example because there's several here. Um, one of them is tied to a very famous museum in Alexandria, which still stands today. You can go visit it. It's called the Leafendel House. It was once a Civil War hospital. And the owner of the house, Harriet Kazanov, she'd actually left the home prior to the war. She had left in the mid-1850s, her husband had died, she couldn't afford the property anymore. And many people get confused by this. Um, she actually ended up building a smaller house about 10 miles away. And people get confused. They're like, why did she build a new home if she couldn't afford her current one? And it boils down to back in the 1850s, it was probably cheaper to build smaller and newer than to pay for bigger. Um, so with her, she did uh she wasn't physically residing at the property, but was the legal owner. So, of course, when she comes back from Tixie, she's actually residing with Robert Ely's wife for a period. They're all cousins. Um she file, she does not file with the SCC because she refuses to take the oath of allegiance. Now, the major problem with the house is that the floorboards were just bloodstained. They were just every the f whole first floor was really gross. And because of how expensive it was to just rip up the floorboards and replace them with new, and because, of course, the many um cousins of the Lee family, like Harriet, um, had to deal with a financial loss because of the war, they decide to just cover the floors with a new plank. So there's two layers of wood on that first floor. And underneath the top layer from the 1870s, roughly, there's bloodstained hospital floors. And the thing is, is we just don't know. Um, because I used to work at this museum, we don't know where the bloodstains really are. We would have to rip up the top layer to see underneath, but that'd be pretty cool uh to see that. But many citizens could not restore their houses back to original condition. What we're seeing here in the SCC claims, some of them are really benign, some of them is just hay for the horses that was taken, maybe clothes off a clothesline, um, damage to my fence. Um, then it gets even bigger where my horse was taken. There was a rock thrown through my window by some hooligans, and then it gets even bigger with my the interior of my property, it's just unrecognizable. And there's it was a hospital or it was a prison, right? My because people can file, of course, on behalf of their businesses. Um, so that's what the main reaction is about the properties. Most of the citizens are reacting politically with a lot of disdain. There is very little sympathy for the Union cause, especially after the war. And we can start moving into talking about the lost cause, because at this point, this is something about Alexandria's history that I don't even think the city is ready to talk about. It's very well known that Alexandria was a big proponent of the lost cause. Um, the Southern Ladies Memorial Association plays a very big part, and this is a predecessor to the United Daughters of the Confederacy. So the uh the Memorial Association is, of course, going to be in charge across the southern United States of establishing cemeteries for Confederate soldiers, monuments, commemoration, memorial statues. And one of the biggest things that's placed in Alexandria at the turn of the century, a little bit later, is the Appomattox statue. And this was a major traffic hazard. Of course, as Alexandria industrializes and we get more cars. There are many Alexandria citizens, of course, who were around when the statue was there, and they talked about how much of a traffic hazard it was. Cars would try and stop in the middle of the road, take a picture of it. There was like a roundabout around it. It was just a nightmare. So it was removed from first and foremost because it just was causing accidents. There's a really bad spot in town. But also, it's a statue of a Confederate soldier, and that does not accurately reflect Alexandria's history. There are those who argue actually it does, because Alexandria had two-thirds of its population secede and leave. And then we see, of course, the 17th Virginia form out of Alexandria, Fairfax, and Loudoun County folk. So the many of the militia in Alexandria, they mustered at the location where the statue was, and then they went down to Richmond when Virginia seceded. So going back to our first episode, when the Union Army advanced and invaded Alexandria, the militia wasn't there. They had left the day prior when Virginia seceded and they marched from the location where that statue was placed. So Alexandria made it pretty clear it was a southern town. And I wrote a little controversial article for emerging civil war a few months ago about whether Alexandria truly was a Confederate town. And most of the push that it was a southern city happened after the war. Alexandria, as Northern Virginia began to develop, become more suburban, and especially link it with Washington. Um, if you come to Northern Virginia today, you will notice Northern Virginia does not feel southern. It feels like an extension of DC. It feels like it's part of the larger Mid-Atlantic. But it is a deaf, Alexandria is definitely part of a southern town, and much of that feeling and atmosphere comes from the push right after the war to really entrench in people's minds. Yes, the Union was here, but it's our town, quote unquote, and it's southern. Um, so many people are get confused about Alexandria's status and its identity. Another aspect of Alexandria's participation in Lost Cause and the reaction of these citizens coming back is that um the United Daughters of the Confederacy uh established a chapter here which they called the Mary Custis Lee chapter, so naming after Robert E. Lee's wife. Um and then we see they created a museum to um essentially to Robert E. Lee and to the 17th Virginia, which I'm unsure if it still exists because I I don't think it's it's only open by appointment only. I do not think it has like regular visiting hours, but it's run by the UDC and they call it the Robert E. Lee Camp Hall Museum. It's on Prince Street. It was very active for a while, but I think due to a lot of the push to suppress Alexandria's lost cause history and of course reckon with it and how historically it was very racist and it was um very rooted in Jim Crow. I think it is almost defunct at this point, but I can't speak on that fully. Um, up until the early 2000s, there were articles written about the 17th Virginia very proudly. Um again, the the shift to talking about Alexandria honestly has been really a new thing in the last 10 to 15 years. Um and one of the missions I've had is to make sure people understand the full history. I don't want to say true history because I don't like that word with this, but the full scope of what Alexandria was, including its life before the war was slavery, secession, and how that wasn't an automatic win, like not everybody wanted to secede Alexandria. Um, and then of course its occupation during the war and how occupying it was very symbolic and intentional. And then after the war, with the the move to push the southern identity. Uh, one last note for our discussion here about the southern identity is there is a church in Alexandria which is very famous, and it's called Christ Church. It was the church where George Washington prayed at and where Robert E. Lee and his daughters were baptized as adults. So it has a lot of, of course, Southern Virginia history there. During the war, it was allowed to stay open as a church, um, though the U.S. Army chaplains kind of confiscated it for their services. Um, and then it was returned back to civilian hands midway through the war. But it was left alone because of its connection to George Washington. And his pews are preserved, and you can go view them. It's pretty cool. But after the war, uh Christchurch kind of returned back to those southern roots, and they disinterred about 34 under 40 Confederate soldiers from the Federal Cemetery, from Alexandria National Cemetery, who have been placed there. And they buried them in this very um big mound. It's a large grass mound, looks like an Indian burial mound, it's very prominent in the churchyard. Um, and they have a plaque there that these were Confederate soldiers who were imprisoned in the city of Alexandria and had died here. Um, and this was done in 1879 by the Southern Ladies Memorial Association, and that essentially having this very large and prominent institution like Christ Church host these Confederate soldiers in a cemetery that has other prominent Virginians like the Sons of George Mason, right? We get many um businessmen and leaders in Alexandria, the pallbearer at George Washington's funeral. Um, these are 18th century burials, but we're putting in Confederate soldiers from all over the Confederacy, and it was meant to kind of help Alexandria shift back to that Southern way of life, and it's still there, you can go see it. It's quite interesting. But the Christ Church today is very inclusive, they do not embrace that neo-Confederate lost cause identity, but it's a big part of the church's history.

SPEAKER_01 33:09

Thank you. And it's been a fascinating series in general, learning about Alexandria. But um, for you, Madeline, where does Alexandria sit um historically within the American Civil War sphere, you know?

SPEAKER_00 33:23

Yes, I'm gonna make a very bold statement, and I've made it in um a couple other podcasts, but I want to make sure my viewers know where I stand on this. Is I believe that because of Alexandria's location and how much it went on lockdown and how much it was um essential in getting goods and troops back and forth off the battlefield, I don't believe the war would have been fought in the way it was without Alexandria's occupation. I believe also when we talked about our crime episode, if the city had not been captured, could a spy have come through? Could the Confederate army have bulldozed and absolutely pulverized Washington City? I mean, yeah, Lincoln and his government would have left, but that command center would have been lost, and it would have also helped feed the way for the Confederacy to move into Maryland. So if you think about Alexandria, I absolutely believe in terms of the overall Civil War history, Alexandria helped us win the war. It may have been indirect, it may have been in administrative and kind of boring, tedious, bureaucratic ways, but without its occupation and lockdown status, the war may not have been fought in that in the same way we know. Or it could have been compromised.

SPEAKER_01 34:34

Mm-hmm. And would you say that Alexandria is, I mean, obviously I know it's a city in its own right, but because obviously development and the way that DC has sort of grown, do people see Alexandria still as this city, or or is it seen as a suburb of DC?

SPEAKER_00 34:51

It's a great question. It's it's uh the city of Alexandria itself has its own jurisdiction. Um, it is very separate from DC. Uh, and I I actually attest to this because I grew up right across the river in Maryland and I had never come to Alexandria. My first time setting foot in Old Town Alexandria was when I moved here about five years ago. Um, it is kind of far away. I mean, if you're driving, it's maybe 15 minutes from the city. But if for those of you that have visited the DC area, a 15-minute drive on Google Maps can quickly turn to two hours. Um metro stops away. Um, but yes, it's very different. The vibe is very different. Today, it is very much considered part of northern Virginia and not as much DC. Um, we have, as a tourist industry in Alexandria, really pushed our unique history that is separate from DC. We predate DC um by uh several decades. We were established in 18, uh, excuse me, 1749, and then we get Washington City around 1790. So, and we know that most of the politicians that worked in Washington City lived in Alexandria. So we have history that DC can't even claim, right? We have the colonial history here that DC doesn't have. So today, it is not considered a suburb of Washington, though technically, yes, because when you talk about the federal workers, um, many of them live in Northern Virginia. Um, it's just easier to live in Nova than it is to live in Maryland, as someone who used to live in Maryland. Um, there's more rare lines over here. So, yeah, it's considered if you if from a logistical and geographic standpoint, yes. But if you think about history-wise, I I would consider Alexandria more of a Northern Virginia history center than a DC history center. That makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 36:38

And would you say that Alexandrians appreciate their their history and connections with not just um you know colonial history but civil war history?

SPEAKER_00 36:49

You know, many of them did not know the extent of the Civil War history. Most of the tourists I've given tours with and spoken to and engaged with at my lectures, um, many of the tourists are very intentional in coming to Alexandria when they're visiting DC. It's mainly because of the George Washington connection. But many of them are very surprised to learn about um about Alexandria and its occupation. People that live here, um, they're aware of it. But again, many people don't realize that there were 30 hospitals, there were five prisons. This was under martial law. Um, and going on, you know, tours provided by the city and tours that I give myself, we point out so many of the buildings that still stand. And also I tell the stories that I tell on this podcast, um, living stories, uh human interest stories. I make it kind of come alive. Um, and a lot of people are very surprised to hear about the the darker southern history associated with the city, too. Um, and I feel like Alexandria's occupation almost redeems it from its the stain of slavery on the town that it was occupied by the Union. It did not secede in going to the Confederate Virginia.

SPEAKER_01 37:53

And if you was a tourist and you hadn't visited visited Alexandria, uh Madeline, um what recommendations would you uh, you know, give these people that would like to come and visit the beautiful city of Alexandria?

SPEAKER_00 38:07

Of course. I recommend highly going to the Carlisle House Historic Park. It's one of our oldest standing homes built in 1754, the home of John Carlisle. And this is where um George Washington met with General Braddock at the start of the French and Indian War, Seven Years' War. Uh, but that house was occupied by the famous Green family, who we talked about in our prisons episode, James Green, featured on PBS's Mercy Street, had his hotel, home, and furniture business confiscated by the Union Army. And he was a big testament and kind of an example of the civilian experience. So the Carlisle House has a lot of history. They have great preservation talks, and they talk about, of course, how this house was saved and uh how it was almost lost. And um, they're celebrating their 50th anniversary this year, which is really exciting. I would also recommend uh on a spooky side, the Alexandria Colonial Tours gives fantastic evening ghost tours. And this is not sensational and just trying to scam you. These are real stories, well researched, well documented. Um, and the guides do a tremendous job of balancing the history with the spectacular. I've gone on them. I highly recommend. Um, there are many historians who give those tours and actors. You're in for a very good show if you go on it, anyways. Uh, they also do regular history tours as well. And then uh one off the top of my head, one other recommendation is uh the Stabler Leadbetter Apothecary, uh, which was there before the Civil War, and it looks like um essentially a medicine shop, a pharmacy, and they give excellent uh specialty tours. And one of the specialty tours that they give is based on the hit TV show Outlander, and they give uh kind of a discussion about 18th century medicine. Uh, but the lead-bedders were supposed abolitionists during the Civil War, and uh there's rumors that they were linked to the Underground Railroad. So if you tour the apothecary where they worked, you will hear talk of that, which is very exciting. So it's funny because a lot of the sites in Alexandria they begin in the colonial era, but they always have some connection to the Civil War, which is really cool.

SPEAKER_01 40:10

Excellent. Well, I've really, really enjoyed this whole series. So I'd like to thank you, Madeline. You know, and your your passion shines through, ladies and gentlemen. Please uh go and watch the uh the uh other four episodes. Um, we've covered literally everything in this series. And uh at this stage, Madeline, all that is left to say is thank you very much for giving up your time to come and tell us the story of Alexandra.

SPEAKER_00 40:33

If you made it this far, thank you guys so much for listening. Really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 40:37

And all that is left to say is cheers.

SPEAKER_00 40:39

Cheers.