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Officers of Company D, 4th Vermont Infantry, pose for a portrait during the Civil War.
U.S. Sen. Jim Jeffords unveils Vermont's monument at the Wilderness in 2006. |
BY CLINT SCHEMMER
Vermonters to the front!
The Green Mountain State's legislature weighed in forcefully yesterday in the Wilderness Wal-Mart controversy in central Virginia.
Despite furious last-minute lobbying by Wal-Mart, the Vermont House added its voice to that of the Senate, adopting a joint resolution expressing the state's opposition to big-box development in the Wilderness battlefield area.
The world's largest retailer proposes to build a 139,000-square-foot Supercenter less than a quarter-mile from an entrance to Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. The owner of an adjacent tract proposes a mixed-use development on 900 acres that wrap around the 51-acre tract where the Wal-Mart retail center would be sited.
Without naming Wal-Mart, the Vermont General Assembly asked the developers to find alternative plots for their stores farther from the Civil War battlefield.
In bipartisan fashion, the legislature also asked the Orange County Board of Supervisors, now considering a special-use permit for the Wal-Mart store, to preserve the area.
A majority of the Orange supervisors have indicated that they support the Wal-Mart proposal.
The Vermont assembly also asked Gov. Tim Kaine and the Old Dominion's House and Senate to strongly support protecting the "historic ground of the Wilderness that is so important to the history of our state, the Commonwealth of Virginia, and the entire nation."
Asked for comment, Wal-Mart spokesman Keith Morris said the Wilderness Supercenter's "impact would not be negative to the battlefield if the project goes forward." He said Wal-Mart will respond to Vermont's legislators.
"We still understand the historical significance of the Wilderness site, and we have done everything in our power to ensure that our development is respectful of the location and the guidelines [Orange County] has already put forth," Morris said.
The Vermont House and Senate held hearings, receiving testimony from historians, park Superintendent Russ Smith and representatives of Wal-Mart and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
The pivotal House debate, and the resolution's second reading, came Thursday as Vermont and the nation marked the bicentennial of President Abraham Lincoln's birth.
At 2:21 p.m., less than two hours before legislators began speaking on the measure, church bells across the state rang for 10 minutes to honor the 16th president. Some of the same bells had tolled to celebrate the Civil War's end in 1865 and to mourn Lincoln's death at the hands of an assassin not long after.
Vermont troops suffered their heaviest casualties of the war in the Battle of the Wilderness, turning back a Confederate attack that nearly split the Union army. The May 1864 battle, where Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant first clashed, marked the beginning of the end for Lee's army.
Rep. Rick Hube, a Republican leader, was first to speak during Thursday's debate in the Vermont House. He represents the hometown of Lewis Grant, commander of the 1st Vermont Brigade, which--at great cost--repulsed a critical Confederate attack at Brock Road and Orange Plank Road in Spotsylvania County.
Earlier this decade, then-U.S. Sen. James Jeffords of Vermont secured federal funding to buy 550 acres there and add it to the national park. In 2006, Vermont donated a 20-ton granite monument to its troops that was placed at the historic intersection.
This week's action by the state legislature, though, wasn't about North versus South, said Vincent Illuzzi, chairman of the Vermont Senate Committee on Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs, which first heard testimony on the measure.
"Were Vermonters jeopardizing hallowed ground dear to the hearts of Virginians, I would fully expect Virginians to urge Vermonters to go slowly and consider alternatives before authorizing development of an important historic area," Illuzzi said.
"Like Humpty Dumpty, once the land is carved up and developed, it will never be put together again."
Howard Coffin, a Civil War historian and author who lives in Montpelier, the state capital, said that to Vermonters, the Wilderness is the most important of all Civil War battlefields, eclipsing even Gettysburg.
"The battlefield cannot be moved," Coffin said. "A Wal-Mart can be moved. Just put it somewhere else."
The Civil War Preservation Trust, one of the nine members of the Wilderness Battlefield Coalition, lauded Vermont's action.
"The resolution by the Vermont legislature underscores the national scope of the Wilderness Wal-Mart debate," Jim Campi, the trust's policy director, said yesterday. "All of us--Wal-Mart, Orange County and the preservation community--have a responsibility to protect these beloved yet vulnerable national treasures."
Staff writer Jonas Beals contributed
Clint Schemmer: 540/368-5029
Email: cschemmer@freelancestar.com
