|
|
||
Date published: 11/12/2009
Civil War Union Gen. Joshua L. Chamberlain wrote of our national battlefields:
"Generations that know us not and that we know not of, heart-drawn to see where and by great things suffered and done for them, shall come to this deathless field, to ponder and dream." Fast forward to the 21st century. The "deathless field" at the Wilderness will be covered with acres of vehicles, some flying flags, U.S. and Confederate, whose drivers I had a great-great-grandfather in the 60th Ohio Volunteer Infantry who was in the vanguard at the Battle of the Wilderness. They sacrificed years of their lives and good health during that war. There are no memorials to these veterans on the National Mall. Their memorials are the battlefields themselves, hallowed by their blood and bones. It is a shame that the people of Orange County, represented by their elected officials, didn't have the courage to face down a corporate bully like Walmart and continue There is no reason that the new store couldn't be sited farther from the battlefield. If Walmart decided it needed to add another unit in central Virginia besides the two at Fredericksburg and the one each at Culpeper and Charlottesville, it would have been willing to take the alternate site. That was just bluster, and we have fallen for it. Belatedly, Congress has taken up the matter of funding for the Civil War battlefields. Carol A. Preece Orange
Lincoln believed the best way to respect the fallen was not to
hallow the ground (the ground was infinitely hollowed by the
fallen beyond any of our efforts), but to preserve the purpose of
the war by winning. If we do not preserve individual rights, we
do not preserve the union of the United States of America.
At the end of the day, the Civil War partisans have no argument for the underlying issue of the property rights of the owners of this property. I hope that the anti-property rights noise this issue has generated will cease after the Orange County Circuit Court rules that the plaintiffs have no standing to prosecute this suit--because their property rights were not direclty affected...but something tells me I am pessimistic this hope will be realized. I do not shop at Wal-Mart
Where are people getting this information that Walmart will have no effect on the battlefield, to such a degree of certainty that they must use ALL CAPS! The Supercenter will be built on top of the battlefield. It will increase traffic and congestion on Hwy 3 & 20 through the battlefield. It will be visible from other battlefield land that has been preserved. You can stick your fingers in your ears and say there will be NO EFFECT, but that wont change anything when the bulldozers come.
The soldiers who fought in the Civil War were fighting for noble causes such as freedom and states and individual rights and to make our nation great; the people of Orange have now decided the almighty dollar is more important than honoring the sacrifices of those men who helped to define our nation. The battlefields are memorials and should be treated as such and we as Americans should revere these hallowed grounds. It is a matter of respect.
if rights were preserved and protected in Orange.
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||
