The annual conference of the Hymn Society was held this year on the campus of the University of Richmond, an elite private institution of higher learning. Its elegant campus sits among the wealthy estates of the River Road area of west Richmond, and I could not help thinking of the Capital and its contrast with the poverty of Districts 11 and 12 in the Hunger Games book. Such thoughts do not, however, keep me from taking two desserts from the lavish display at dinner. I am not sure that I have ever eaten in such luxury, and can well imagine what Katniss and Peeta (and Rue and Thresh and many others from the book) would have thought -- as they loaded their plates and came back for seconds and thirds. Or what some of the people elsewhere in Richmond might think.
Years ago, our church sponsored a family of refugees from the Ukraine, back during the days of Soviet rule. There were two adults and four or five children -- the adults were short and thin, the children emaciated and small. I was with them when they first encountered an American supermarket. They could not believe their eyes -- all this food! I think of them as I marvel at this cafeteria.
I understand why the UR campus is so immaculate, why its dining hall and food are so lavish: they must attract students and their tuition dollars, and many of these students come from families of privilege where they assume such luxury as their entitlement. And this is no different from other elite private colleges and universities across the country, including the one where I received my baccalaureate. But I remain uneasy about it, and aware of the fragility of this manner of life: its manicured lawns, its perfect buildings -- and, I noted, its omnipresent security force.
Sunday morning finds me at St. James' Episcopal Church, its spire the focal point at the east end of Monument Avenue in Richmond. On this summer Sunday, the church is about eighty percent full, a lively congregation of all ages, including plenty of children and teens. I am underdressed in white shirt and tie with dress slacks and shoes; almost all of the men are in suits, the women in dresses.
The liturgy is straightforward Rite Two with five hymns, all well-played and sung with vigor. We kneel at appropriate times, but at no point do I see anyone make the sign of the cross; the overall feel of the liturgy is low-church.
I take an instant dislike to the Rector, whose function this day is Talk Show Host (at the announcements) and Celebrant. He reminds me of other clergy I have known, and it is unfair of me to lump him in with them. At the least, the obvious vigor of the parish reflects well on the parish leadership, and the Rector is always part of that.
I had arrived late, slipping into a back pew during the Collect for Purity, so I am curious whether anyone would greet me at the end. The postlude is buried under an instant din of loud chatter following the dismissal. I stand in place, listening as best I can, until the organist finishes (Buxtehude, played very well), and make my way to the door. There is much friendly conversation -- it is obvious that this congregation cherishes its fellowship -- but not a word for me, not so much as a friendly smile. I might as well be invisible. I am in the line for an assisting priest at one of the three doors; she takes my hand and with an artificial smile worthy of Effie Trinket from the Hunger Games, she says "Welcome. I'm so glad you're here." I walk down the avenue to the statue of "Jeb" Stuart, who was a communicant at St. James and was buried from this parish after his death in battle. The President, Jefferson Davis, and his wife Varina, and Mrs. Lee (and Robert, when possible) attended St. Paul's Episcopal, a few blocks away. We will have a hymn festival at St. Paul's later in the week
The afternoon lies before me, free until the conference officially begins at 5:00. I drive east on Broad Street, past the even more historic St. John's Episcopal Church, site of Patrick Henry's words "Give me liberty, or give me death." I linger at the National Park Service welcome center at the top of the hill on Broad Street, site of the Chimbarazo Hospital, the Confederacy's largest. More than 70,000 patients were here during the four years of its existence, with a lower mortality rate than many modern hospitals. A young park ranger makes up with her friendliness for the clergy of St. James; I am the only visitor, and she spends some fifteen minutes telling me about the site and the other National Park Service battlefield sites around Richmond. It is far too much for one afternoon, and I quickly get lost, seeking US 360 out to the Cold Harbor battlefield. I give up, and drive the length of Broad Street back to the university.
Later in the week I visited the battlefield sites east and southeast of Petersburg, some thirty miles south of Richmond. I linger at The Crater, remembering that horrible day. Those who may have seen the movie "Cold Mountain" a few years ago will remember the battle scene early in the film; that was the Crater. Some Pennsylvania coal miners in the Union army dug a tunnel under the Confederate lines and filled it with gunpowder. The explosion immediately killed some 270 South Carolina soldiers who were in the trenches, making a thirty-foot deep crater still visible today. As was too often the case in this war, the Union soldiers were not effectively led -- their commander, Gen. James H. Ledlie, was well behind the lines, drunk -- and they were soon driven back with heavy casualties in hand-to-hand fighting in and around this crater. A division of United States Colored Troops had been specially trained for this day, and their casualties were the heaviest, the Confederate soldiers killing many of them even after they surrendered. Some were bayoneted by their own Union allies, "white soldiers who feared reprisals from victorious CSA troops" (from Wikipedia, s.v. "Battle of the Crater"). There was not such an evil day as this in all the five years of the war.
On my way back west after the conference, I followed the route taken by the Army of Northern Virginia in its retreat from Richmond and Petersburg, and I stopped at Saylor's Creek. This was where Grant's army caught up with the Confederates, who were strung out with their wagon trains over the country roads, and on this day, April 6, 1865, the Army ceased to be an effective fighting force; almost 8,000 men from the Confederate Army were captured, killed, or wounded. In the aftermath, the Union dead received honorable burial in a little cemetery that is still there at the site; the Confederates were left to be eaten by the animals, and their remains were later dumped without ceremony into unmarked mass graves.
Why do I go to places like this?
The best answer is that given by Mr. Lincoln on another battlefield:
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Lincoln could not know that the "new birth of freedom" would soon be smothered by the robber barons who were already poised to take over his Republican Party and who control it to this day, and the Democratic Party as well. He could not know what a distant dream "government of the people, by the people, for the people" would become by the twenty-first century, hardly more than a bitter joke.
Perhaps he did not understand that the Confederates were fighting for such a government just as much as those on the Union side; their vision was a Jeffersonian democracy, an escape from what they saw as the tyranny of a too-powerful central government.
But Lincoln was right. So long as we remember those times, those people on both sides who, in their respective ways, fought for freedom, the dream shall not have altogether perished, and may yet in some future age become a reality.
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