Alexandria's Veterans #4

Casus Belli: T h e   S H E R M A N   B R O T H E R S

General William Tecumseh Sherman, about 1863.

Today, were I to mention Sherman, you might easily think I am talking about Lancaster, Ohio, native General William Tecumseh Sherman, famous for his 'March to the Sea,' the military strategy that was the death of the South during the American Civil War (1861-1865.)  In the years leading up to the Civil War, I obviously would be referring his brother, John Sherman.

Senator John Sherman (R-OH).

Initially, John Sherman was a Whig.  Sherman was also an Anti-Slavery advocate and, as such, became instrumental in the founding of the Republican Party.  Democrats tended to be pro-slavery.  Sherman served first as a Representative from Ohio, then was elected Senator for Ohio.  Sherman was also active in Abraham Lincoln's campaign for the Presidency.

John Sherman was no stranger to Alexandria.  But first, let us look at some street names.

Church Street was named Church Street because in Alexandria, Alexander Devilbiss -- Alexandria's founder -- envisioned the location of the churches.  Accordingly, the Congregational Church was built on Mill Street, named because the Carlock Mill was at the end of the street.  On the other hand, the Methodists built their church towards the end of Church Street.  The Baptists built their church at the very end of Church Street, where a graveled parking lot now stands.  The lot along Main Street from what was then the edge of town, where the current Baptist Church stands, to the library was a Commons, a free space for outdoor gatherings and events.  Eventually, a schoolhouse was built on the Commons between the two churches.  This school was torn down when the new (1893) schoolhouse was built where today's Elementary School gym formerly stood.  In 1899, the Baptist Church finished the red brick church at its present location.

The Alexandria Baptist Church on far left as it appeared in the late 1800s.

Let's go back to the Baptist Church at the edge of town on Church Street in the 1850s.  As a child, I recall the foundation stones of the old Baptist Church sticking up through the ground, completely unaware of the history these stones contained.

Several times in the 1850s, John Sherman came to Alexandria to talk, in the basement of the old Baptist Church, about the Abolitionist Movement.  The Abolitionist Movement was the movement that objected to slavery.  Most Abolitionists based their beliefs in Biblical truth and the concept that all men were created equal.  Abolitionism was, in their minds, politically and religiously correct.  History would bear out their belief.

Alexandria was profoundly Abolitionist.  Alexandria was at the end of The Great Awakening.  This movement was predicated on Isaiah 66:8 [Wycliff Bible], " Who heard ever such a thing, and who saw a thing like this? Whether the earth shall travail of child in one day, a folk shall be chided together? For why Zion travailed of child and chided her sons. (Whoever heard of such a thing, and whoever saw something like this? Shall a whole country be born after just one day’s labor, or shall an entire nation be born together? But Zion went into labor, and gave birth to her children all at once."

"A Nation born in a day..."  That was the United States on July 4, 1776.  For the sake of the nation, Abolitionists believed, slavery was wrong, lest God avenge us all.  How profound, that the Caucasians in the industrialized North should reject slavery while the agrarian South relies on cheap slave labor to run their plantations.  How profound.

John Sherman brought Anti-Slavery to Alexandria.  J. M. Scott promoted Anti-Slavery in St. Albans.  Alexandria raised soldiers to fight slavery through military service, guns, and bullets.  Scott would form a company of soldiers at the Great Circle Mound in Newark under Senator John Sherman's call.

Abolition became the theme in Alexandria politics leading up to the American Civil War.  St. Albans supplied the soldiers to fight slavery.