In an undated handout photo, a plaque at the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Va., commemorates a stretch of the Potomac as the “River of Blood†due to casualties there during the Civil War. Posted on 11/25/2015 10:39:04 AM PST by Trumpinator
In an undated handout photo, a plaque at the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Va., commemorates a stretch of the Potomac as the “River of Blood†due to casualties there during the Civil War.
Between the 14th hole and the 15th tee of one of the club's two courses, Mr. Trump installed a flagpole on a stone pedestal overlooking the Potomac, to which he affixed a plaque purportedly designating "The River of Blood."
"Many great American soldiers, both of the North and South, died at this spot," the inscription reads. "The casualties were so great that the water would turn red and thus became known as 'The River of Blood.'"
The inscription, beneath his family crest and above Mr. Trump's full name, concludes: "It is my great honor to have preserved this important section of the Potomac River!"
Like many of Mr. Trump's claims, the inscription was evidently not fact-checked.
"No. Uh-uh. No way. Nothing like that ever happened there," said Richard Gillespie, the executive director of the Mosby Heritage Area Association, a historical preservation and education group devoted to an 1,800-square-mile section of the Northern Virginia Piedmont, including the Lowes Island site.
"The only thing that was remotely close to that," Mr. Gillespie said, was 11 miles up the river at the Battle of Ball's Bluff in 1861, a rout of Union forces in which several hundred were killed.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
That Gingrich comment (they actually had the cohones to go ask him?) reminds me of this response to boxers vs briefs.
I’d love to see video of the look on Gingrich’s face when he was asked about this ... It could go one of two ways: annoyed at being asked, or borderline cracking up with laughter over it.
I sleep fine. Wake me up when it's been changed.
-— This showed up as a lead tickler story on my Facebook feed. Top three. -—
They got him this time...
What is good for the goose is good for the gander. Trump was the same with Carson....calling him a pathological liar on the scale of a child molester.
No, lying about a non-existent battle and putting up a bogus plaque on your property is the stunt. I fail to see how that honors anyone from the war.
The exact and precise geographical location of the event (and the plaque) is irrelevant, and your candidate would tell you to show some class and just be glad SOMEONE did something to remember them.
Then why the need to include "on this spot" on the plaque? He could have honored them without lying.
Actually, it is fair to be incensed over this. Ok, more like upset, or possibly peeved or miffed.
The plaque is wrong. It needs to be changed. But it doesn’t rise to the level of an albatross that should be hung around Trump’s neck. The issue is the plaque, not the guy who happens to own the course and might have been misinformed over the sites significance.
I poked around some Civil War maps, and found a skirmish named the Battle of Dranesville occurred around 2 miles south of this spot.
This was after Ball’s Bluff, and both armies were set in for winter...and essentially competing foraging parties ran into each other. Result: 300 casualties. And (I find these types of tid bits interesting) it was the first time in the eastern theater that the Union won.
So we have Ball’s Bluff 11 miles northwest of the Trump site, and Dranesville 2 miles south of the Trump site. Its not unreasonable to believe that some of the wounded may have indeed ended up on this river bank...perhaps to be evacuated, or just to drink water. Its also not unreasonable to believe that local lore includes stories of blood in the river.
This is the coordinate of the battle:
39.0006130, -77.3451880
When placed in Google Maps, just pan a little north, and there’s Lowes Island.
But is it a lie, or is it an error?
There’s a big difference between the two.
Except that Trump is saying that “a lot of people must have died” because it was a major river crossing and that is where that things like that logically went down according to him. Reading between the lines what he really means it that this must have been a prime battle site because it occurred in a place that now happens to be the location of his golf course.
That whole section of the Potomac was the site of all sorts of skirmishing. It’s going to be hard to find a point where shots _weren’t_ fired ...
Have you taken your psychotic meds?
Maybe annoyed and laughing.
OMG!!
The plaque, which happens to have his name on it, says that.
Again, it’s doubtful that Trump is a Civil War hobbyist, let alone an expert. It’s doubtful that he personally researched the matter and likely that he just accepted someone elses overembellishment of the sites significance.
It happens. I have a LOT of friends in the area who incorrectly claim that their houses sit on the site of some battle or another. Not because they are lying but because someone else told them that.
It’s very much like a game of telephone.
“It’s going to be hard to find a point where shots weren’t fired ...”
True. I found an interesting report put together by Fairfax County:
http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/parks/resource-management/downloads/civilwarinventory.pdf
On page 21, it states that during the fall/winter of 1861, there were 61 skirmishes!
And since this was an approach to Washington, it was part of the screening defenses. A map on page 28 shows the northernmost end of this screen (in VA at least) was a few hundred yards east of Lowe’s island.
I have no doubt that locals have passed down stories over the years (likely exaggerated each generation) about this time.
November 24, 1861: The day the Potomac ran red with blood at Lowe’s Island
Posted on 25 November 2015
On November 27, 1861, a note from John Hawkshurst, a Virginia civilian and unionist, arrived at Brigadier-General George McCall’s headquarters at Camp Pierpoint, Virginia. The note read:
The following is a list of the citizens that attacked four of our men on Lowe’s Island, killing two of them, and stripped and left them so that the hogs ate them: Dr. William B. Day, Dr. John Day, Thomas Carper, John Coleman, Gilson Jenkins, Samuel Jenkins, Thomas Coleman (who now has one of the pistols taken at that time), James Farr, Philip Carper, James Carper and Stephen Farr. They are all residents about Dranesville. This information was furnished by three of Mrs. Coleman’s negroes who came into Camp Griffin November 26, 1861.
And thus blood was shed at Lowes Island. However, let me admit the date in my teasing title is a guess. The fragmentary report gives no indication of the actual date. The killing (and leaving for the hogs) of two soldiers happened sometime in November of that year, most likely within a few days of the message’s receipt at Camp Peirpoint.
However, I find it appropriate to offer a speculative date for this incident since Lowe’s Island is in the news... and in the news specifically because of speculative Civil War history. Yesterday the New York Times ran a story concerning a plaque at the Trump National Golf Course, pointing out the glaring inaccuracies. Normally I don’t post about political topics. But this particular subject sort of lands in my lap. So I’ll attempt to step around the politics while pointing out the history amid the rhetoric.
You won’t find an HMDB entry for “The River of Blood.” Back when I first noticed the plaque, probably around the time it was put in place (I think 2009 or 2010), it was my opinion the plaque did not measure up to the definition of “historical marker.” And judging from the belated reaction to the plaque, it appears my judgement was fairly sound. The text reads:
“The River of Blood”
Many great American soldiers, both of the North and South, died at this spot, “The Rapids”, on the Potomac River. The casualties were so great that the water would turn red and thus became known as “The River of Blood.”
It is my great honor to have preserved this important portion of the Potomac River! - Donald John Trump.
You will find dozens of articles (some quoting Civil War authorities or written by such authorities) that are going to say “nothing” happened at the site during the Civil War. I’ll give them some benefit of the doubt, maybe nothing of grand importance happened on the site of the golf course. But the truth of the matter is somewhere between “River of Blood” and “nothing”... with the needle much closer to the nothing side of the scale.
The site of the golf course is Lowe’s Island, on the banks of the Potomac, here in Loudoun County (though very close to the county line). The island is formed by an old chute of Sugarland Run. What those of us from the Mississippi bottom lands would call a slough. That channel passes between Lowe’s and the mainland, then empties into the Potomac just above Dam No. 2 and Seneca Falls. The area may be familiar to readers, as it close to Rowser’s Ford.
Circling back to the 1861 incident, I’ve never been able to get so much as a rumor of who the two soldiers were or even what unit they were in (whip me for not exhausting all research paths before posting...). On November 26, Colonel George Bayard, 1st Pennsylvania Cavalry, led an expedition to the Dranesville area. Bayard’s objective was to capture Confederate pickets known to be posted at the town. This was somewhat a precursor to the Battle of Dranesville, which would occur the following month. Bayard would succinctly report, on November 27, “We killed or captured all we saw.” Among the names of those captured, Bayard offered many of the same listed in the note from Hawkshurst. So either Bayard just cast a very wide net and happened to bring in the suspects, or he had in mind specific individuals when setting out on the mission.
But this was not the only “incident” that occurred on Lowe’s Island during the war. As mentioned, General J.E.B. Stuart passed near the island as he struggled to cross in June 1863. And that crossing point made the island an attractive staging area for both Federal and Confederate operations from time to time. But the only other “action” that is documented occurred in late July 1863. Confederate irregulars maintained a cache of stores and corralled livestock on Lowe’s Island. Armed with that information, Major Ulysses Doubleday (brother of the general who is alleged to have invented baseball) lead a detachment of the 4th New York Heavy Artillery to clear the island. Doubleday reported no casualties. And his action freed Colonel Percy Wyndham to take the 1st New Jersey Cavalry through Dranesville on July 27
So there you have it... the “river of blood” at Lowe’s Island amounted to two soldiers, whom we don’t have names for, who were killed by some local citizens. (UPDATE: Ron passed along some more information on this. The soldiers were from the 34th New York.) A far fetch from what is written on the plaque.
And that plaque? Why are we making it news, some 154 years after the blood flowed on Lowe’s Island? I think you can answer that question without much thought. I’d simply say that when the “news” is something this stale, one has inclination to question the messenger as much as the message.
In his defense of the plaque, Trump gave something like a “my people talked to other people” response. I will add that back when I first became aware of the plaque, my line of inquiry lead me to the names of two local historians who were said to have provided services to Trump’s business. That does square with the narrative - Trump’s people discussed this with some local authority. That authority provided the customer what he wanted to hear... and what would sound really nice on a plaque. At a minimum, an authority who was unwilling to correct a mistaken appreciation for the facts.
And I think we need to keep that in mind on this issue. There are all sorts of folks out there selling a brand of “snake oil” that reads “history” on the bottle’s label. It’s not hard, in Virginia, to concoct a story that is pleasing to the ears and the egos, given the rich history that appears on every corner. Likewise, it is not hard to shuffle aside history where inconveniently in the way of some project.
That last part is why I object to the plaque. Even if corrected for the historical inaccuracies, the plaque is like a dagger thrust. Lowe’s Island was not preserved. And the use of that verb on the plaque is a much larger miscarriage of fact than saying the Potomac ran red.
(Citations and sources: OR, Series I, Volume 5, Serial 5, pages 448-449; Series I, Volume 27, Serial 44, page 979; Series II, Volume 2, Serial 115, page 1286.)
https://markerhunter.wordpress.com/2015/11/25/november-24-1861-lowes-island/
He said that huh?
What brand batteries do you use in your hearing aid?
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