6/9: Danville After Davis: Driving Dixie Down
In The Band’s 1960’s classic ballad The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, the song’s narrator, Virgil Caine mused on the end of the Confederacy:
It’s a time I remember, oh so well
The night they drove old Dixie down
And the bells were ringing
The night they drove old Dixie down
And the people were singing
They went, “Na, na, la, na, na, na.”
That Southwest Virginia native (Caine “served on the Danville train”) was a witness to the last chaotic days of the Civil War. So was Danville, the last capital of the Confederacy.
After hosting a fleeing Confederate president Jefferson Davis and his cabinet from April 3 – 10, 1865, when Davis entrained for Greensboro, North Carolina, Danville faced an uncertain future. U.S. cavalry was in the area. But so too were hundreds of Confederate troops who were converging on Danville, determined to continue the fight despite the recent surrender of Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.
Confederate Maj. Gen. Lunsford L. Lomax was placed in command of Danville’s defenses. He prepared to destroy multiple town bridges to block a Union advance. Citizens protested the planned destruction of valuable public property. This led to an armed confrontation with the town’s small Home Guard that almost led to bloodshed.
Lomax ultimately backed down. He and his troops left town. But Danville then faced a new threat – thousands of paroled soldiers flooding into the town, hungerly eying the warehouses still crammed with rations intended for Lee’s army but now being shipped southward for use by Joseph Johnston’s Army of Tennessee. Danville was a major supply depot for the Confederate army. Not only that, but the town also held the Danville Arsenal, one of the Confederacy’s largest. Its building was packed with black powder, artillery shells and other implements of war.
Thousands of leaderless, hungry soldiers roaming Danville’s streets, a breakdown of order, food and other supplies within reach, and an arsenal. What could possibly go wrong for Danville and its citizens?
To answer the question and present this intriguing but little-known story about the Civil War in our own backyard, on Tuesday, June 9, the Roanoke Civil War Round Table—winner of a 2024 Kegley Award for Heritage Education [see https://roanokepreservation.org/preservation-awards/]—will host Jarred Marlowe.
Jarred Marlowe is a historian who currently lives in Collinsville, Virginia. He has a bachelor’s degree in history from the Virginia Military Institute and master’s degree from Johnson University. Jarred is a member of the Col. George Waller Chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution and the Social Media Director of the Blue & Gray Education Society.
Date, Time & Location: Tuesday, June 9 (7:00 pm), Chapel of the Residents’ Center at Friendship, 397 Hershberger Road, Roanoke, VA, 24012. Admission $5.00 for Non-Round Table Members (and becoming a Round Table member is welcome).
[1] You can hear The Band’s vintage version here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1JGWFcvAwU.
