Amid swirl of debate over Confederate symbols, a look at Lynchburg’s Civil War monuments

Posted: Saturday, July 18, 2015 11:30 pm
Sherese Gore

... One of the monuments in Lynchburg honors John Warwick Daniel, a Confederate veteran wounded in the Battle of the Wilderness in 1864 and known as “The Lame Lion of Lynchburg.” Daniel went on to serve in the General Assembly, the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, where he represented Virginia until his death in 1910. He was honored with the bronze statue, unveiled in 1915, which carries the inscription: “Foremost and best beloved Virginian of his time.”

While serving in the U.S. Senate, Daniel also had a key role in the 1901-02 Virginia Constitutional Convention, which was called with the explicit purpose of disenfranchising blacks. He served as chairman of the Committee on the Elective Franchise.

The convention took successful aim at black suffrage, according to d’Entremont, who has taught at Randolph since 1979 and is the college’s Theodore H. Jack Professor of History. In 1900, there were 147,000 qualified black voters in the commonwealth; by 1904, that number was about 10,000 ...

Among the city’s most conspicuous example of Confederate symbolism in Lynchburg is the statue honoring Confederate soldiers that stands at the top of Monument Terrace. Onlookers packed the area for the memorial’s unveiling May 4, 1900 as Daniel gave “an eloquent and patriotic address,” according to a newspaper account ...

http://www.newsadvance.com/news/local/amid-swirl-of-debate-over-confederate-symbols-a-look-at/article_aa5a151e-2dbd-11e5-bd72-f7f1e2671c0e.html