Page 3 - Demo

“ Judge Campbell did not appreciate the accusation that he had influenced the not-guilty verdict and, after failing to extract an apology from the preacher, “horsewhipped the reverend on the Amherst courthouse steps.” Worse, the “whipping took place in the ‘presence of many ladies.’”
Let’s take a look at the “Wine List” first.
This essay by S. Allen Chambers is really a humorous, extended toast to the man who penned both the Declaration of Independence and Lynchburg’s first wine list. Is there any connection between the two documents? Perhaps to think like Jefferson we need to drink like Jefferson.
This is no joke. Wine, especially moderate amounts of the red stuff, is making headlines these days for its preventative potential in the fight against all that ails us: dementia, heart disease, cancer, tooth decay—the list goes on. Had Jefferson succeeded in his efforts to ensure an adequate supply of affordable wines for all Americans—who knows?—alcoholism would be a curiosity and Prohibition as we know it could have been avoided altogether.
“No nation is drunken where wine is cheap,” observed Jefferson. But Chambers notes that Jefferson’s “wishes did not prevail, and wine continued to be the Ameri- can drink of choice only for those who could afford it, while ‘all the middling and lower conditions of society [were condemned] to the poison of whisky, which is destroying them by wholesale, and ruining their families.’”
The effects of Jefferson’s “poison whisky” extended beyond the family, spilling out into the streets and, in the case of Amherst, Virginia, flowing right up to the courthouse steps. “Driven by Drink? Why the Village of Amherst Became a Town” by Robert Wimer, revives a 1902 incident that brought the village’s “drinking problem” to the attention of the New York Times and “catapulted the Anti-Saloon League of Virginia into national prominence....” The situation was complicated by the fact that, at the time, the residents of Amherst had voted to go “dry,” with exceptions for certain uses like medicinal alcohol.
The gist of the story is that a Baptist preacher and writer, Reverend Charles H. Crawford, had accused Amherst Judge Clarence J. Campbell of rigging the outcome of a trial involving a former bartender turned druggist who was dispensing gallons and gallons of medicinal whiskey into the prescription bottles of the patrons of a former tavern turned drugstore. Judge Campbell did not appreciate the accusation that he had influenced the not-guilty verdict and, after failing to extract an apology from the preacher, “horsewhipped the reverend on the Amherst courthouse steps.” Worse, the “whipping took place in the ‘presence of many ladies.’”
Whiskey, no matter which side of the issue people embraced, appears to have been a polarizing and exhausting beverage compared with the energizing effects
of Jefferson’s beloved wine. Consider, for example, Gaye Wilson’s article “A Nar- row Escape from the British, Thanks to Jack Jouett.” In this story a captain in the Virginia militia races forty miles on horseback through hazardous back roads, from the vicinity of the Louisa Court House to Monticello, to warn Jefferson that the British are coming. There, fortified with a glass of Jefferson’s Madeira, he sprints back into the night and rides another two miles to wake members of the legislature in Charlottesville.
Though “sometimes referred to as ‘the Paul Revere of the South,’ Jouett never gained the widespread fame granted Revere by Longfellow’s poem.” (In October 1909 the Charlottesville Daily Progress published a poem honoring Jack Jouett Jr., and a quick Google search turns up a few others. But Lynch’s Ferry has unearthed what appears to be a Beat-era-inspired Jouett tribute by “Shortfellow” Giles—see page 20.)
Speaking of rare finds, this issue also features the first-ever article written by
the father-and-son team Roger G. Garfield and Graham C. Garfield. “Taking the Rivermont Trolley” manages to show the beauty of the Lynchburg trolley system in its heyday without conjuring any wistful notions of days gone by. Transportation systems, adorable trolleys included, are costly, maintenance-laden endeavors. Still, looking at the cover of this issue makes me want to jump up and down, beg, plead, and threaten to hold my breath until the city reinstalls the Rivermont trolleys. Please—I promise we’ll take care of them.
L editor
from the
SPRING/SUMMER 2010 