In 1856, future Confederate hero Turner Ashby led a violent pro-slavery mob in an attack against John C. Underwood, of Clarke County, Virginia. Underwood was an anti-slavery man who spoke at the Republican Party’s convention in Philadelphia that year. The slave-owning Ashby, who also led armed men against John Brown’s anti-slavery uprising, became a Confederate cavalry leader. Ironically, he volunteered to attack the Federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, the same site John Brown was executed for trying to capture. In June of 1862 he was killed in a skirmish. His supporters photographed the dead Ashby propped up and in uniform. The creepy photo was widely reprinted and helped make him into an iconic Lost Cause figure. Ashby would be dubbed the “Black Knight of the Confederacy.”
Underwood, who after the Civil War was principally responsible for Virginia adopting its first color-blind constitution, went on to become the Reconstruction Era governor of the state. Then he was forgotten. On purpose. Virginia’s public history for the first century and a quarter after the Civil War lionized the defenders of White Supremacy and vilified those who opposed slavery.
Now, the State of Virginia will officially recall Underwood with a highway marker. The marker will be located on John Mosby Highway (U.S. 50) near Mt. Carmel Road in Clarke County. The marker will say:
“John C. Underwood, an attorney from New York, settled near here early in the 1850s. Harassed for his antislavery activism and his work on behalf of the Republican Party, he left Virginia in 1856. Pres. Abraham Lincoln appointed him a federal judge for Virginia’s eastern district in 1863. An outspoken advocate of equal rights for African Americans after the Civil War, Underwood was elected president of Virginia’s Constitutional Convention of 1867–68. Among the convention’s 105 members were 24 African Americans. The ‘Underwood Constitution,’ ratified in 1869, granted Black men the right to vote, established a system of free public schools, and secured other democratic reforms.”
In his 1856 Republican Convention speech, Underwood declared that slavery “has blighted what was naturally one of the fairest and loveliest portions of our country…” Turner Ashby chaired a committee that accused Underwood of creating the “impression” that Virginians opposed slavery “which we pronounce a libel upon our institutions.” Ashby’s committee voted to demand that Underwood “leave the State as speedily as he can find it in his power to do so.” When Underwood arrived at the local train station, Ashby met him, asking one of his accomplices if they should coat him with tar for speaking out against slavery. Ashby told Underwood to leave the county or else force would be used. He soon wrote to Underwood repeating his threat. Underwood soon fled. [Source: Blood Image: Turner Ashby in the Civil War and the Southern Mind by Paul Christopher Anderson (2006).]
In 1955, soon after the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision ending de jure segregation, a high school in the Shenandoah Valley was named for Ashby and the school’s teams were named The Black Knights.
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The title of this post seems to indicate that Turner Ashby was an Abolitionist rather than the fact that Ashby drove an abolitionist out of the state.
Not my best title!
Just reading your “confusing” article. Are you another Democrat hoping to re-write history, which should and must, correctly reflect that Southern White Democrats were the party of slavery and the KKK? The republican party was founded by Blacks and white abolitionists. Certainly there were bad, and better, slave owners who found (rightly or wrongly) themselves caught in moral and ethical delimmas concerning loyalties to family, friends and relatives. War is hell and this US Civil War was particularly pernitious and devisive.
It is my opinion that there are many, many people who do not believe that White Republicans and Blacks were allies in the fight against slavery. I blame much of this on an education system that is proving to be a complete and utter failure.
I realize that I’m a late arrival but would much appreciate your thoughtful response.
Most of my regular readers are fully informed of the Republican Party’s positions on slavery and the movement after 1865 towards extending civil rights to Blacks. As for the opposition, you can read my articles on the Democratic Party here:
https://thereconstructionera.com/?s=democrat
The title of this post is clear to me. Turner Ashby’s family enslaved members of mine in Fauquier, VA. My surname ‘Green’ comes from the family of his mother, Dorothea Green. My family, as slaves, comprised the source of Turner Ashby’s wealth that he fought so hard to maintain.
Thanks for the personal connection to the story. I grew up in the North but I was familiar with the romantic story of Ashby when I was a boy. He was portrayed as an “early-fallen knight errant.” No mention was made of the wealth he accumulated through the enslavement of humans or of his role in terrorizing those who questioned the justice of slavery.
Please edit your title for this post!!
Hi, Do you have Monroe and Green?
My 4th great uncle, Nathaniel Carter married Lucinda Monroe, (No DNA matche of the Virginia Carters), d/o Monroe and Green of Fauquier and Prince William.
In 1858 Nathaniel moved his family to Missouri. Two of his sons fought on the Union side, one dying and buried in Union cemetery in AK.
Their descriptions, they are tall, one dark hair, dark complexion and gray eyes, one light hair, light complexion, blue eyes.
It seems that her father was a Revelationary soldier.
But as usually those who were Union from Virginia are hard to find. I have more Virginia relatives that were Union than Confederates.
In fact my 3rd great grandfather spied on Mosby men, informed a scout with Illinois 8th along with Silas Thorpe (Virginia) , his brother-in-law, my uncle who was with the NY13th. This lead to a successful attack against Mosby.
My daughter is married to a man that descend from Green, Hawkins and Hill, Fauquier and Stafford.
Thanks for sharing your Green family.
Patty
John C. Underwood was also the Federal Judge who, along with Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, presided over the case of United States v. Jefferson Davis after the end of the Civil War.