A Battlefield Tour in North Carolina: General Jacob D. Cox’s Plea for Preservation
General Jacob D. Cox wrote of taking a battlefield tour of Guilford Court House after the surrender of Gen. Joseph Johnson’s army in 1865:
“A summer ride which a party of us took to the battlefield of “Guilford-Old-Courthouse” may be worth noting as an encouragement to believe that our descriptions of the scenes of our own engagements need not become unintelligible even in the distant future. Among the combats of our Revolutionary War, Guilford Court House ranks high in importance; for the check there given to the invading British army under Lord Cornwallis by the Continental forces under General Greene was the turning-point in a campaign. Greensborough is the present county-seat of Guilford County, and the “old Court House,” a few miles distant, has disappeared as a village. A few buildings almost unused being the only mark of the old town. Natural topography, however, does not change its material features easily, and in this case a cleared field or two where the forest had formerly extended seemed to be the only change that had occurred in the past century. With General Greene’s official report of the battle in our hands, we could trace with complete accuracy every movement of the advancing enemy and his own dispositions to receive the attack. We could see the reasons for the movements on both sides, and how the undulations of surface and the cover of woods and fences were taken advantage of by either commander. Military principles being the same in all times, we found ourselves criticsing [sic] the movements as if they had occurred on one of our recent battlefields. It brought the older and the later war into almost startling nearness, and made us realize, as perhaps nothing else could have done, how the future visitor will trace the movements in which we have had a part; and when we have been dust for centuries, will follow the path of our battalions from hill to hill, from stream to stream, from the border of a wood to the open ground where the bloody conflict was hand to hand, and will comment upon the history we have made. It pointed the lesson that what is accurate in our reports and narratives will be recognized by the intelligent critic, and that the face of the country itself will be an unalterable record which will go far to expose the true reasons of things – to show what statements are consistent with the physical conditions under which a battle was fought, and what, if any, are warped to hide a repulse or to claim a false success, Nature herself will thus prove the strongest ally of truth.[1]
That is a moving endorsement for battlefield preservation from a far-sighted veteran of the Civil War.
[1] Cox, Jacob Dolson, Military Reminiscences of the Civil War, Volume two, November 1863-June 1865, Aeterna Publishing, 2010, pp. 326-327.
Cox is a bit of an unsung American Military hero. Classic Civilian-soldier
And a friend and Ohio colleague of Garfield
Speaking of Jacob Dolson Cox, I fervently pray that the American Battlefield Trust and the State of Maryland will place a high priority on preserving the area of the battlefield of Fox’s Gap that I designated in my book, Hood’s Defeat Near Fox’s Gap, as “Cox’s Intersection” and not perpetuate the erroneous history of the battle as described by Ezra Carman, an individual who did not participate in the battle.
The battlefield is now a small park but still of interest.
In 1857, David Hunter Strother (“Porte Crayon”) visited Guilford and did an article and drawing for Harper’s.
He wrote: “I reined up my horse in the midst of a group of ruined chimneys and decayed houses, all, save
one, silent and deserted. There was no human in sight of whom to make in inquiry, but I knew
instinctively that I was upon the field of Guilford. The face of the country answered so well to
the descriptions which I had read, and there has been apparently so little change since the day
of the battle, that there was no difficulty in recognizing the localities”.
He was later a US officer during the Civil War.
Thanks to Brian and, of course, Dave, et.al., for the nice words about my friend Jacob Cox. He and I have been together for over 50 years, beginning with the writing of my biography of him in the form of my doctoral dissertation (Ohio State, 1969), and continuing with my two books about him, “Citizen-General: Jacob Dolson Cox and the Civil War Era” (Ohio U. Press, 2014); and “My Dearest Lilla: Letters Home from Civil War General Jacob D Cox.” (U of Tennessee Press, 2023). So please let me add to this item the final paragraph I wrote in the chapter of “Citizen-General” about Cox the historian: “Cox could not have anticipated the degree to which his nineteenth-century vision has been fulfilled in our time. Every year millions of visitors walk on the ground where he and other Civil War soldiers fought, fell, and died, studying the strategy, tactics, and movements of two great armies, the memory of which Cox helped to make an indelible part of our nation’s history.” I should think we all can agree on that point. All the best, Gene
Thanks Gene for adding from your book. I have enjoyed your work.