UPDATE: Remembrance of County’s Slave Population joins Confederate Soldier Memorial for coming week

(Editor/Writer’s Note: We promised an update with photos of the week-long memorial to the slave families of Warren County after it was placed shortly after noon on Saturday, September 25, and this is that update, including three new photos below, one of which is also the new feature image for the story. Royal Examiner commends Coming to the Table members for initiating a potentially less divisive path forward with continued acknowledgment of the sacrifice of, not only the men who fought for their state in the Civil War but of the slave families freed from bondage at the end of that war. For slavery was and will always be a war, if not an officially declared one, on human dignity and freedom.)

The recently controversial, circa mid-2020, Confederate Soldier statue on the Warren County Courthouse grounds in the center of the Town of Front Royal is about to get some company. That company according to a press release issued by Coming to the Table on Thursday, September 23, will be marker flags to represent what is cited as over 1100 people – men, women, and children, who were enslaved in Warren County at the outset of the Civil War.

Contacted about the display, which is slated to be placed at noon this Saturday, September 25, and remain through Saturday, October 9, Coming to the Table press contact Julie Chickery estimated as many as 350 markers could be placed representing the number of slave families in Warren County during the American Civil War. A graphic of the planned marker flags was not available with the press release; however, we will update this story with one upon their placement Saturday.

The Confederate Soldier Memorial dating to 1911 survived a 2020 referendum vote on relocation to a private site. At issue for supporters of relocation was whether a memorial at a public site dedicated to law and order, commemorating a rebellion surrounding the issue of continued slavery in the nation was appropriate in the 21st century as racism continues to be a hot-button political issue nationally. Royal Examiner File Photos by Roger Bianchini

Could this be a first step toward a less divisive path concerning the continued memorializing on the Warren County Courthouse lawn of the county’s sons who fought, many who died, for the Confederacy? Perhaps, Chickery agreed of the potential of movement toward a more permanent marker acknowledging the human sacrifice of the county’s slave population. For even if not many of the families of the approximately 600 soldiers names on the Confederate Soldier statue were slaveholders as some have asserted, there were families in this county who did hold slaves, as the number of 1,149 slaves freed here after the Civil War was recorded to have been on February 27, 1866, Chickery noted.

The names of county sons who went to war for the Confederacy. Some supporters of the statue’s continued presence at the courthouse have asserted that the bulk of those men’s families were not of the economic class to own slaves, and their personal reasons for going to war are unknown. – For some, perhaps many, it was just because they were drafted, some memorial supporters pointed out.

Below is the full Coming to the Table Press Release:

WARREN COUNTY COURTHOUSE DISPLAY TO HONOR ENSLAVED MEN, WOMEN, AND CHILDREN

The local chapter of Coming to the Table is hosting a display on the Warren County Courthouse lawn to honor the more than 1,100 men, women, and children enslaved in the county at the onset of the Civil War.

Last year the county was involved in a contentious debate around an item on the ballot to relocate the Confederate monument on the courthouse lawn to a more appropriate private location. One of the erroneous arguments repeated at board meetings and in letters to the editor of local news publications was the implication that slavery was not pervasive in Warren County. Historical records prove these claims to be untrue.

Gene Kilby talking to Elaine Shea, Coming to the Table member, at Saturday’s placement of temporary memorial to the slave families of Warren County.

Co-sponsored by Northern Shenandoah Valley Unites, the display will consist of small utility marker flags that will represent the enslaved. Julie Chickery, Warren County resident and member of both Coming to the Table and Northern Shenandoah Valley Unites said, “This display is an important part of ongoing efforts to acknowledge and heal wounds from racism that is rooted in the United States history of slavery.”

DATE: Saturday, September 25 – Saturday, October 9, 2021

A very informative pamphlet is available for pickup at the County Slave Family Memorial. It describes typical lives of the enslaved here, as well as the actual numbers and demographic context of slaveholding, said to have been established in 1836, in Warren County.

LOCATION: Warren County Courthouse, 1 E Main Street, Front Royal, VA 2263