Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society
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Source: October 1992 Volume 30 Number 4, Pages 129–132

Sacred Places

Warren D. Beach

Page 129

There are several levels of "sacred places" -- places that are sacred to us in one way or another. I would like to discuss these different levels and then spend a little tine on the sacred place on which we meet today.

I have categorized four levels of sacred places. They are: ... Organizationally sacred places
... Regionally sacred places
... Personally sacred places
... Nationally sacred places

First are the organizationally sacred places, places of significance to an organization such as your Tredyffrin Easttown History Club.

Your organization has such a place, or places. I don't know what they are, but they exist for you. It may be a place where your founder lived, or where some interesting event in your organization took place. It is there.

Next are regionally sacred places. These are places that have great meaning, but that meaning is generally limited geographically.

An example of a regionally sacred place is Stone Mountain, Georgia. Some of you may have been there; in fact, prior to moving to Valley Forge, we lived just a few miles from there.

Page 130

It is a large mountain just to the northeast of Atlanta, Georgia, on which there are carvings of three important figures in history -- Jefferson Davis, Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson and Robert E. Lee.

While these men are important in history, they are primarily of regional importance. (Of course I say this as a northerner; if you are a southerner, these men are national heroes!)

Some regionally sacred places actually don't really exist. How many of you have read that great American novel Gone With The Wind? The focal point of the novel is Tara, the antebellum mansion and home of Scarlett O'Hara. There really isn't any Tara. (I'm sorry if this is bad news for some of you.) However, tradition puts Tara in or near the present-day town of Jonesboro, Georgia -- and believe me, you can buy plenty of Tara souvenirs in the town of Jonesboro.

Another level of sacred places is personally sacred places. We all have one or more personally sacred place.

I'd like to share one of mine with you as an example, and in that I like to tell this story. My "sacred place" story starts in late June of 1863 a few miles north of Atlanta, Georgia. The area is now called Cheatam Hill, and is a part of the Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield. Then it was called "the bloody angle", where the Confederate troops were making what they thought was the final defense of Atlanta.

My great-grandfather, George P. Beach, a private soldier in the 36th Indiana regiment, was on the front lines. (I don't know whether or not he wanted to be there, but being a private he had little choice about that.) The 36th Indiana regiment had been in the front of the advancing Union army since it had left Chattanooga, Tennessee, a few weeks earlier. In command of the Union campaign at that point was a man whose name you may recognize, William T. Sherman, later to be famous for the "March to ths Sea". Anyway, Pvt. Beach was wounded in the fierce and close fighting that took place. He was shot in the posterior. (There is also a story about the location of the wound, but I'd better not go into that.) The wound was serious and marked the end of his fighting in the campaign. The first surgeon called informed him that the leg would have to come off, a common treatment in those days. He would have none of that and called for a second opinion. Somehow another doctor decided that the wound wasn't serious enough for amputation, and so Pvt. Beach was sent home to Spiceland, Indiana to recover.

The story now changes in time to 1984, in the late summer. We were assigned to the Chatahoochee River National Recreation Area in Atlanta. A friend of mine, a historian at Kennesaw Mountain, was able to search the records and find the exact location of the 36th Indiana during the battle. On a bright sunny day my father, then in his early 80s, my son, then in his early 20s, and I, somewhere in between, were able to locate the spot.

Page 131

We were within 50 feet or so of where my father's grandfather, my great-grandfather, and my son's great-great-grandfather fell wounded. For just a moment there was a silence among us, and some sort of connection was made with our past. I cannot say exactly what the feelings were, but I knew then that I had found a personally sacred place. I have since done a fair amount of research in family history and have yet to discover a fact or a site that has as much meaning as I found that day in Georgia.

Another level of sacred places encompasses those areas that are important to all of us. These places are of transcendent inportance to our nation and are such that they are often turning points in our national character.

They are places that, when you name them, should automatically conjure up some sort of vision of national pride and cultural history. Let me, by way of example, name a few such places and see if some spark of recognition isn't ignited in your memory: Bunker Hill ... Fort Sumter ... Ford's Theater . . . Pearl Harbor ... Valley Forge.

They are all places'where our national character, was shaped, where things occurred that made us into the nation we are today. They are not all places where battles were fought, although they too are important, and certainly not all places of victory. For you see, a battle won or a battle lost can be equally important in our history.

The name Valley Forge conjures up, to me at least and hopefully to you too, a sense of commitment, of courage, of dedication to freedom, and a period of cold and suffering.

The enemy was not engaged at Valley Forge, although General Washington thought the British might come. The encampment at Valley Forge was only six months long -- barely an eyeblink in our history -- but those six months from December 19, 1777 to June 19, 1778 were truly the crucible of freedom for this country ... the forging of an army.

I have a friend who is the Commanding General of the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He is a historian and has a theory that all armies have a point in their history when they come of age or, as he puts it, have a turning point when they truly become an army. The Russian army can look to the defense of Moscow, the Chinese army has its "long march", and the United States has its Valley Forge, a place where 12,000 officers and men marched in, ill-equipped and ill-trained, having been badly beaten by the British at Brandywine and Germantown. It was an army that had no victories and few draws to record, an army whose only real claim to fame was the taking of Trenton on Christmas Day the year before. (Actually, Trenton was held, not by British troops, but by Hessian mercenaries.) And after taking Trenton, the army fell back before the entire British army arrived.

During that winter at Valley Forge two things occurred that helped turn the Continental army into a real army and altered the course of the rest of the Revolutionary War.

Page 132

The arrival of General Von Steuben was the first. He wasn't exactly a general when he arrived. After serving in the Prussian army he was recommended to General Washington by Benjamin Franklin. Von Steuben's experience in the classic style of European warfare and his training abilities were immediately recognized, by General Washington; he was appointed Acting Inspector General and given the task of training the army at Valley Forqe in a standardized method of fiqhtino. This qave the men simple, concise commands for fighting, and enabled the officers of all units to command the men of any unit. It worked, for when in June 1778 the army marched out of Valley Forge to attack the British at Monmouth they were a trained, disciplined army equal to their foe.

The other very significant event that occurred during the encampment at Valley Forge did not actually happen here, but was a major event in the Revolutionary War. In May of 1778 the country of France decided to side with the Colonies in the war. When word of this alliance was received, a fire of joy was ordered by General Washington, to take place on the Grand Parade.

Thus the army left Valley Forge a well-trained army under a competent officer corps, with the alliance of France and the personal alliance of the Marquis de LaFayette.

As you go from this place, remember your own sacred places, and also remember that you have been to one of our country's national sacred places, Valley Forge. It is now a National Historical Park, administered by the U. S. National Park Service for all to see and reflect upon this crucible of freedom.