As the sun prepared to hide its face behind the tall mountains to the west, a group of well-dressed, graying Civil War veterans sat on the porch of the newly opened Middlesborough Hotel. A few miles to their southeast was Cumberland Gap. The gap was a deep cleavage in Cumberland Mountain, a high ridge about one thousand feet above the surrounding countryside that stretched some forty miles across Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. For more than a century, migrants had bypassed the rugged terrain and bowl-like depressions on each side of the gap in favor of lands to the west of the Appalachian Mountains, thus making it largely a sparsely populated, undeveloped terrain. But the quiet, sterile old fields of the Cumberland Gap surrounded by picturesque mountains were becoming lively. Now the sound of the saw, the hammer, the trowel, and almost every other implement of industry could be heard reverberating throughout the once silent landscape.
The "Magic City" of Middlesborough was the vision of Alexander Alan Arthur, a Scotsman taken by the natural beauty and industrial potential of the region. He had enlisted European investors to create the American Association, which purchased thousands of acres around the gap, constructed a railroad to link the region with the North and South, and planned an industrial city in the large bowl on the Kentucky side of the gap. Some five thousand people rushed to Middlesborough within weeks of the first lots being sold in 1889. By June 1890, a number of the newcomers included Northern and Southern capitalists who came in the hope of striking it rich in Appalachia. Among these American captains of industry were Civil War veterans that gathered at the Middlesborough Hotel.
 |
| Alexander Alan Arthur, the man behind Middlesborough |
On the evening of June 7, 1890, a group of former Union and Confederate soldiers were earnestly discussing the effort by officials in New York City to ensure that Union General Ulysses S. Grant was permanently entombed in an edifice in their city worthy of his legacy. Grant had been dead nearly five years; however, the campaign to raise the necessary funds to complete the monument to stand alongside the Hudson River at Riverside Park in Upper Manhattan had stalled. The veterans felt somewhat ashamed to read the distressing news that the monument may not be built to honor the "American Ulysses."
 |
| Knoxville Daily Journal, June 8, 1890 |
Prior to 1865, Americans had commemorated significant events and persons in history; however, the sheer scale of tragic death and heroic sacrifice in America's Civil War drove participants on both sides of the war to honor their leaders and ordinary soldiers by erecting statues and other structures in public and private venues. A relatively small number of monuments were dedicated in the 1860s and 1870s. But a rapid expansion of building Civil War monuments in the mid-1880s and 1890s was precipitated by the children of veterans who began dying during this time. Moreover, the greatest number of monuments, which were erected in Southern cemeteries and public spaces, was a product of cementing the Confederacy's Lost Cause narrative of the war, one which downplayed the role of slavery as the primary cause of the Civil War in favor of a carefully constructed narrative of battlefield glory and one in which Southerners, staunch advocates of states' rights, fought honorably to defend their homes from invading Yankees. Thus, with a booming Southern Appalachian City as the backdrop for a discussion of the plight of Grant's Tomb, a scheme was hatched at the Middlesborough Hotel on June 7, 1890.
 |
The view from the overlook atop Pinnacle Mountain
(Virginia is far left, Tennessee center, and Middlesboro, Kentucky far right) |
The group of Confederate and Union veterans looked toward Pinnacle Mountain. Its summit of nearly 2500 feet soared over the Cumberland Gap, offering a majestic view into the states of Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky. There, pointing to the mountain, Captain John M. Brooks, a former Confederate officer and mayor of Middlesborough, said is where we should build statues to both Civil War commanders--Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee. Brooks envisioned two colossal statues on horseback that could be seen from the gap below. Grant was to be positioned looking southward while Lee looked northward. In a nod to the push for national reconciliation in the late nineteenth century, both Civil War commanders would have extended hands to each other. Such a monument, Brooks maintained, would draw more tourists to the region and the mountain which typically saw several thousand either hike or ride up to its summit each year to contemplate the magnificent panorama below. Middlesborough, Brooks proudly proclaimed, would provide lodging accommodations and a variety of businesses for visitors to spend their money while they enjoyed the natural beauty of the Cumberland Gap.
 |
| Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee shake hands after Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House |
The veterans quickly canvassed other capitalists from New York, Boston, and Chicago staying at the hotel and at other places throughout Middlesborough. They managed to raise $14,000 in a matter of days. Next, they organized the Cumberland Gap Grant and Lee Association and called for a meeting at the town hall for June 13. At that meeting, officers were elected and telegrams of cooperation and encouragement from numerous governors, senators, and congressmen were read to thundering applause. The Association leaders highlighted a telegram from Ohio Governor Joseph B. Foraker, who stated that "I will gladly help you all I can." For many Southerners, Foraker had been a lightning rod who symbolized the vengeful Yankee. The Ohio governor had enlisted in the Union army as a sixteen-year-old in July 1862 and fought under General William Sherman on the road to Atlanta as well as participated in the former general's infamous March to the Sea. Foraker's enthusiastic support for the monument was promoted by Middleborough's boosters as symbolic of the reconciliation that had taken place among the former Union and Confederate veterans in the twenty-five years since Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox Court House. A call was then made inviting former Union and Confederate soldiers to subscribe to the fund with subscriptions running one dollar each. Before the meeting adjourned, it was agreed that notices announcing the subscription campaign be sent to newspapers to be published throughout the country. The Association hoped to raise $50,000 in the week ahead.
A week later, O. O. Hall of Middlesborough, the secretary of the Cumberland Gap Grant and Lee Association, arrived back from his travels to a number of northern cities to elicit funds from their leading merchant princes. While newspapers reported that a storm was taking over the country with funds flowing into Middlesborough to make a Grant and Lee monument to national unity in Southern Appalachia a reality, it appeared that the campaign was fizzling out. Hall reported to the Association's board that $26,000 had been raised thus far; however, he was still hopeful that they would be able to raise the much-needed several hundred thousand dollars to complete the project.
In spite of the optimism, things were looking ominous in Middlesborough. The "Magical City" was plagued by three disastrous conflagrations in the summer of 1890. By early 1891, the money was drying up as a worldwide depression shook the confidence of both American and European investors interested in the town. By 1893, most investors had pulled out. All major businesses in Middlesborough soon closed, land values plummeted, and the Magic City resembled a western ghost town. Though the mid and late 1890s were a constant struggle for those left behind, the city survived on the strength of the regional coal industry. Its residents dropped the "ugh" at the end of its name and recast their city as Middlesboro.
As the "Magical City" of Middlesborough died, so did the plan to build a monument of peace, unity, and national reconciliation atop Pinnacle Mountain. Though it would have been a majestic piece of art to rival the majestic panoramic view of the Cumberland Gap, it would have constituted yet another work of art erected without the proper historical context that perpetuate a carefully, contrived narrative promoted and nourished in the thousands of late 19th and early 20th century Civil War monuments that dot our national (primarily southern) landscape.
Sources: Knoxville Daily Journal, Earl Hess, Lincoln Memorial University and the Shaping of Appalachia
