Walmart Abandons Civil War Site For Store
Governor Peter Shumlin today applauded a decision by Wal-Mart to abandon plans to build a new store in Virginia on the site of a Civil War battlefield where more than 1,200 Vermont soldiers were shot and nearly 400 lost their lives in one of the bloodiest battles of that war.
“Vermont paid a terrible toll on that site on May 5 and 6, 1864, losing so many of our young men in the Battle of the Wilderness,” the Governor said. “Our brave soldiers gave their lives to keep the country together and end slavery. It would have been an awful loss to have that battlefield covered in the shadow of a Wal-Mart store.”
The store would have been located near a monument donated by the state and the land on which the 1st Vermont Brigade fought.
Remnants of their entrenchment can still be seen at the site.
“There are almost certainly Vermonters buried there,” the Governor said. That two-day battle is now viewed as the beginning of the end for the Confederate Army.
Former U.S. Sen. James Jeffords secured an appropriation from Congress to buy the land on which the Vermonters fought – near the site of the proposed Wal-Mart.
The 2009 Legislature passed a joint resolution calling for Wal-Mart to relocate the planned store to a more appropriate site.
Topics: 1864, 2011, America, Battle of the Wilderness, battlefield, civil war, Confederate Army, Congress, economic development, economic growth, Economy, employment, Governance, government, Governor Peter Shumlin, jobs, joint resolution, moniter, monitor, news, North, Senator James Jeffords, slavery, society, soldiers, South, store, U.S., United States, Vermont, Vermont Brigade, Wal-Mart, Walmart
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