Editor’s Note: Today is the sixth and final installment of a six-part series on Thomas Drummond, who led a short but fascinating life as a senator, newspaper editor and Civil War hero. He is buried in the Methodist Cemetery on Newell Avenue, St. Clairsville. The authors are Edmund A. Sargus, a federal judge, and his son, Edmund C. Sargus, a writer in Tampa, Fla. Both are from St. Clairsville and have co-authored a book on the life of Thomas Drummond.

The night before the Battle of Five Forks, Drummond told fellow officers that he would not survive the next day’s conflict. He made a point of wearing his only clean uniform, as he believed he would be buried in the clothes he wore that day.

The Battle of Five Forks was the beginning of the end of the Civil War.

The day after the battle, Grant ordered an all front assault across the thirty miles of trenches dividing the two armies.

Lee saw the hopelessness of his army’s situation and withdrew from the trenches in the hopes of escaping to the west. Richmond and Petersburg quickly fell, as the Confederate government abandoned the capital. By April 9th, Lee was ready to surrender. Grant met him at Appomattox Court House with the 5th Cavalry as his escort.

Thomas Drummond had been shot in the abdomen after the final, successful assault at Five Forks. He was taken to nearby Dinwiddie Court House. There, Union surgeons had converted a small, rough hewn Methodist church into a temporary field hospital. The building was similar to the many rustic churches Drummond had attended in his childhood.

No medical care available during the Civil War could have saved Drummond. He told the officers with him that he was at peace with God and was proud to die for his country. He must have known that at Five Forks the Union Army had brought about all which he had fought for in the pre-war years. Slavery was about to end; the Union would be preserved.

On the morning of April 2nd, he made one last request. He asked to be buried next to his mother, who had died when he was eight years old. Not long after, he died on a Sunday in the middle of a Methodist Church.

On April 15, 1865, The Wheeling Intelligencer reported : “It is with deep regret that we learn that Capt. Drummond, the only surviving son of Rev. Dr. Drummond, of this city, was mortally

wounded before Richmond. He belonged to the 5th U.S. Cavalry

attached to Custer’s division: Capt. Drummond was a gallant and

meritorious officer, whose whole soul was devoted to the cause of his

Country.”

The Belmont Chronicle, one of two St. Clairsville newspapers, wrote on

April 27, 1865 that Drummond “was a gallant soldier , and as he was being

borne from the field articulated the Latin wordsdulce et decorum est pro

patria moriit is pleasant and honorable to die for one’s country. Capt.

Drummond’s remains …will be buried at St. Clairsville by the side of his

mother”

His body was embalmed and readied for the trip to St. Clairsville.

Intervening events slowed his journey home. Only five days after the

surrender at Appomattox, President Lincoln was assassinated. For the next

twelve days, the Army chased John Wilkes Booth in the largest manhunt in

American history. Train traffic came to a standstill.

III

On May 3rd, Drummond’s remains arrived at the Wheeling Terminal of

the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. His ancestral home was once slave

territory. In his final journey, he returned to the new, free state of West

Virginia.

The governor, Arthur Boreman, and a delegation of state officials joined

Reverend James Drummond at the terminal as the train arrived. Drummond’s

body was carried to the West Virginia Capital and was laid in repose in the

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chamber of the State Senate.

The Wheeling News Register described the funeral arraignments:

“The corpse will lie in state in the Senate Chamber during the day of

Thursday the 4th just. Friday morning at 8 o’clock, the corpse will be

removed under military escort accompanied by the Committee of

Arraignments, to the Fourth Street Methodist Church where suitable religious

services will be performed….The procession will proceed to Bridgeport,

though as many as can are requested to accompany the corpse to the place of

internment, at St. Clairsville.”

The procession began as his body was taken to St. Clairsville. via the

majestic Wheeling Suspension Bridge. The structure once was on the Mason-

Dixon line between the North and the South, a divide made irrelevant by the

war that had just ended. While on the bridge, the military band played the

Battle Hymn of the Republic. “As He died to make men holy, let us die to

make men free.”

The St. Clairsville Gazette described his final interment:

“The remains of Thomas Drummond of the regular army were buried with

military honors at St. Clairsville on last Friday. Quite a number our

people met the remains at the east end of town and, with muffled drums

followed them to their final resting place, in the Methodist Cemetery.

The coffin was lying in a hearse, with the flag spread over it, and exposed

to the view of the people along the street. Captain Robinson’s Co. A 170

Reg’t Ohio National Guard acted as an escort in excellent time at the head

of the procession. After the coffin had ben deposited in the grave, Rev.

Alexander Martin …read the impressive burial service, the military fired

three volleys over the grave, and the grave was closed over all that

remained of the gallant soldier and patriot.”

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IV

Several years later, Union veterans in St. Clairsville formed a lodge of the

Grand Army of the Republic. Many St. Clairsville residents had fought in the

Civil War and many had died. It is no disrespect to those veterans to say that

the members recognized something special as they named their group the

Thomas Drummond Post of the G.A.R.

Years later, in 1904, friends of Thomas Drummond held a large

commemorative ceremony in his honor at the Iowa School for the Blind. His

old newspaper, the Vinton Eagle, printed an entire addition in his memory.

Thirty nine years after his death, his aging friends seemed desperate to keep

his memory alive. A plaque was placed in his honor at the special school he

had willed into being.

The final speaker was Isaiah Van Meter, a one time editor of the Benton

County Democrat, the opposing newspaper in Vinton. For years, Drummond

had hurled invectives at the paper, calling it a slavery loving journal and a

supplicant to wealthy slave owners. Van Meter would give back, calling

Drummond a slave loving abolitionist.

Though longtime friends, the two ran against each other in 1860 race for

state senate. During a public argument, the two engaged in yet another

fistfight on the main street in Vinton.

Close to eighty years old, Van Meter traveled back to Vinton to

remember his friend and one time adversary. Van Meter recalled the last time

he saw Thomas Drummond, which was in the midst of the war . According to

Van Meter, the two said nothing of politics and warmly embraced each other.

To Van Meter, Drummond was no longer a misguided abolitionist. To

Drummond, Van Meter was no more a slavery loving apologist. In Van

Meter’s words, they were both just members of the same Union Army.

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History has an arbitrary way of dictating who is remembered and who is

forgotten. After the 1904 ceremony at the School for the Blind and the death

of the last St. Clairsville G.A.R member, the name Thomas Drummond

slipped into oblivion.

Drummond may not have himself changed the course of American

history. Yet, without the commitment, the fearlessness and the leadership of

Thomas Drummond and others like him, our country today would be a very

different place. In the end, what we are is grounded in where our country has

been. And in the existential struggle of the Civil War, Thomas Drummond

was a great beacon of a better future.

To his memory. To our history. Let It Be Done.