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99 4 Appeals for Local Elite Assistance The Case of William T. Sutherlin I . . . cannot call to mind any one who would be more likely to have it in his power to lend me a helping hand such as I ask for. —grief Lampkin to William T. Sutherlin, february 22, 1877 on July 26, 1865, C. B. Ball, a veteran of the Danville Artillery, appealed for assistance to one of the richest residents of Pittsylvania County and Danville, William T. Sutherlin. In his letter, Ball asked, “Can’t you let me have six or seven hundred dollars to start me in the world again?”1 Ball’s written plea for help serves as another entrance into the world of needy veterans looking for help from the people near them. Pittsylvania-Danville’s upper class made up another part of the local support network of the community. Part of a long-existing system of local aid, elite men and women took on renewed importance as potential sources of cash or job opportunities for the less fortunate members of their community during and after the Civil War. Although members of the upper class could, and did, refuse to give their assistance, many veteran families (and other impoverished Virginians) felt they had little to lose by asking the wealthy for help, especially when other sources of aid had failed them. Some of these petitions succeeded , and the ones that did suggest that a new category, that of the Confederate veteran family, had been added to the obligations felt by upper-class men and women toward the needy. few historians have addressed the question of what happened to the antebellum system of elite assistance for needy Southern whites, and none have looked at the way veteran families attempted to tap into that older tradition. This chapter examines the wartime and postwar appeals to the upper class through a focus on William T. Sutherlin, a wealthy citizen of Pittsylvania County and Danville. Sutherlin was a prominent and rich member of the elite of Pittsylvania 100 take care of the living County and Danville.He manufactured and sold tobacco,owned several farms, and served as president of the Danville Bank. He was mayor of Danville from 1855 to 1861 and served as one of the county’s delegates to the 1861 state secession convention, where he and the other Pittsylvania delegate opposed secession as moderate or conditional Unionists. During the Civil War, he thought he might have a chance at an appointment to a field generalship. When that appointment fell through, he accepted a position as major and quartermaster stationed at Danville. At the end of the war, when the Confederate government stopped at Danville in its flight from Richmond (making the town the “Last Capital of the Confederacy”), Jefferson Davis stayed at Sutherlin’s house. Despite the financial impact of emancipation,William Sutherlin continued to play a prominent role in the postbellum business and political community, operating several farms in Pittsylvania and Halifax counties, buying and selling tobacco all over the Southeast, and working closely with the area railroads as director, commissioner , builder, and president. According to the 1870 Census, Sutherlin had become the richest man in the county and was valued at over $200,000 in personal property and real estate. He served in the House of Delegates from 1872 to 1874 and as president of the state agricultural society. Sutherlin chaired the infamous “Committee of forty,” which defended the overthrow of black political power in the 1883 Danville Riot by placing blame on an allegedly aggressive black mob. He was also among the early founders of the city’s cotton mills.2 Sutherlin loomed large in the life of Danville, Pittsylvania County, and the surrounding region throughout the second half of the nineteenth century. He married Jane Patrick in 1849, and had two daughters, one of whom, Janie, survived to marry and have a child of her own. Sutherlin was an active member of the methodist Church and was active in local and state politics. He participated in a number of fraternal orders, including as a leader of the Roman Eagle masonic Lodge. He was known as a supporter of education and served as a trustee of Randolph macon College and Danville female College. A brief biography of him concluded at his death in 1893, “emphatically a good man and a public benefactor.”3 Sutherlin, prominent and wealthy even after the Civil War, was the subject of many appeals for assistance from people...

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