Blue Cabin

Rohn Engh wrote that we should not be timid with photography. With that in mind, I decided to share this odd blue picture, a result of playing in Photoshop.

The image started out as a shot of Mauck Meeting House in Page County, which I mentioned before. Several sites on the internet deal with the interesting history of the church. Many of the members were Baptists who had once been Mennonites. Eventually there was a split in the congregation because some held to "the old ways of the Mennonites and thought it an article of faith that the church should not hold with slavery, the bearing of arms or the taking of legal oaths." Eventually many members of this group moved to Ohio.

Researchers can find versions of the story online. The mention of Ohio reminds me that in Bound Away: Virginia and the Westward Movement, historians Fischer and Kelly document that large numbers of anti-slavery citizens of Virginia and North Carolina moved to Ohio and other westward states to get away from the unjust institution. Their absence made it difficult for a series of anti-slavery proposals to pass in the Virginia legislature. Imagine how different American history might have been if Virginia had eliminated slavery decades before the Civil War! The state might not voted to secede; and Lee might have fought for the Union. I imagine the war would have been much shorter.