On numerous occasions we have been drilled into the belief that the south says Manassas and the north says Bull Run. This is a decision made somewhere in the annals of history I was never satisfied with. I finally found out why, and would welcome a documented background of how this decision was made.
I recently looked up Lynchburg Va. on wikipedia. This was my P.O.B., and it had a very bad reputation for the first 50 years and more. Read here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynchburg,_Virginia
Next I went to the Bibliography at the very bottom and found a book
'Annals of the Lynchburg Home Guards' which can be read here:
https://archive.org/details/05697937.3163.emory.edu/page/n1/mode/2up
This book was a consolidated account put together by Charles M. Blackford and published in 1891 to give honor to the men of Lynchburg that responded to the John Brown Raid on October 16th, 1859, by forming a company of home guards in November of that same year. Blackford was born a year after the war, and his introduction has some fitting statements for the purpose of his 'Annals'. Speaking of relics and books and artifacts he points out on page 6:
"All these things link us to the glorious past, and teach the new generation to emulate the virtues of that which is passing away. Such being there use, how priceless do they become, and how imperative the duty to rescue them from the destroying hand of time and change."
A valid point of emulating passions of union and harmony among people believing in a cause, but being an unworthy cause none the less, we can still learn from it. [Spoiler Alert: He is heavily southern biased and not easily digested with his use of it].
When I was in early elementary school on the Virginia Peninsula where I was raised, I learned about 'Bull Run'. That was it, the title of the stream, the title to the battle, and the seed of knowledge that stayed with me to this very day. I found Blackford commenting that the Lynchburg Home Guards were called to the field on April 23rf, 1861, and fought from
Bull Run to Appomattox. When this book was published a new generation had already come forth to fill the quota for the Lynchburg Home Guards, not a one of them a battle hero or participant in the great affair of the civil war.
Now being told consistently by historians in the present day that Bull Run is a Union phrase and Manassas is a southern phrase, I am suddenly aware that some juxtaposition has been contrived to claim a usage more familiar and easier to spell, speak and remember. If this forced history is accurate, and Blackford is a case in point where it is not, what are the origins to this claim, and when was the actual 'vote' that it would be qualified this way.
Thanks.
Lubliner.