Richmond Press, Inc.                          Richmond, VA                          1938

The Strategy of the Butchertown Cats

I must make a comment on the fierce rock battles of former days, in which so many of the boys of Richmond took part.  Many of the old ones had been wee kids during those historic days when their city had been encircled with a ring of fire, when the sound of John McGruder's cannonading might be plainly heard rolling along up the valley of the James, when the flashes of McClellan's field guns might be seen by the citizens from the hills near the Davis mansion, or when the ragged, gray-clad columns would go down Main Street, marching to battle.  Those boys naturally took an absorbing interest in the glorious fighting, which led them to extremes that now-a-days may be lacking.  This brought on, at times, as we have said, the use of firearms; and there were many casualties.

At length there occurred two or three tragedies; and then the press, the clergy and the civil authorities made a determined and united effort to break those battles up; and at last succeeded in putting a stop to them.  Of course, the battles of lesser boys, later on, and in a more harmless way, sprang up again, for that has gone on from time when first boys were boys and will continue to the end.

An instance of that older and more serious fighting was told me by a member of the Butchertown gang, which will serve to illustrate the serious nature of those wars.

Two of the Butchertown cats had been shot, though not dangerously, as it turned out; but sufficiently to keep them from running when the police appeared suddenly upon the scene.  Both gangs, as might have been expected, took to their heels in opposite directions, the Butchertown boys running across the C. & O. tracks, which were occupied mostly by long, engineless trains of freight cars, behind which they made good their escape.

The two wounded were supported by four friends, two to each, supporting them and running with them.  They soon saw, however, that the police would overtake them.  So they made for the freight cars, around which they passed, being for the moment out of view of their pursuers.  As they ran along between two trains of motionless cars, they saw an empty box-car with an open door.  Into this they hoisted their wounded comrades, shut the door on them and ran on, passing through the other train and out of sight before the police came to the point of view.

They had an easy time getting away now, for in those days a boy who could not outrun a policeman in a sight race, or elude him by pursuing devious ways through alleys and over back fences, was not much of a boy.

Then, an hour afterward when the police had retired, they returned with crude stretchers and carried their comrades off in safety and to the surgeon's care.  Thus furnishing an example of quick thinking by soliders in the field, not exceeded by either Stonewall Jackson or Napoleon Bonaparte.