Although the U.S. House select committee hearings looking into the Jan. 6, 2021, events that resulted in the attack on the U.S. Capitol were watched more by Democrats than Republicans, millions still heard a piece of Chattanooga history mentioned last week.
In its final televised hearing shown on several major networks on the afternoon of Dec. 19, committee vice chairman Liz Cheney, the outgoing Republican U.S. representative from Wyoming, started her closing comments referencing her great-great-grandfather.
She discussed the career of Samuel Fletcher Cheney and his volunteer service with an Ohio regiment as a member of the Union Army during the Civil War and said Chickamauga was one of the battles in which he fought.
As it turns out, this was not just information she had heard or read. Both she and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, have made multiple visits over the years to Chickamauga to learn more about their ancestor, according to park historian Jim Ogden, who has met them and helped show them around the park.
Interviewed over the phone Tuesday, he fondly recalled three visits one or both made in 2002, 2003 and 2008.
The visits have come back to the forefront because of Rep. Cheney’s opening comments as the members of the committee made statements in the group’s final meeting before releasing its full report later that week. The report refers to the Justice Department possible charges against former President Trump over his actions that led to the Jan. 6 riot by some who supported him, although many Republicans and Trump supporters were little swayed or alarmed by the committee’s findings.
I found a video of the hearing posted to YouTube apparently by the Washington Post, and here is what Rep. Cheney said as a way of comparing her great-great-grandfather’s military service to preserve the Union to the actions of Jan. 6, 2021, which she said were not in that realm.
“In April of 1861, when Abraham Lincoln issued the first call for volunteers for the Union Army, my great-great-grandfather, Samuel Fletcher Cheney, joined the 21st Ohio Volunteer Infantry. He fought through all four years of the Civil War from Chickamauga to Stones River, to Atlanta. He marched with his unit in the Grand Review of Troops up Pennsylvania Avenue in May of 1865 past the reviewing stand where President Johnson and Gen. Grant were seated.
“Silas Canfield, the regimental historian of the 21st Ohio Volunteer Infantry, described the men this way. He said, ‘They had a just appreciation of the value and advantage of free government and the necessity of defending and maintaining it. They enlisted, prepared to accept all the necessary labors, fatigues, experiences, dangers and even death for the unity of our nation and perpetuity of our institutions.”
She went on to say that, since the Jan. 6 incident when some began storming the Capitol after then-President Donald Trump questioned the election results, she had often found herself thinking about her ancestor and others who sacrificed for the country and its preservation.
Rep. Cheney went on to say that was a contrast to those who stormed the Capitol and tried to keep former President Trump in office.
“At the heart of the problem is the guaranteed peaceful transfer of power,” she said in comparing what she called the contrasting attitudes between her great-great-grandfather and others like him with the Jan. 6 attackers.
Longtime Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park historian Mr. Ogden said over the phone that he had not been aware of the Cheney ancestor’s connection to Chickamauga until reading a story in the Washington Post about two decades ago. He said that early in Vice President Dick Cheney’s tenure under President Georgia W. Bush that began in 2001, Liz and her sister, Mary, had presented their father as a birthday present a map of Samuel Fletcher Cheney’s route as a member of the 21st Ohio during the Civil War.
As it turned out, Mr. Ogden would get to know quite a bit more – and get to know the Cheneys a little in the process.
In October 2002, Vice President Cheney was in Dalton, Ga., campaigning for Republican candidates in a year that saw Sonny Perdue elected as governor and Saxby Chambliss elected as U.S. senator and then took a private tour of Chickamauga Battlefield with park officials.
Mr. Ogden met him then and again in late September 2003, when Vice President Cheney came along with his two daughters.
Mr. Ogden said the vice president seemed quiet but very interested in and attentive to what he was being told, and that his few questions showed he was following thoughtfully what he was being told about his ancestor and the battle of Chickamauga.
Historical sources say Samuel Fletcher Cheney was born in 1829 in New Hampshire. He had risen to captain in the 21st Ohio and fought in 34 total battles. He returned to Ohio after the war and ran the family lumberyard and was a cabinet maker. However, after he lost part of a hand in a sawmill accident, he later moved with his family and other pioneers to Nebraska, where he lived until his death in 1911.
An old news article found online about that 2003 visit said that the Cheneys spent about four hours in the late afternoon at the park after attending a fund-raising event in Memphis earlier in the day. Mr. Ogden, park Supt. Pat Reed and 21st Ohio historian Brad Quinlin led the tour, which included a visit to Snodgrass Hill. That was where the 21st Ohio had made a valiant stand to help hold off the Confederates for a short period and allow other Union forces to retreat to Chattanooga and regroup for future battles.
The tour group also looked at the Fuller Gun Exhibit that had belonged to former Chattanoogan Claud Fuller, and they pulled out a revolving Colt rifle used by the 21st Ohio.
Mr. Ogden recalled that Dick Cheney’s wife, Lynne, was unable to attend that event.
Before the 2005 inauguration, the vice president’s office had also reached out to Mr. Ogden, and he was able to get them in touch with the 21st Ohio re-enactment group. As a result, Mr. Ogden was invited to march with the group in the inaugural parade.
In 2008 during a 145th anniversary observance of the Battle of Chickamauga, Dick and Liz Cheney and one of Cheney’s daughters came by while Dick spoke at a re-enactment event.
Mr. Ogden remembered focusing during that visit on educating the young daughter, one of five children Liz Cheney and Philip Perry have.
Through the various visits, Mr. Ogden said he could tell Liz Cheney was also very interested in learning family history, just as her father was.
“Being raised by parents cognizant of both national and family history, and the importance of knowing such, Liz Cheney long knew of her great-great-grandfather's Civil War service at least in general,” he said. “She got to see some of the ground where he fought when she accompanied her father on visits to the Chickamauga Battlefield.”
So, this woman who lost her congressional re-election bid due in large part to her criticism of former President Trump’s Jan. 6 actions was aware of her great-great-grandfather’s efforts to preserve American democracy long before she told a nationwide TV audience last week.
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Jcshearer2@comcast.net