Hanging Rock, Virginia: Two Presidents In Wartime Retreat
America may have never lost a war -- until Vietnam -- but individual Presidents have been on the losing ends of battles. Rutherford B. Hayes and William McKinley, mere soldiers in the Union Army at the time, passed this way while retreating into West Virginia, according to a historical sign at the spot. Although both survived the war and went on to become U.S. Presidents, the sign notes that bullets did eventually catch up with McKinley.
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Today I was listening to an episode of the Visiting the Presidents podcast in which host Dr. Joe Faykosh detailed Hayes's late-life illnesses. Compared with the thought of someone discussing my inflamed rectum 140 years later, a sign about me retreating from battle seems like a lesser indignity.
[Kurt Deion / kurtshistoricsites.com, 04/19/2025]
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Future Presidents Rutherford B. Hayes and William McKinley crossed this spot while vamoosing from Lynchburg during the Civil War.