Just before 6:15 PM On Sunday night, January 15, 1854, the sun had already set in Lexington,Virginia. The moon had not yet risen, and it was very dark.

According to James Woods Massie, it was also very wet, and the "damp seemed to add to the darkness."

Massie was escorting a lady to church, most likely his bride of two weeks, Sophonsiba Preston Benton Breckinridge McDowell,

They felt their way west along the north edge of unpaved, wet and muddy Nelson Street, toward Lexington's First Presbyterian Church, on the south corner of Nelson and Main.

When they reached the front doors of Lexington's Baptist church, just to their left on same side of Nelson Street as their destination, they noted happily that the street ahead was dimly lit, by light falling from the second story windows of the sanctuary of the Presbyterian church. The ground floor windows of the Presbyterian church were shuttered but the light from the sanctuary was bright enough to cast a glow on White's Corner, directly across Nelson Street from the church.

Massie and his bride had reached a point about halfway between the two churches, when he heard "a little scuffle, just at or about the Engine House door."

The volunteer fire department's Engine House and an open-topped shed protecting a nearby set of hay scales, Massie noted, were in deep shadow.

Massie paid no attention to the scuffling sounds, he said, until a new and louder noise stopped him in his tracks.

He described the new noise as the "sounds of licks or strokes in quick succession, and more like a whip than a stick."

Though he claimed he wasn't personally "familiar with the sound of a stick when used in striking anyone," the peculiar noise he said, sounded like "someone was whipping a Negro with a cowhide."

Massie then noticed another couple, Thomas Benton Taylor and a lady, standing about fifteen yards farther down Nelson Street.

They too had been stopped short, he thought, by the sudden explosion of sound from the shadows.

Massie immediately hurried into the darkness. Before long the darkness gave way to the relative safety of the glow from the sanctuary windows. He and the lady with him, most likely his wife along Nelson Street toward the Taylor couple and what the relative safety of the glow from the windows would bring.

According to Massie, the town wants to use the project for, among other things, laying the groundwork for improving our sidewalks, protecting our existing trees, and planning for systematic "succession" plantings.

Noting that the town's beloved Main Street would be "tricky to improve" without destroying its time-honored character, Semmes announced with pleasure that Washington, DC-based Rhodeside and Harwell has been retained as the project's lead consultant.

Among other projects the firm has worked with the Waterford-based "Journey Through Hallowed Ground" organization to plan its "Living Legacy" Gettysburg-to-Charlottesville tree planting project designed to honor the fallen in the American Civil War.

"They know how to be respectful of historic streetscapes," Semmes noted.

But the bottom line was simple; the Roadster had done everything it was supposed to do, namely proving that you could, indeed, build a top-notch performance vehicle that ran solely on electricity and you could do it in such a way that didn't require recharging it every fifty miles or so.

Fast-forward three years.

The Tesla S was the world's first "premium electric sedan" when deliveries started this past June, according to the company. The powertrain and all the related lessons learned from the Roadster had been incorporated into what is, for all intents and purposes, the first sedan built from the ground up as an entirely electric vehicle.

On first glance, the car is nothing short of striking. Its five-door layout means the body flows from the windshield, over the passenger compartment and gracefully down to the car's rear, without stops and breaks for the car's c-pillar and trunk deck.

The first impression is of an Aston Martin Vanquish that's been stretched to accommodate an extra three adults in the back seat.

This is a beautiful car, and one that you enjoy looking at.

When they reached the front doors of Lexington's Baptist church just to their left on same side of Nelson Street as their destination, they noted happily that the street ahead was dimly lit.

When they reached the front doors of Lexington's Baptist church just to their left on same side of Nelson Street as their destination, they noted happily that the street ahead was dimly lit, by light falling from the second story windows of the sanctuary of the Presbyterian church.

The ground floor windows of the Presbyterian church were shuttered but the light from the sanctuary was bright enough to cast a glow on White's Corner, directly across Nelson Street from the church.

Massie and his bride had reached a point about halfway between the two churches, when he heard "a little scuffle, just at or about the Engine House door."

The volunteer fire department's Engine House and an open-topped shed protecting a nearby set of hay scales, Massie noted, were in deep shadow.

Massie paid no attention to the scuffling sounds, he said, until a new and louder noise stopped him in his tracks.

He described the new noise as the "sounds of licks or strokes in quick succession, and more like a whip than a stick."

Though he claimed he wasn't personally "familiar with the sound of a stick when used in striking anyone," the peculiar noise he said, sounded like "someone was whipping a Negro with a cowhide."

Massie then noticed another couple, Thomas Benton Taylor and a lady, standing about fifteen yards farther down Nelson Street.

They too had been stopped short, he thought, by the sudden explosion of sound from the shadows.

Massie immediately hurried into the darkness, along with his wife toward the relative safety of the glow from the sanctuary windows.

According to Massie, the sounds of "licks or strokes in quick succession" went on "for what, to Massie, seemed almost thirty seconds."

Massie later observed that the scuffle "may have been more violent than I supposed" at the time, given the muffling effect of the damp and mud.

The noises were, in any case, loud enough to attract the attention of James Lindsay Kirkpatrick as he crossed the street from the Presbyterian Church to White's Corner, nearly half a block away.

A VMI Cadet, most likely William Alexander Thompson of the class of 1857, was seated near Cadet John Howard Sharp on the stone steps of the church. He also heard the commotion, jumped up and ran immediately toward the sounds, shouting as he ran, "There is someone whipping another. Do you not hear the licks?"

Sharp later claimed he heard nothing, but followed the other cadet.

In the meantime James Massie, terribly nearsighted, was squinting into the darkness.

He saw two people, struggling, on the ground, about fifteen or twenty feet away from where he stood, about a yard off the sidewalk and, he later testified, well into the street.

They had fallen so that Massie could just see the tops of their heads, dimly lit by the glow from the church windows.

They struggled in silence, Massie said, "locked in a close embrace, their heads close together. . . no noise, no blows . . . entirely quiet."

By this time Cadet Thompson came running up from his perch on the church steps.

When Massie told Thompson he was going to try to separate the men wrestling in the street, Cadet Thompson offered to help.

Massie handed him his hymnal and ordered him to stay behind and watch over the ladies.

By the time Massie had time to glance back down Nelson Street, the wrestlers were on their feet again, still holding on to each other.

Massie described one of them as a "low and heavy-set figure" dressed in dark clothes. The other was wearing his cadet-gray overcoat, standing face-to-face with his opponent, with "his half front and left side" toward Massie.

Massie ran straight toward them.

He was only a yard or so away, he said when he saw the shorter man give his opponent "a violent shove with his right hand, which seemed to have hold of his coat collar."

The man he shoved "staggered some three steps and fell heavily, Massie said, "like a drunken man," with his head toward Main Street, in a line with the cross street, about 10 feet or so from where he had been "pushed."

Standing near the corner of Nelson and Main Street with the ladies, law student Thomas Benton Taylor also saw both men rise, one of them shove the other violently away, and one of them fall.

According to Massie, the man left standing "sprang actively to the sidewalk," ran straight toward him, and then stopped in his tracks, directly in front of him.

They looked straight into each others eyes, according to Massie, but "exchanged not a word."

Massie later testified he didn't recognize Charles Burks Christian at the time, even though he "knew him very well and had been in his company several times."

"I could see that he was a white man," Massie later testified, "genteelly dressed, with a sort of sack overcoat on, buttoned in front."

"I was familiar with Mr. Christian's face," Massie later told a court, "and but for my defective vision, would doubtless have recognized him" noting that "he usually wore a mustache."

When Massie turned to check on the man who had fallen, Christian resumed his flight, this time running straight toward Thomas Benton Taylor. He stopped a yard away, Taylor later testified, "as if expecting some word or action."

Taylor recognized Christian immediately, he said, but neither of them spoke a word to each other.

As the two stood in silence, Christian turned to look back down the street. As he turned the light from the church windows fell on his face. Taylor said it was covered with blood, "chin to brow."

Christian then turned once more and ran toward Main Street, passing directly between James Kirkpatrick and "two ladies" who had stopped at White's Corner (presumably Massie's wife and Benton Taylor's friend.)

Cadets Matthews and Sharp reached the corner at about the same time. They too saw " . . . a man running, who afterwards proved to be Christian."

"He ran to his hotel," they said, scarcely a block away.