Richmond in the American Civil War
Richmond, Virginia, served as the capital of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War from May 8, 1861, hitherto the capital had been Montgomery, Alabama. Notwithstanding its political status, it was a vital source of weapons and supplies for the war effort, as well as the terminus of five railroads, and as such would have been defended by the Confederate States Army at all costs.
The Union made many attempts to invade Richmond. In the
Strategic and symbolic significance
In the
Capital of the Confederacy
The Confederate States of America was formed in early 1861 from the first states to secede from the Union. Montgomery, Alabama, was selected as the Confederate capital.
After the Confederate Army fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, on April 12, 1861, beginning the Civil War, additional states seceded. Virginia voted to secede from the Union on April 17, 1861, ratified its secession by popular vote on May 23, and existed briefly thereafter as a republic before joining the Confederacy on June 19, 1861. However, on May 8, 1861, in the Confederate Capital City of Montgomery, Alabama, the decision was made to name the City of Richmond, Virginia as the new Capital of the Confederacy. The Confederate capital was moved to Richmond in recognition of Virginia's strategic importance. Virginia was the South's industrial center, with an industrial output nearly equal to that of all other Confederate states combined. The Confederacy also hoped the move would consolidate its hold on the state since it had difficulty securing other states bordering the Union.[4]
The
Richmond remained the capital of the Confederacy until April 2, 1865, at which point the government evacuated and was re-established, albeit briefly, in Danville, Virginia.[5]
Industrial center
Positioned on the
The
Numerous smaller factories in Richmond produced tents, uniforms, harnesses and leather goods, swords and bayonets, and other war materials. As the war progressed, the city's warehouses became the supply and logistical center for much of the Confederate forces within the
Richmond was also a transportation hub. It was the terminus of five railroads: the
Peninsula Campaign
In the late spring of 1862, a large Federal army under Major General
McClellan's starting base was the Union-held Fort Monroe at the eastern tip of the Peninsula. Efforts to take Richmond by the James River were successfully blocked by Confederate defenses at the Battle of Drewry's Bluff on May 15, about eight miles downstream from Richmond. The Union Army advance was halted shortly outside of the city at the Battle of Seven Pines on May 31 and June 1, 1862 (near the site of what is now Richmond International Airport).
Seven Days Battles
Over a period of seven days from June 25 to July 1, 1862, Richmond's defensive line of batteries and fortifications set up under General
Even as other portions of the South were already falling, the failure of the Peninsula Campaign to take Richmond led to almost three more years of warfare between the states.
Mid-war years
As a result of its proximity to the battlefields of the
On March 13, 1863, the Confederate Laboratory on Brown's Island was rocked by an explosion that killed dozens of workers.
On April 2, 1863, the city was beset by a large
The Confederacy hit its high-water mark at the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863. Subsequent campaigning in the balance of the year failed to bring about a decisive battle, and Richmond residents settled down to the winter of 1863–64 mostly still optimistic about the Confederacy's fortunes.
One of the Civil War's most daring
Ulysses S. Grant's 1864 Overland Campaign resulted in Robert E. Lee's Confederate army retiring to the vicinity of Richmond and Petersburg, where they checked Grant's progress.
Evacuation, burning, and capture of Richmond
After a long siege, Grant captured Petersburg and Richmond in early April 1865. As the fall of Petersburg became imminent, on Evacuation Sunday (April 2), President Davis, his Cabinet, and the Confederate defenders abandoned Richmond and fled south on the last open railroad line, the Richmond and Danville.
The retreating soldiers were under orders to set fire to bridges, and supply warehouses as they left. This included exploding the Powder Magazine in the early AM of April 3, at the
President Lincoln, who had been visiting General Grant and staying nearby at City Point, toured the fallen city (April 4–7) by foot and carriage with his young son Tad, and visited the former White House of the Confederacy and the Virginia State Capitol.
About one week after the evacuation of Richmond,
-
Remains of a locomotive of the Richmond and Petersburg Railroad
-
Damage near the Armory. Albumen print, 1865
-
Ruins of the Gallego Mills
-
Ruins in the commercial district
-
Exchange Bank in Richmond
Legacy
Richmond's
War dead were also buried at
The city used to have a number of markers and monuments commemorating the Civil War and the city's role in the Confederacy.
The
In popular culture
The
In 1969 The Band released "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down", which features the lyric, "...by May the 10th (1865) Richmond had fell, it was a time I remember oh so well". On May 10, 1865, Confederate President Jefferson Davis, fleeing Richmond and having dissolved the Confederate government, was captured by Union forces in Irwinville, Georgia.[11]
The Richmond-based punk band Love Roses features an image of the famous Currier and Ives print of the city burning as the cover art for their album A New Reason for the Same Old Mistakes.
Notes
- ^ Gibson, Campbell (June 1998). "POPULATION OF THE 100 LARGEST CITIES AND OTHER URBAN PLACES IN THE UNITED STATES: 1790 TO 1990 (Population Division Working Paper No. 27)". Population Division, U.S. Bureau of the Census, Washington, D.C. p. Table 9. Retrieved 3 April 2015.
- ^ By comparison, the population of Washington, D.C. was 61,122 in the 1860 census
- ^ Hound, Civil War Book (2006-12-12). "What were the largest cities in the South in 1860?". Your daily Civil War newspaper [est. 1995]. Retrieved 2019-07-09.
- ^ "Why Richmond?". virginiahistory.org. Virginia Historical Society. Retrieved 2020-06-05.
- ISBN 0-451-52849-2.
- ^ "Bread or Blood: The Richmond Bread Riot - Hungry History". HISTORY.com. Retrieved 2017-04-13.
- ^ Michael B. Chesson, "Harlots or Heroines? A New Look at the Richmond Bread Riot." Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 92#2 (1984): 131-175. in JSTOR
- ^ a b Mouer, L. Daniel; McQueen, Lenora; Smith, Ryan K.; Thompson, Steve; National Register of Historic Places Registration Form: Shockoe Hill Burying Ground Historic District DHR #127-7231
- ^ Mouer, L. Daniel; McQueen, Lenora; Smith, Ryan K.; Thompson, Steve; Virginia Department of Historic Resources, PRELIMINARY INFORMATION FORM (PIF) for HISTORIC DISTRICTS, "Shockoe Hill Burying Ground" (127-7231)
- ^ Moser, Bob (Summer 2003). "Conflicts Arise over Lincoln Statue in Richmond, Va., Cemetery". Southern Poverty Law Center: Intelligence Report.
- ISBN 0-8203-1941-4
Further reading
- Ash, Stephen V. Rebel Richmond: Life and Death in the Confederate Capital (UNC Press, 2019).
- Berler, Anne Karen. "Unconquerable Defiance": Richmond Newspapers and Confederate Defeat, 1864–1865. (MA Thesis, Virginia Commonwealth University, 2007). online, bibliography on pages 81–87.
- Bill, Alfred Hoyt. The Beleaguered City: Richmond, 1861–1865 (1946).
- Calcutt, Rebecca Barbour. Richmond's Wartime Hospitals (Pelican Publishing, 2005).
- Chesson, Michael B. "Harlots or Heroines? A New Look at the Richmond Bread Riot." Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 92#2 (1984): 131–175. in JSTOR
- DeCredico, Mary A. Confederate Citadel: Richmond and Its People at War (UP of Kentucky, 2020).
- Furgurson, Ernest B. Ashes of glory: Richmond at war (1996).
- Greene, A. Wilson. Civil War Petersburg: Confederate City in the Crucible of War (U of Virginia Press, 2006).
- Harwell, Richard Barksdale. "Civil War Theater: The Richmond Stage." Civil War History (1955) 1#3 pp: 295–304. online
- Lankford, Nelson. Richmond Burning: The Last Days of the Confederate Capital (2002).
- Thomas, Emory M. The Confederate State of Richmond: A Biography of the Capital (LSU Press, 1998).
- Stout, Harry S., and Christopher Grasso. "Civil War, Religion, and Communications: The Case of Richmond." in by Randall M. Miller and Harry S. Stout, eds., Religion and the American Civil War (1998) pp: 313–59.
- Takagi, Midori. Rearing Wolves to Our Own Destruction: Slavery in Richmond Virginia, 1782–1865 (University of Virginia Press, 2000).
- Thomas, Emory M. The Confederate State of Richmond: A Biography of the Capital (LSU Press, 1998).
- Titus, Katherine R. "The Richmond Bread Riot of 1863: Class, Race, and Gender in the Urban Confederacy" The Gettysburg College Journal of the Civil War Era 2#6 (2011) pp. 86–146 online
- Wright, Mike. City Under Siege: Richmond in the Civil War (Rowman & Littlefield, 1995)
- Zombek, Angela M. "Paternalism and Imprisonment at Castle Thunder: Reinforcing Gender Norms in the Confederate Capital." Civil War History 63.3 (2017): 221–252.
Primary sources
- Wixson, Neal E. ed. From Civility to Survival: Richmond Ladies During the Civil War: The Ladies reveal their wartime private thoughts and struggles in compelling diaries and emotional memories (iUniverse, 2012).
- Woodward, C. Vann, ed. Mary Chesnut's Civil War (Yale University Press, 1981), Pulitzer Prize