Embattled Capital: A Guide to Richmond During the Civil War

By Robert M. Dunkerly and Doug Crenshaw

A guide to the former Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, with “a good deal of historical information, much of it neglected in histories of the war” (The NYMAS Review).

“On To Richmond!” cried editors for the New York Tribune in the spring of 1861. Thereafter, that call became the rallying cry for the North’s eastern armies as they marched, maneuvered, and fought their way toward the capital of the Confederacy.

Just 100 miles from Washington, DC, Richmond served as a symbol of the rebellion itself. It was home to the Confederate Congress, cabinet, president, and military leadership. And it housed not only the Confederate government but also some of the Confederacy’s most important industry and infrastructure. The city was filled with prisons, hospitals, factories, training camps, and government offices.

Through four years of war, armies battled at its doorsteps—and even penetrated its defenses. Civilians felt the impact of war in many ways: food shortages, rising inflation, a bread riot, industrial accidents, and eventually, military occupation. To this day, the war’s legacy remains deeply written into the city and its history.

This book tells the story of the Confederate capital before, during, and after the Civil War, and serves as a guidebook including a comprehensive list of places to visit: the battlefields around the city, museums, historic sites, monuments, cemeteries, historical preservation groups, and more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jan 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781611214925

Robert M. Dunkerly

Robert M. (Bert) Dunkerly studied history at St. Vincent College in Latrobe, PA, and historic preservation at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, TN. He led tours of the battlefield and researched its history, preservation, and its National Cemetery. Bert is the author of three other books in the Emerging Civil War Series and is active in historic preservation and research.

Book preview

Historic Overview

CHAPTER ONE

Over the course of its time as the Confederate capital, Richmond endured riots, economic hardships, patriotic displays, military threats, devastation, and— eventually—military occupation.

In 1860, Richmond was an industrial city with an ethnically diverse population, a unique blend of Northern, Southern, and regional influences. With a large immigrant population, enslaved and free blacks, and various ethnic and religious groups, it was more heterogeneous than many Southern cities.

Richmond also served as an industrial and transportation hub, with railroads, canals, and turnpikes. It had been the state capital since 1780, when the seat of government moved during the Revolution. About 38,000 souls lived in the city limits on the eve of secession, one-third of them enslaved.

Most of all, the city boasted prestige, which landed it the crown as the Confederacy’s capital in 1861. Virginia, even then, was known as the mother of states and statesmen. In the tense years leading up to the war, the legacy of Washington, Jefferson, Henry, and other Revolutionary leaders loomed large. In fact, the 1858 statue of Washington, which included other Revolutionary commanders, looked out over the capitol grounds. Another statue—Henry Clay—pointed to the hopes of the city’s people that compromise could be reached and war averted.

Montgomery, Alabama, first hosted the Confederacy capital, where delegates of the seceded Deep South states gathered to form a new government in early 1861. Virginia had not yet seceded from the Union, and some questioned whether it would.

Rockett’s Landing was the site of the Confederate Naval Yard during the war, and had been important as the city’s wharf ever since its founding. (bd)

Virginia’s eventual secession and the opportunity to gain the prestige for Richmond, the Tredegar Iron Works, and its other industrial capacity soon made it a popular choice for the Confederacy’s new national capital.

While not all Richmonders embraced the Confederacy and supported the war effort, the majority did. No one who walked the streets in the balmy spring days of 1861 had any idea of the turbulence that lay ahead.

1861: AN ENTHUSIASTIC START

When the New Year dawned, South Carolina had already left the Union, and four more states would join the Confederacy within a month. Many Virginians waited, unsure regarding secession and war.

Virginia’s first secession convention began on February 13, 1861. After much debate, a vote to secede failed on April 4. When Confederates fired on Fort Sumter on April 12, President Lincoln, with only a month in office, called for troops to put down the rebellion. Every state in the Union, including Virginia, would have to provide troops. Two days after Lincoln’s call for troops, secession passed at the second convention by a vote of 103 to 43. Those opposed to leaving the Union hailed mostly from the western counties, some of which later became West Virginia.

A torchlight procession through the streets of downtown illuminated the buildings as citizens celebrated the passing of secession on April 17. In Lombard Alley, near 15th and Main Streets, the United States flag from the capitol was taken by the howling secessionist mob the day the Ordinance of Secession passed. Unionist John Minor Botts wrote it was torn to pieces by the mob … a fitting place, for so dark a crime.

John Letcher, the governor of Virginia when war broke out, oversaw the mobilization of the state’s resources. (loc)

The Confederate capital soon moved from Montgomery to Richmond, and on the morning of May 29, Jefferson Davis arrived by rail from Petersburg, getting his first view of the city as he crossed the railroad bridge over the James. The first family stayed at the newly opened Spotswood Hotel, at 8th and Main Streets.

Richmond’s first scare came on April 21 as rumors spread of an attack by the warship, USS Pawnee. The bell on Capitol Square rang its three stroke alarm to warn the public. Militia gathered at Rockett’s Landing on the James River and on the heights of Chimborazo Hill. The dreaded ship never arrived, but the incident revealed the city’s vulnerability and tested public reaction.

The first major battle of the war took place in July at Manassas, thirty miles from Washington in northern Virginia. When news of the Confederate success reached Richmond, crowds gathered on Capitol Square, and artillery fired 100 rounds in celebration.

Euphoria wore off as trainloads of wounded arrived in the city during the following days, and the reality of war came home. The first Yankees also arrived, prisoners taken at Manassas; the Confederates were ill-prepared to deal with the numbers of the prisoners. New York Congressman Alfred Ely was captured in the battle’s aftermath and spent nearly six months in a prison.

A flood of wounded overwhelmed the city and the military’s small hospital system. In response, warehouses and even private homes transformed into makeshift hospitals. The Confederate government responded by opening Chimborazo hospital on the eastern outskirts of the city in October. It became the largest hospital in the world at that time, seeing over 75,000 men pass through its doors. Other large hospitals sprang up on the city’s outskirts. As the year ended, the main armies watched each other in northern Virginia, and a sense of cautious optimism settled over Richmond.

Scientist and inventor Matthew Maury contributed greatly to the Confederate naval effort. (loc)

1862: THE YEAR OF BATTLES

If the year 1862 seems battle-heavy from a modern vantage point, it certainly was for the soldiers and civilians. The war arrived on the city’s doorstep and did not leave for months. Engagements large and small raged within earshot of Capitol Square.

On January 18, former President (1841-45) John Tyler passed away. He had served in the Confederate Congress, a strong supporter of secession. Tyler became the only American president whose death was not formally observed in Washington, D.C., but Confederate officials made the most of a former President supporting their cause, burying him in Hollywood Cemetery. At his funeral, a Confederate flag draped the coffin of the tenth President of the United States, making him the only former president ever to be buried and honored ceremoniously under a non-U. S. flag. The elaborate funeral included Davis and Vice-President Alexander Stephens, members of the Confederate Congress, the state legislature, mayor, and other dignitaries. Connecting Tyler to the Confederate cause gave the fledgling nation a sense of legitimacy.

Passing away in 1862, former President John Tyler was a link to Virginia’s earlier history. He is buried in President’s Circle in Hollywood Cemetery. (bd)

When Jefferson Davis was sworn in as president of the Confederacy in Montgomery, Alabama, on February 9, 1861, it had been as provisional president, appointed by the Provisional Confederate Congress, a group of delegates acting to form a new government. On November 6, 1861, Davis won a formal presidential election—the only one the Confederacy ever held under the newly adopted Confederate constitution. On a rainy February 22, Jefferson Davis officially took the presidential oath on the steps of the capitol in Richmond, followed by Alexander Stephens as vice president. A large platform near the Washington monument held members of the Confederate Congress, state legislature, and other guests. A band played Dixie after Davis’s confirmation, and The Confederate Marseillaise after Stephens’s. Following the ceremony, Davis hosted a reception at the White House on East Clay Street.

On March 1, the government declared martial law in the city. Life would never be the same for residents as Gen. John Winder, provost marshal for the city, enforced the new rules. Authorities suspended the writ of habeas corpus, outlawed distilling, established checkpoints at the city’s entrances, and created a provost marshal with arrest powers. Personal weapons had to be turned in to authorities or would be seized. Government price controls and shortages affected the buying power of civilians.

In April, the Second Baptist Church donated its bell to be melted down to create a cannon. Later that month, several women formed a gunboat association. This grass roots effort raised money to pay for the construction of an ironclad warship, built at Rockett’s Landing and made with Tredegar iron.

John Minor Botts was an outspoken Unionist who eventually was banished from Richmond. He is buried in Shockoe Cemetery. (bd)

Buried in an unmarked grave, Mary Ryan’s actions sparked the Brown’s Island Explosion in March 1863. Her unmarked grave was marked for the first time in 2017. (bd)

As the days gradually warmed that spring, the opposing armies lay inactive in northern Virginia. Soon, Union Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan moved the massive Union Army of the Potomac from Washington down to Fort Monroe and began marching up the peninsula toward the capital. In April, Confederate troops from the Army of Northern Virginia marched through Richmond on their way to Yorktown to block McClellan’s advance. Citizens had the chance to see their army and cheer the men, and many local soldiers had brief visits with wives and families as they passed through.

Yet the Union’s first effort to take Richmond came by water, not land. On May 15, a fleet of five warships moved upriver—until a garrison of Confederate soldiers, sailors, and marines at Drewry’s Bluff fort stopped them just eight miles below the city.

The narrow river allowed only two Union ships to approach, and they found themselves hemmed in with cannon firing into them from above and troops firing from both river banks. It was the final battle for the famed ironclad, USS Monitor, which sank in a storm later in the year. Thus, the crews of the USS Monitor and CSS Virginia faced each other again; this time the Confederate sailors fought on land, having scuttled their ironclad.

The Union ships failed to inflict serious damage on the fort’s defenders, and after four hours, they withdrew downriver. Corporal John Mackie, serving aboard the USS Galena, became the very first U.S. Marine to earn the Medal of Honor.

The Seven Pines battlefield, marked only by a couple of state historical signs, is entirely lost to development. (cm)

Joseph E. Johnston commanded the Army of Northern Virginia until wounded at Seven Pines. He recuperated in a private home in the Church Hill neighborhood of Richmond, taking months to recover. He never commanded in Virginia again once Robert E. Lee established his reputation in the Seven Days’ Battles. (loc)

For the remainder of the war, Drewry’s Bluff held an important front line post. It also served as a Confederate marine and naval training center, with midshipmen practicing on board a ship in the James River. Excursions came down from Richmond to visit the fort and see the soldiers drill, making it a local tourist attraction.

By late May, the Army of the Potomac closed in on Richmond while the Confederates fell back to the city’s outer defenses. General Joseph E. Johnston, commander of Confederate forces, devised a plan to strike at Seven Pines and hopefully crush a significant portion of the Union army.

The Confederate attack unraveled in tragic errors with numerous mistakes and miscommunications. Union reinforcements bolstered the line, and after two days of fighting, the southerners withdrew. Combined casualties totaled about 11,000, but the loss of one man made a crucial difference.

General Joseph E. Johnston, wounded at Seven Pines, eventually passed command to the untested Robert E. Lee, until then serving in several engineering and advisory posts. Aggressive by nature, Lee struck McClellan in late June, starting a series of battles known as the Seven Days: Beaver Dam Creek (Mechanicsville), Gaines’s Mill, Savage’s Station, White Oak Swamp, Glendale (Frayser’s Farm), and Malvern Hill.

Both sides lost a combined 35,000 men. After a week, the Union army had been driven back from Richmond and camped along the James near Berkeley Plantation. Lee emerged as the South’s hero, especially as Confederate armies in Tennessee and Kentucky met defeat.

In the aftermath, the city’s citizens scrambled to care for the wounded and bury the dead. Walking along the neat rows of markers at Oakwood Cemetery, the stark reality set in.

The armies moved on, giving Richmond and Chesterfield, Henrico, and Hanover counties a respite. Before the year closed, battles raged at Manassas for a second time, Antietam, and Fredericksburg. Lee’s army more than held their own, and as the year closed, Virginians supporting the war had reason to be optimistic about independence.

1863: UNREST AND UNCERTAINTY

The New Year brought relief to city residents as the armies departed and stayed far from the city, but internal strife and tension surfaced. Scarlet fever and smallpox broke out, likely a result of the city’s overcrowding from refugees, soldiers, and the growing government, as well as unsanitary conditions in the city.

Angry women took to the streets, breaking into stores and keeping police and soldiers at bay for about two hours. (loc)

The Bread Riot started here on April 2, 1863. Looters broke into the store that stood behind the FedEx truck in this photo. (bd)

The worst industrial accident in the Confederacy took place on Friday, March 13, at Brown’s Island. Dozens of women and girls had entered the workforce after men volunteered or were conscripted into the military. Nineteen-year-old Mary Ryan’s carelessness with a pack of friction primers used to fire artillery set off a spark in a room where other girls unloaded black powder. The disastrous results killed at least 50 and badly wounded 14.

Rising prices and shortages fueled discontent among the working class that spring. Tensions boiled over on April 2, when several hundred angry women took to the streets. Armed and organized, they descended on stores and warehouses along Cary, 14th, and Main Streets, looting food and clothing. Eventually the State Guard (equivalent to modern state police) dispersed the mob at gunpoint. This largest civil disturbance in the Confederacy ended with 60 men and women arrested, but most of the stores never recovered any of the stolen goods. The city responded to the hunger crisis by offering rations for the poor as a form of relief.

Physically exhausted, Stonewall Jackson (above) performed poorly during the Seven Days’ Battles in June-July 1862. Shot at Chancellorsville in May 1863, he passed away soon after. His body was brought to Richmond and laid in state in the governor’s mansion, and the new second National Confederate flag (above right) was draped over his coffin. His remains were taken to Lexington for burial. (loc)(jh)

On May 3 and 4, citizens received a scare when Union cavalry led by Brig. Gen. George Stoneman raided Ashland and Hanover County, fifteen miles north of the city. Militia quickly responded, manning the city’s defenses.

Tensions also rose between corporations and the military. Industries like railroads and factories wanted to keep their skilled male workers on the job, yet the conscription official often plucked them for service. Joseph Reid Anderson, owner of Tredegar Iron Works, found a solution with his Tredegar Battalion. This was a reserve force, subject to call out when needed, but allowed to work at their jobs. Other