Epilogue

The epilogue chronicles General Robert E. Lee’s return to Richmond after surrendering his army at Appomattox Court House. Lee could not have been prepared for the sights that greeted him as he crossed the pontoon bridges linking Manchester to Richmond. The fires were still burning in places as he and his party entered the city. Most of the business district had been destroyed. People were camped in Capitol Square, homeless. The entire social and racial system in Richmond was in shambles. Richmond faced innumerable challenges in the immediate postwar period.

Hardship and Despair, 1863

Chapter 3 explores how the year 1863 challenged the city and its people as never before. Bad weather and the government fixing of prices for food and livestock led to spiraling inflation and food shortages. Because of these problems, coupled with a devastating fire at the Confederate arsenal laboratory on Brown’s Island, the situation in Richmond was tense. It finally exploded when hungry women marched to the governor’s mansion. Infuriated by the lack of response to their queries, the women took to the streets and created the largest bread riot to wrack the Confederacy that spring. Neither Mayor Joseph Mayo nor Governor John Letcher could appease the crowd, so the Home Guard was sent to deal with the rioters. In the aftermath of the Bread Riot, the Richmond City Council created what would become a comprehensive welfare system.

Prologue

Died: Confederacy, Southern.—at the late residence of his father, J. Davis, Richmond, Virginia, Southern Confederacy, aged 4 years. Death caused by strangulation. No funeral. —Richmond Whig, evening ed., April 7, 1865 The Confederate death certificate given as this chapter’s epigraph was published shortly after General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House. Confederate president Jefferson Davis and members of his cabinet were on the run, attempting to make their way to the Trans-Mississippi theater....

The Fall of Richmond, 1865

This final chapter describes Richmond’s last days as the Confederate capital. Union general Ulysses S. Grant continued extending his lines, forcing Confederate general Robert E. Lee to do the same—but with less men. The Army of Northern Virginia was hemorrhaging as desertions averaged 100 men a day. When Grant broke Lee’s lines in three places, Lee had no choice but to call for the evacuation of the Confederate capital on April 2. Lee had decided months earlier to set fire to the tobacco stored in the city. Following Lee’s orders, Department of Richmond commander General Richard Ewell torched the hogsheads. A breeze turned into a swift wind, and before long the city was in flames. Locals, escaped prisoners, slaves, and free blacks looted stores and pillaged government warehouses, enraged by the bounty they discovered there, hoarded during the famine. Mayor Joseph Mayo surrendered Richmond to Federal forces on April 3. The chapter concludes with President Lincoln’s visit to the burned-out capital.

The Overcrowded and Hungry City, 1864

Chapter 4 chronicles the ongoing challenges that Richmonders faced. Inflation continued to be a problem. The ever-growing tide of refugees swelled the population to more than 100,000; some in Richmond thought the figure was closer to 130,000. Class divisions became increasingly evident as the well-to-do entertained lavishly, while the middle and laboring classes faced what some feared would become a famine. In March, locals learned of a daring raid led by Union colonel Ulrich Dahlgren and brigadier general Judson Kilpatrick. The raid was turned back, and the goal of killing Jefferson Davis and freeing the Union prisoners in Libby Prison was stymied. The Army of the Potomac’s offensives in the Overland Campaign culminated in a siege of Petersburg, thirty miles south of Richmond. As General Lee told General Jubal Early, if Union general Ulysses S. Grant advanced to the James River, the war in the east would become a siege, and thus defeat for the Confederacy would be “a mere matter of time.”

The Campaigns of 1862

This chapter discusses the first of a series of military campaigns the Federals launched against Richmond. Many feared during the Peninsula Campaign and the Seven Days’ Battle of 1862 that the city would be given up, as Nashville and New Orleans had. These battles around Richmond exposed the people to the horrors of war. The city became overcrowded as people flocked to it because the capital was deemed to be so safe. Richmond became a major hospital center during this time. The year 1862 forced Richmonders to adapt to war with all of its consequences.

From the City on the James to Confederate Capital

The initial chapter chronicles Richmond’s economic development and modernization during the 1850s. By the eve of secession, Richmond ranked thirteenth nationally in manufacturing. The city and its citizens remained staunchly Unionist while the Deep Southern states seceded. It was President Abraham Lincoln’s call for 75,000 militia, with some required to come from Virginia, that turned Richmonders into enthusiastic supporters of secession. It was only logical that the Confederate government relocated the capital from sleepy Montgomery, Alabama, to the bustling city on the James River because of its prominence.