NEW EXHIBIT
RICHMONDERS AT WAR B Y C H R I S TO P H E R G R A H A M
W
hat happens when war comes home to Americans? Few places within the current United States have been the sustained target of military action. Soldiers of the Continental Army besieged Boston in 1776. The United States Army assaulted and dislodged Diné (Navajo) people from Canyon de Chelly in 1864. Numerous southern cities — Vicksburg, Atlanta, Charleston, Petersburg, for example — came under attack in the same years. But from the moment the new Confederate States moved their capital to Richmond,Virginia, in late May 1861, capturing this city became a
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men either recovered or died. In that, Richmond is unique in American history.
primary objective of United States armies. Richmond also became the industrial and political hub of a new nation, the destination for conscripts and impressed men, White and Black, and the place where wounded and sick
Richmonders at War, a new temporary exhibition at the American Civil War Museum’s Tredegar location, invites visitors to see the story up close and in person. This panel exhibit, to be located on the
(Above map) Union soldier Robert Knox Sneden’s hand-drawn map of Richmond shows the extensive network of fortifications that ringed the city. Courtesy of the Virginia Museum of History and Culture.
