Richmonders at War

BY CHRISTOPHER GRAHAM

What 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 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 men either recovered or died. In that, Richmond is unique in American history.

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 second floor mezzanine, will feature a simple but unexpected narrative. It gets beyond familiar stories of courageous suffering in defense of the Confederate national capital and those of famous men at the helm of the slaveholder’s republic. Instead, the story weaves through the excitement of secession, the desperation of bread riots, the endurance of a city flooded with both dead and wounded, conscript and refugee, and the despair of men and women sold as slaves until the last days before liberation.

Prior to secession, Richmond had been a medium sized but cosmopolitan American city. It boasted merchants and banks, tobacco and grain factories, an iron works, a major hub of the American slave trade, and a possibly outsized sense of itself as the historic home of American democracy. War brought dramatic changes. Richmond’s iron works, grain mills, and textile factories transformed themselves into major military suppliers. Massive government bureaucracies took root downtown while large military installations grew on the city’s outskirts.

The arrival of a national government, its military forces, the workers to support them, and the civilian refugees from war-torn surrounding counties more than doubled Richmond’s population. It also strained the capital’s capacity to sustain itself. Inflation, low wages, and a food distribution system hampered by poor supply lines and complicated military regulations produced hunger and despair. Perhaps nothing impacted Richmonders more than the overwhelming presence of the wounded and dead. The Richmond Daily Dispatch noted in 1863 about the cemeteries surrounding Richmond that “nearly every stranger has a father, brother, son, or friend now inhabiting that vast city of the dead.”

Most of our visitors to Historic Tredegar are from out of town, and the most-asked questions fielded by our Visitor Engagement Associates are “what else is there to see in Richmond?” and “where can I get something to eat?” To answer these questions, Richmonders at War will incorporate QR codes into exhibit panels that will open links on the Vamonde tour platform to locations (and directions) to sites in Richmond to visit (and nearby restaurants). These locations will not be battlefields, but rather other kinds of sites of unrest, suffering, pride, and work. Some are on the outskirts of town. At some, visitors may see original buildings. Several are spaces that have been utterly transformed since the war. All are reminders that Civil War history happened all over the landscape and not just on monument marked battlefields.

By encouraging visitors to ponder the presence of the past that surrounds them wherever they go, we hope to provide a great experience that lingers well after they leave us at Tredegar. And getting out into the city to explore will expose our visitors to our modern home, complete with entertainment, shops, and of course, excellent restaurants where they might continue their conversations over a bountiful meal.

A future planned addition to the exhibit will contrast the experience of war with the memory of war by examining the ways that Richmond recalled the conflict.

Christopher Graham is Curator of Exhibitions at the American Civil War Museum