“The city was thoroughly jammed—its ordinary population of forty thousand swelled to three times that number by the sudden pressure. Of course, all the Government, with its thousand employs, had come on; and in addition, all the loose population along the railroad over which it had passed seemed to have clung to and been rolled into Richmond with it. Not only did this mania seize the wealthier and well-to-do classes, but the queerest costumes of the inland corners of Georgia and Tennessee disported themselves with perfect composure at hotels and on the streets. Besides, from ten to fifteen thousand troops were always collected, as a general rendezvous, before assignment to one of the important points-Norfolk, the Peninsula, or the Potomac lines. Although these were in camp out of town, their officers and men thronged the streets from daylight to dark, on business or pleasure bent; and the variety of uniforms — from the butternut of the Georgia private to the three stars of the flash colonel-broke the monotony of the streets pleasingly to the eye.“Hotel accommodations in Richmond were always small and plain, and now they were all overflowing. The Spotswood, Exchange and American held beds at a high premium in the parlors, halls and even on the billiard-tables. All the lesser houses were equally packed, and crowds of guests stood hungrily round the dining-room doors at meal-times, watching and scrambling for vacated seats. It was a clear case of ‘devil take the hindmost,’ for their cuisine decreased in quantity and quality in exact ratio to augmentation of their custom.”-- Thomas C. DeLeon, Four Years in Rebel Capitals: An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy, From Birth to Death (1890)
More often than not, this blog’s discussion of history focuses on a specific person or group. But, if you’re like me, sometimes you want to see a broader canvass—i.e., not the people who made the major decisions, but how ordinary people lived in extraordinary times. Social history, if you will.
The date that gave rise to this Bonus Question of the Day—the day that Richmond, Va., was designated the capital of the Confederacy—provides just the kind of occasion needed for such a discussion.
I’ve been able to find a number of titles on the Internet by Thomas Cooper DeLeon, but far, far less about his life. What little I’ve pieced together comes from A Richmond Reader, 1733-1983, a fine anthology edited by Maurice Duke and Daniel P. Jordan, and David J. Eicher’s The Civil War in Books: An Analytical Bibliography.
DeLeon claimed to have composed the book “almost immediately” after the war, based on extensive notes. He’s been criticized by historians for his partisan tone and occasional mistakes, but—at least judged by this section on Richmond—this account lives. Any Hollywood scenarist hoping to write about the Confederacy would do well to consult this for local color.
According to Duke and Jordan, DeLeon (1839-1914) was a journalist, novelist and Confederate officer from an important South Carolina family. In the months surrounding the outbreak of the Civil War, he served as a government clerk in Washington before throwing in his lot with the Confederacy—first moving to Montgomery, site of the provisional capital, then to Richmond.
Reading DeLeon’s lively remembrance of Richmond after the new government was transferred from the Deep South reminded me of nothing so much as a more recent history/memoir written years later: Washington Goes to War, by David Brinkley. I’m not talking simply about the striking similarities between the two authors (Southern journalists in their early 20s at the time of the events they recount, in cities below the Mason-Dixon line).
No, what I have in mind is the energetic, jostling, disruptive scene—the exponential growth—experienced by a comparatively sleepy metropolis as it swells to previously unimagined importance—not just as a government center, but as the fulcrum of a military-industrial complex.
The homefront “war” Brinkley witnessed, as a young radio reporter, was World War II. Franklin Roosevelt’s desire to make the United States the “arsenal of democracy” will sound familiar after you’ve just read the paragraphs from DeLeon: soldiers everywhere you looked, mushrooming government bureaucracies, and no vacancies whatsoever to be found at the city’s hotels. (For a comic view of the latter, watch sometime George Stevens’ wonderful 1943 romantic comedy The More the Merrier, starring Jean Arthur and Joel McCrea.) Central to this effort was the building of the Pentagon, the largest office building in the U.S. at that time.
Let’s stop for a moment to consider the issue of accommodations, because they played at least some role in Richmond’s designation as the new seat of government for the Confederacy. After only a few months in Montgomery, the representatives from the seceding states could see that the city was not for them, though the state of Alabama promised to set aside an entire tract of land for the federal district, as had been done with Washington.
Montgomery had nowhere near enough room or creature comforts for the Confederacy’s elected officials, let alone the soldiers who would have to defend it. Once the provisional government experienced the first days of a particularly muggy May, marked by particularly pesty mosquitoes, it couldn’t wait to go elsewhere.
Of all the cities contending for Confederate capital, Richmond was most able to hold an influx of people (though, as we’ve seen from DeLeon’s account, even in this instance it was strained to capacity).
And then there was the institution as vital for the Confederate war effort as the Pentagon would be for America’s in World War II: Tredegar Iron Works. Under owner Joseph R. Anderson, this private firm's foundries and machine shops switched from fabricating cannon and gun carriages for the U.S. Government to becoming “the Mother Arsenal of the Confederacy.” Of the 2,200 cannon produced by domestic sources for the Confederacy, Tredegar would account for half.
For all its advantages, however, Richmond possessed a true Achilles’ heel for the Confederacy: its proximity to Washington. “In selecting Virginia as their battleground, the rebels committed a crowning blunder,” The New York Times argued persuasively. “At Montgomery, its very remoteness would have secured to it a sort of immunity from punishment … but Virginia is not two days’ sail from the centres of population at the North.”
Only lackluster leadership in the Army of the Potomac prevented Richmond from being captured sooner. Even under the likes of Generals McClellan, Pope, Burnside and Hooker, though, Virginia was forced to endure constant invasions and battles, and Richmond held its breath, praying it could forestall the inevitable.
Four years later, as the city lay in smoke and ashes, it was crowded by a far different group: in the words of African-American minister Peter Randolph, they were liberated slaves, “running, leaping, and praising God that freedom had come at last.”
(The image accompanying this post, by the way, comes from Harper’s Weekly, Oct. 19, 1861. It shows an Alabama regiment marching through Richmond’s Capitol Square on their way to join General P.G.T. Beauregard.)
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