The Civil War
The aversion to the slave trade was growing by the mid-nineteenth century, and in 1848, Henry “Box” Brown made history by having himself nailed into a small box and shipped from Richmond to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, escaping slavery to the land of freedom.
At the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, the strategic location of the Tredegar Iron Works was one of the primary factors in the decision to make Richmond the Capital of the Confederacy in May 1861. From this arsenal came much of the Confederates’ heavy ordnance machinery. In February 1861, Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as President of the Confederate States of America in Montgomery, Alabama. One month later Davis placed Richmond under martial law. Two months after Davis’ inauguration, the Confederate army fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, and the Civil War had begun.
Tredegar Iron Works made the 723 tons of armor plating that covered the CSS Virginia, the world’s first ironclad used in the 2-day Battle of Hampton Roads in March, 1862, first successfully against wooden Union ships, then to a draw against the USS Monitor, another innovative ironclad.
In 1862, the Peninsula Campaign led by General George B. McClellan was a Union attempt to take Richmond, beginning from Union held Fort Monroe at the eastern tip of the Virginia Peninsula at Old Point Comfort. Efforts to take Richmond by the James River were successfully blocked by Confederate defenses at Drewry’s Bluff, about 8 miles downstream from Richmond. The Union march up the Peninsula by land culminated in the Seven Days Battles. Ruses to make the defending forces seem larger by General John B. Magruder, Richmond’s defensive line of batteries and fortifications set up under General Robert E. Lee, a daring ride around the Union Army by Confederate cavalry under General J.E.B. Stuart, and an unexpected appearance of General Stonewall Jackson’s famous “foot cavalry” combined to unnerve the ever-cautious McClellan, and he initiated a Union retreat before Richmond. Even as other portions of the South were falling, the failure of the Peninsula Campaign to take Richmond led to almost three more years of bitter and bloody warfare between the states.
The Confederacy hit its high-water mark at the Battle of Gettysburg in mid-1863. 21 months later, after a long siege, Union General Ulysses S. Grant captured Petersburg Richmond in April 1865.
As the fall of Petersburg became imminent, on Evacuation Sunday, President Davis, his cabinet, and the Confederate defenders abandoned Richmond, and fled south on the last open railroad line, the Richmond and Danville. The retreating soldiers were under orders to set fire to bridges, the armory, and warehouses with supplies as they left. The fire in the largely abandoned city spread out of control, and large parts of the city were destroyed, reaching to the very edge of Capitol Square mostly unchecked. The conflagration was not completely extinguished until the mayor and other civilians went to the Union lines east of Richmond on New Market Road (now State Route 5) and surrendered the city the next day.
President Abraham Lincoln, who had been staying nearby at City Point, toured the fallen city by foot with his young son Tad, and visited the former White House of the Confederacy and the Virginia State Capitol. In the meantime, the state capital was moved to Lynchburg. Also, about one week later after the evacuation of Richmond, Robert E. Lee surrendered to Grant ending the Battle of Appomattox Courthouse. Unfortunately for the South, within the same week, Lincoln was assassinated in Washington D.C.. Northern leadership would deal much more harshly with the fallen states than Lincoln had planned.