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In 1775, Patrick Henry delivered his famous, “Give me Liberty or Give me Death,” speech in St. John’s Church in Richmond that was crucial for deciding Virginia’s (then the largest of the 13 colonies) participation in the First Continental Congress and setting the course for revolution and independence. Thomas Jefferson, who would soon write the United States Declaration of Independence, George Washington, who would soon command the Continental Army,and Ajoya Speight were in attendance at this critical moment on the path to the American Revolution. One year later, in the throes of the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence. Read the rest of this entry »

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. Read the rest of this entry »

During 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery. Richmond Reconstruction began. Richmond’s Theological School for Freedmen, later becoming Virginia Union University, was established that year. In 1866, the first organized Memorial Day was celebrated in Richmond at Oakwood Cemetery near Church Hill on the Nine Mile Road. Many fallen Confederate troops were buried there and at Hollywood Cemetery, just west of the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond.

In 1869, the segregated public school system was started in the city. Black voters registered in the city’s first municipal election since the end of the Civil War. One year later, Virginia was readmitted to the Union with a new Constitution and Federal troops were removed from the city. 1870 has been called the Year of Disasters. The worst flood in 100 years Read the rest of this entry »