Richmond’s Connection to the Civil War, A Brief Overview
After Virginia seceded, Richmond became the capital of the Confederacy because, as the Virginia Historical Society reports, the city “reflected both the material importance of Virginia to the war effort—it still was the most populous southern stay and had the most industry—and the psychological symbolism of Virginia’s association with the earlier war of independence.”17
Located a mere 100 miles south of the Union capital, Washington D.C., Richmond endured many battles and its landscape changed completely. Even away from the battlefield, women and their children also felt the dire effects of an ongoing war so close to home. The Richmond Times Dispatch reported that on April 2, 1863, the South had its largest civil disturbance during the Civil War when at least a thousand emaciated women marched on the capitol demanding food. When the city did not meet their demands, the women took to streets looting stores for food sold “at famine prices.”18
Less than a month before its demise, an editorial in Richmond’s newspaper began its Thursday morning publication on March 30, 1865 declaring, “It must be remembered that the South is worth fighting for.”19 Despite the rallying cries to ceaselessly defend the South’s capital, a ten-month battle over Richmond and Petersburg would ultimately deplete the Confederate strongholds of their resources and on April 1st, 1865, Lee would retreat from the cities.20
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