Montgomery's three hotels and numerous boarding houses were crowded with government officials, politicians, soldiers, and newspapermen. It became more of a metropolis than a quiet village, with its streets crowded with carriages and horses, and people on the prowl for gossip, argument, and discussion. Everyone admired the town's beauty. But by May the summer's humid heat and the mosquitoes changed many people's minds about Montgomery. So when the newly seceded Virginians offered their own state and their own capital as the seat of the Confederacy, many were eager to accept the offer.
Mary Boykin Chesnut noted in her diary that her husband, a former U. Senator, was against the move. However, she remarked, " I think these uncomfortable hotels will move the Congress. Our statesmen love their ease. Jefferson Davis was at first opposed, believing the capital should reside in the Deep South, where the feelings for secession were most fervent. However, the Confederate Congress approved the move and adjourned May 21, and scheduled to meet in Richmond two months later.
As Dr. Her population was the South's largest. Her industrial capacity was nearly as great as that of the seven original Confederate states combined. The Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond was the only plant in the South capable of manufacturing heavy ordnance.
Virginia's heritage from the generation of Washington, Jefferson, and Madison gave her immense prestige Davis left Montgomery May 26 at the climax of the fervor following the fall of Fort Sumter and Lincoln 's call for 75, troops.
Arriving in Richmond, the capital of Virginia, on May 29, he was met by crowds at the railroad station and throngs along the streets to the Spotswood Hotel.
Air Force plane crashes into a mountain near Dubrovnik, Croatia. Brown was leading a delegation of business executives to the former Yugoslavia to explore business Bruno Richard Hauptmann, convicted in the kidnapping and murder of the month-old son of Charles A.
Lindbergh, is executed by electrocution. On March 1, , Charles Lindbergh Jr. On April 3, , the first Pony Express mail, traveling by horse and rider relay teams, simultaneously leaves St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California. Ten days later, on April 13, the westbound rider and mail packet completed the approximately 1,mile journey and By this, he meant that the responsibility for the fighting would be gradually transferred to the South Vietnamese as they became more combat capable.
Sign up now to learn about This Day in History straight from your inbox. In , year-old William Alexander Anderson Wallace received news that one of his brothers had been killed in the Battle of Goliad, an early confrontation in the Texan war of Yet even many committed country fans are unfamiliar with a program that, The U. Customs Department had seized some copies of the book several weeks earlier as the book entered the U. The rise of the action-adventure blockbuster was on the horizon, but on April 3, , the small-scale romantic comedy triumphs over the big-budget space extravaganza.
Labor shortages also proved to be an issue. Anderson had always augmented his labor force with slaves, but as demand increased and the needs for manpower stripped factories of work details, he was forced to rely even more heavily on slave labor to keep the works in operation. As soon as the war started, the population of Richmond began to swell. In addition to laborers and bureaucrats, refugees , spies, Confederate soldiers , journeymen, and less savory sorts, including prostitutes, gamblers, and speculators, all poured into the capital.
By the summer of , locals believed the city had become one vast armed camp; others argued the city was little different from the wicked biblical city of Sodom. In , Richmond had almost 38, residents, including 11, slaves. Although no census was taken during the war, city officials estimated the population grew to more than , by ; some believed between , and , people crammed the capital by This huge increase in population had severe consequences. Even after Confederate general John H.
Winder took day-to-day control of the city beginning in February , gambling dens and houses of prostitution flourished, while rival juvenile gangs threatened locals with petty larceny and assault. Accommodations were limited and according to some, abysmal. Nonetheless, they commanded high rents; it was not unusual to see several families living in cramped, unheated spaces. Epidemics of smallpox and other diseases threatened the city late in and in Food and fuel became scarce, especially as the armies battled on prime farmland in the Virginia Piedmont and the Shenandoah Valley.
Shortages of consumer goods and a worthless paper currency created unheard-of levels of inflation. Indeed, by , prices in Richmond were percent higher than they had been in Overcrowding and inflation hit the laboring classes especially hard. Although wages rose throughout the period, they could not keep pace with the rising cost of consumer goods. This situation created a social powder keg that finally exploded on April 2, , with the Richmond Bread Riot.
Angered by his rebuff, the crowd surged into the business district, attracting hundreds of others along the way. Plunder and mob violence roiled the city for two hours until the threat of artillery dispersed the mob. Nonetheless, the Bread Riot sobered local and Confederate officials and underscored how desperate some in the city had become. Richmond reveled in military victories at Manassas in and during the Seven Days in , but those successes produced massive casualties that threatened to overwhelm the capital.
The situation only grew worse as the campaigns of and again centered on the Confederate capital. The Confederate Congress implemented legislation in the autumn of that standardized the hospital system and put it under the control of the Confederate Medical Department. At Chimborazo alone, nearly 78, patients were treated during the course of the war.
Sally Tompkins convinced wealthy Richmonder Judge John Robertson to allow her to operate a hospital out of his home while he moved to a safer area in the Shenandoah Valley. Robertson Hospital could care for only a hundred patients at a time but was also able to provide them with more personal attention than they might receive elsewhere.
She continued to operate her hospital until the end of the war. Tompkins was not the only white woman who actively worked for the Confederate cause in Richmond. Other women filled key positions in the Treasury Department, the. Ordnance Department, the Quartermaster Department, and the Confederate commissary. Women sewed uniforms, made percussion caps, and signed currency, all for wages and in support of the Confederate cause.
Elizabeth Van Lew and her mother were staunch Unionists. Indeed, Union generals Benjamin F. Butler and Ulysses S. Grant deemed the information the younger Van Lew provided them as critical to the campaigns. In recognition of that assistance, Grant, as U. Nevertheless, locals, visitors, and news correspondents commented repeatedly on how many women had entered the work force.
Given the high number of casualties and disabilities the war produced, one wonders if Confederate women could, indeed, return to solely the domestic sphere. With a quarter of the white male population dead, many women had no choice but to continue working to support their families. Servants and Slaves in the White House of the Confederacy. In part this was due to necessity, as slave labor was absolutely crucial to the success of the Confederate war effort.
Male slaves with industrial skills found their labor in particularly high demand, and could often command relatively high wages.
In addition, the Confederate War Department hired thousands of black men to work in the government warehouses, tanning yards, and hospitals that soon filled the city; black women also routinely found employment in government hospitals as laundresses and cooks. The War Department and the city council also routinely forced male slaves to dig trenches and build fortifications outside the city.
In addition, prices for housing and basic commodities skyrocketed during the last two years of the war, forcing many Richmond families to make cuts in the number of household servants they hired, or to hire only slaves without children. Confederate military fortunes waxed and then waned in and But following on the heels of that battle came twin Confederate debacles at Vicksburg, Mississippi, and Gettysburg , Pennsylvania.
Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia and not the Confederate capital. Yet Richmond necessarily loomed large because Lee determined to defend it: it was his logistical lifeline.
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