Further, as the city’s only non-partisan newspaper since its establishment in 1850, the publication had a reputation for featuring relatively unbiased news. This website traces those changes by digitizing the pages of the Richmond Dispatch, the city’s newspaper which with 1,800 subscribers equaled the circulation of all of its competitors combined. When the delegates in Richmond reached their decision, it is doubtful that any of them realized to what degree the events of the next four years would change their state and its capital. Now, however, with President Lincoln compelling Virginians to take a side, the entire tenor in Virginia and Richmond shifted as all three of Richmond’s delegates joined with the majority of members of the state convention to pass an ordinance of secession on April 17. Back on February 4, when the city elected delegates to the state secession convention, reflecting the city’s conservative political nature two of the three delegates it chose were Unionists. Indeed, if on April 12, 1861, the Confederacy had not fired on Fort Sumter and thereby cause President Abraham Lincoln to call on the states to raise 75,000 troops to put down the rebellion, there is every reason to believe that Virginia would not have seceded. Like the other states of the Upper South and the border states, Virginia was slow to leave the Union and join the Confederacy. Clearly all of these factors would lead the newly-established Confederate government to vote on to shift its national capital from Montgomery, Alabama to Richmond.ĭespite the obvious advantages Richmond afforded, when the Confederacy had formed in early February of 1861, it was not only unclear that Richmond would become that nation’s new capital, but even whether Virginia would join with that new nation. Further, besides its industrial capacity, the city housed numerous hotels and formed a banking center for the Upper South. In addition, the city contained a number of rolling mills, foundries and, most notably, the Tredegar Iron Works, the largest employer in the city with 900 employees. In addition, particularly during the two decades before the Civil War, the city had taken advantage of its location to become a significant manufacturing center as it was ranked thirteenth nationally in manufacturing-much of it due to its many flour and meal mills and tobacco factories. Richmond’s location at the falls of that river had allowed it to become the hub of this commerce. The city’s economic foundation was tied to the agricultural hinterlands as the James River for years had served as the primary transportation system for shipping raw materials and finished products. Richmond’s location on the James River had defined its development since the city’s founding in 1780. In addition to its racial divisions, Richmond featured two distinct and thriving ethnic populations, composed of Irish and German immigrants as well as their American-born descendants.
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The remaining 14,315 inhabitants were composed of 11,739 slaves and 2,576 free African Americans.
A total of 23,595 of these residents were white. In 1860 Richmond, Virginia’s capital, had a population of 37,910 inhabitants, ranking it as the nation’s twenty-fifth largest city.
This website portrays these changes, but also uses the capital of the Confederate States of America as a lens for understanding the larger conflict itself.īefore understanding how the website accomplishes these two tasks, it is necessary to provide some background on both antebellum Richmond as well as on the Richmond Dispatch. Few American cities have experienced as much change in so little time as did Richmond, Virginia during the Civil War.
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