Richmond, Virginia: pride of the founding fathers, doomed capital of the Confederate States of America. Unlike other Southern cities, Richmond boasted a vibrant, urban industrial complex capable of producing crucial ammunition and military supplies. Despite its northern position, Richmond became the Confederacy’s beating heart—its capital, second-largest city, and impenetrable citadel. As long as the city endured, the Confederacy remained a well-supplied and formidable force. But when Ulysses S. Grant broke its defenses in 1865, the Confederates fled, burned Richmond to the ground, and surrendered within the week.
Confederate Citadel: Richmond and Its People at War offers a detailed portrait of life’s daily hardships in the rebel capital during the Civil War. Here, barricaded against a siege, staunch Unionists became a dangerous fifth column, refugees flooded the streets, and women organized a bread riot in the city. Drawing on personal correspondence, private diaries, and newspapers, author Mary A. De Credico spotlights the human elements of Richmond’s economic rise and fall, uncovering its significance as the South’s industrial powerhouse throughout the Civil War.
Table of Content
From the City on the James to Confederate Capital
The Campaigns of 1862: ‘On to Richmond’
Hardship and Despair, 1863: ‘A General Gloom Prevails’
The Overcrowded and Hungry City, 1864: ‘We are in a Sad and Anxious State Here Now’
The Fall of Richmond, 1865: ‘We Slept as It Were over the Heaving Crater of a Volcano’
The Smoking Ruins
About the author
Mary A. De Credico is professor of history at the United States Naval Academy and is author of numerous publications, including Mary Boykin Chesnut: A Confederate Woman’s Life and Patriotism for Profit: Georgia’s Urban Entrepreneurs and the Confederate War Effort.
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