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Founded in 1737 at the furthest navigable point
on the James River, RICHMOND remained a small
outpost until just before the end of the colonial era, when independence-minded
Virginians, realizing that their capital at Williamsburg was open
to British attack, shifted it fifty miles further inland. The
move to Richmond failed to offer much protection - the city was
raided many times and twice put to the torch, once by troops under
the command of Benedict Arnold.
Richmond subsequently flourished, its population
reaching 100,000 by the time of the Civil War. When war broke
out it was named the capital of the Confederacy ,
despite the fact that Virginia had voted two-to-one against secession
from the Union just a month before. The massive Tredegar
Iron Works , now a dedicated visitor center-cum-museum,
became the main engine of the Confederate war machine. For four
years the city was the focus of Southern defenses and Union attacks,
but despite an almost constant state of siege - General McClellan
came within six miles as early as 1862, and General Grant steamrolled
remorselessly towards it through the last months of the war -
it held on until the very end. It was less than a week after the
fall of Richmond, on April 3, 1865, that General Lee surrendered
to General Grant at Appomattox, a hundred miles west.
After the war, Richmond was devastated. Much of
its downtown was burned, allegedly by fleeing Confederates who
wanted to keep its stores of weapons, and its warehouses full
of tobacco, out of the victors' hands. Rebuilding, however, was
quick, and the city's economy has remained among the strongest
in the South. Today's Richmond is a remarkably elegant city, with
an extensive inventory of architecturally significant older buildings
alongside its modern office towers. Tobacco is
still a major industry - machine-rolled cigarettes were invented
here in the 1870s, and Marlboro-maker Phillip Morris
runs a huge manufacturing plant just south of downtown. Richmond
is also a leading banking center.
