Va-Hist subscribers will certainly be interested in this review that was
recently posted on the H-Net electronic discussion lists. Please respect
both the letter and the spirit of the copyright notice at the foot of
the review.

Brent Tarter
The Library of Virginia
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Visit the Library of Virginia's web site at http://www.lva.lib.va.us



H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by [log in to unmask] (September 2003)

Nelson Lankford. _Richmond Burning: The Last Days of the Confederate
Capital_. New York: Penguin Books, 2002. viii + 312 pp. Maps, notes,
illustrations, bibliography, index. $27.95 (cloth), ISBN 0-670-03117-8;
$15.00 (paper), ISBN 0-142-00310-7.

Reviewed for H-CivWar by Kevin M. Levin <[log in to unmask]>, Instructor of
History, St. Anne's--Belfield School, Charlottesville, Virginia

Finding Meaning in the Fall of Richmond

On April 5 of this year a bronze statue of Abraham Lincoln and his
youngest child, Tad, was unveiled in Richmond commemorating their visit
to the city shortly after the arrival of Union forces. Commissioned by
the United States Historical Society, Lincoln and his son are seated on
a bench against a plain granite wall. The words, "To Bind Up the
Nation's Wounds" are cut into a granite capstone. Those who followed
this story know that the unveiling was accompanied by a great deal of
controversy and emotion. The commander of the Virginia Division, Sons of
Confederate Veterans called the work "a slap in the face of a lot of
brave men and women who went through four years of unbelievable hell
fighting an invasion of Virginia led by President Lincoln." Another
likened a Lincoln statue in Richmond to erecting a monument to Adolf
Hitler in Jerusalem. Lincoln historian Harold Holzer, Co-Chairman of the
U.S. Lincoln Bicentennial Commission supported placing the statue in
Richmond "as an historical symbol of reconciliation." Richmond National
Battlefield Park Superintendent, Cynthia MacLeod, said that Lincoln's
visit "was, and is, nationally significant and this statue will bolster
our effectiveness in telling that story." This heated debate suggests
that the fall of Richmond and the Civil War still has a tight hold on
popular memory. The publication of _Richmond Burning_ serves as a
fruitful entry point into the history behind this continued fascination
and attachment to the final days of our nation's civil war.

Though the fall of Richmond did not signal the surrender of all
Confederate armies, for many Southerners it did provide sufficient
evidence that their bid for independence would not be realized. Nelson
Lankford who edits _The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography_,
published by the Virginia Historical Society, uses the final days of
Richmond to weave together an array of stories that provide insight into
how the residents of Richmond, from Jefferson Davis to the city's slave
population, interpreted the swirling events that took place there in
early April 1865. Reactions from the city's white population varied. For
Fannie Dickinson, the arrival of Union troops meant the end of the world
as she knew it, while Elizabeth Van Lew rejoiced as Union regiments
raced one another toward Capitol Square. The slave population welcomed
the army, which included regiments of U.S. Colored Troops as liberators.
Accompanying the 28th USCT was Reverend Garland White who was born in
Richmond as a slave and later escaped to the North where he recruited
African Americans for the Union army. After he had addressed a crowd on
the edge of the city, an older woman approached and said, "[t]his is
your mother, Garland, whom you are talking to, who has spent twenty
years of grief about her son" (p. 127).

The central focus of the book is the fire on April 2 and 3, and Lankford
goes to great lengths to explain the breakdown in communications that
led to General Richard Ewell's order to destroy buildings that contained
tobacco. With the support of Secretary of War John C. Breckenridge,
Ewell believed that a fire could be contained. Others, including Chief
of Ordnance, Josiah Gorgas, and Richmond mayor, Joseph Mayo, questioned
whether the destruction of the buildings was even necessary. No one
seems to have been concerned that the wind would render any thoughts of
a contained fire otiose. Compared with the pictures of the devastation
as seen in photographs taken of Richmond after the fire, Lankford
reminds the reader that nine-tenths of the city's commercial district
was consumed by the fire, including eight hundred buildings. In addition
to the physical damage, Lankford catalogues other losses, including
valuable state documents and other historical items. "Letters of George
Washington and two-hundred-year-old colonial indentures fluttered in the
breeze" (p. 184).

Though the book's strength is its strong narrative, Lankford does place
his story in a broader historiographical context. Ultimately, the fall
of Richmond was due to Union military superiority in the wake of the
fall of Petersburg and not to internal fissures. Unlike previous studies
that emphasize the beginning of reconciliation between the two warring
sides, Lankford reminds the reader that Southerners stubbornly resisted
the reality of Union occupation. Stories suggesting early signs of
reconciliation such as Lincoln's courtesy call to the home of General
George Pickett, Union Major Genernal Godfrey Weitzel's decision to send
a "wallet stuffed with greenbacks" to his old "West Point chum" Fitzhugh
Lee, and Robert E. Lee's courageous move to kneel and pray next to a
black man at St. Paul's are all challenged. According to Lankford, all
three stories "are filled with a spirit of reconciliation and of hope
for the future of the broken country, reunited by force of arms and
facing an uncertain road ahead" (p. 243). In the end, however, the
stories contain more myth than fact.

Lankford steers the reader through Lincoln's triumphal entrance into the
city and tour of Jefferson Davis's White House, but also discusses in
some detail lesser known stories such as the president's desire to
restore the Virginia state legislature to vote the state out of the
Confederacy, thus ending hostilities much sooner. Lankford's interest in
this story is a perfect example of the book's attention to the
contingency of the past. Looking back on events at the beginning of
April 1865, it is easy to fall into the habit of drawing connections of
inevitability between important dates. A full week lapsed between the
government's abandonment of Richmond and Lee's surrender at Appomattox
on April 9. Even after entering Richmond on April 4, Lincoln could not
be certain that the end of the military conflict was anywhere in sight.
Lincoln eventually rescinded the offer to restore the legislature on
April 12, only after circumstances had changed in the Union's favor.
Lankford's focus on the limited perspectives of the participants reminds
readers not to make the mistake of reading back into the past.

By the following summer visitors to Richmond would have witnessed a city
in the process of rebuilding. Though the physical destruction was easily
repaired, according to Lankford, "passions did not die so quickly" (p.
245). Virginia Unionist and former U.S. Congressman John Minor Botts,
blamed the war and destruction on the secessionists and praised General
Ulysses S. Grant for delivering the South from "military despotism." On
the other side of the spectrum, former Richmond _Examiner_ editor Edward
Pollard held Jefferson Davis responsible for the fall of Richmond, and
castigated Grant for his use of unrestrained force. Even in defeat,
according to Pollard, the Confederacy could claim to have acted out of
the highest virtues of chivalry and humanity. At the same time,
Richmond's African-American community organized a march to celebrate the
first anniversary of occupation. Not surprisingly, white Richmonders
were appalled and though they attempted to stop the celebration, in the
end around two thousand men and women took part in the festivities. The
multiple meanings attached to the fall of Richmond and Confederate
defeat continue to resonate in popular culture and "cannot be masked by
the warm sepia glow cast over our great national trauma by popular books
and documentary films" (p. 248).

Lankford's sharp prose and command of a broad range of primary and
secondary sources makes this book a pleasure to read. Returning to the
heated debates surrounding the Lincoln statue, this book might also help
create a more historically-grounded and meaningful dialogue between
those who embrace radical positions in the debates about how the Civil
War should be remembered.

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