Another Day in Richmond!

Today (July 5th), we returned to Richmond, this time to view it as a city entering the Civil War. We walked along some of the canals, and discussed their construction. They were built by poor whites, immigrants, and slaves, and so we evaluated the differences those workers must have had, and the double standard that these new uses for slavery were implying. If slaves were working alongside of free white men, what did that mean for the status of the slaves, and the status of those who were free?

A canal in Richmond that we investigated

Another canal, this one bigger and more open than the other one. It was closer to the river, so it was used more.

After looking at the canals, we went over to the river, and discussed the role of the 'industrial south'. While the south was mainly agricultural, cities like Richmond prove that the South was more than capable of sustaining its own factories. Two notable factories were Tredegar Ironworks and the "Confederate's Laboratory". Both produced a good deal of ammunition, weaponry, and other solutions to militaristic needs during the Civil War.

A section of Tredegar Ironworks that still stands today.

Continuing on to Tredegar and the Civil War museum (it's in another part of the old Tredegar factory, to the right of the one in the photo), we saw the impact of the war, and heard a lot of stories from the battlefields. Some of the best parts of the museum were the locks of hair from Stonewall Jackson and General Lee, as well as a cast of Lee's face. The tour guide there was extremely friendly, and not only talked with us about history, but also mentioned the discovery of the Higgs boson!

In the Civil War museum there was a sign that had the effects of southern inflation on it. There were objects, then their prices in the Confederacy in 1863, and then how much that was equivalent to today. The results were shocking. A cake of soap was $1.10 ($20.34 in today's money), a pair of shoes cost $600 (that's equal to $11,094), and a bag of flour would have sold for $250 (that's $4,623 now)! It added a whole new dimension to the war that I had never thought of before, and gave me a new perspective on what things were like for both the soldiers fighting, and for those waiting at home. In seminar, we discussed the difference between the paintings we see of the war and the photographs. The paintings look regal, and show everyone cleaned up and at their best. The photographs are more realistic, and show the horrible condition of the soldier's clothing, their lack of shoes and proper equipment, and the gruesomeness of their injuries. Understanding what the war was really like changed the way I thought about it, and it's shocking to me that an entire country was able to live through something as horrible as the Civil War.

Richmond had a lot of really cool graffiti and murals right beside the river

Each piece seemed to have its own theme, and was done by a different group

The paintings were just lined up next to each other on a really long wall

This one was the last one before the river (it reads: "James, is that you I smell?" in reference to the water of the James River)

This was one of my favorites!

A little island in the James River, which reminded me a good deal of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - and look, there's even people camping on it! :)

A pretty view of a new bridge and some old pylons over the James River

My paragraph for class that day:

In school, it seems that the division between races before the Civil War was much like the divisions present during segregation. However, it would appear that it was not that way. In Rothman’s work, he points out that the streets of Richmond were filled with all sorts of people, and that different genders and races all had interactions with each other. This sounds like a good thing, as there was a lot of bi-racial cooperation going on, but in reality, it just lead to a sticky situation. The institution of slavery in the south relied heavily on the fact that those who had any form of black blood in them were lesser beings than those who were white, and could therefore be made to work hard all day and be traded like objects. But, when daily interactions in the streets of Richmond, and cities like it, lead to more and more co-mingling of the races, it evened out the playing field. It became very clear that skin tone wasn’t invocative of differences, and that blurred the color lines. Instead of blacks being on the bottom and whites being on the top, there were now whites buying from, selling to, and even being intimate with blacks! This sort of behavior clearly points out that blacks were not property, and were just as worthy human beings as whites were. And that’s where the color lines blur – slaves could be bought, sold and traded, forced to work and whipped, yet they were working right along side of whites, and no one would ever think to treat a white person that way. It put everyone in a tricky place, because slavery, which the south was reliant on, depended on the assumption that those with darker skin were lowlier than those with pale skin, yet everyday interactions proved that those assumptions were false.