Richmond VA - 150 years ago today- evacuation and the fire. The end of the Civil War.

[underpants]

After a long siege, Grant captured Petersburg and Richmond in early April 1865. As the fall of Petersburg became imminent, on Evacuation Sunday (April 2), President Davis, his Cabinet, and the Confederate defenders abandoned Richmond and fled south on the last open railroad line, the Richmond and Danville.

The retreating soldiers were under orders to set fire to bridges, the armory, and warehouses with supplies as they left. The fire in the largely abandoned city spread out of control, and large parts of Richmond were destroyed, reaching to the very edge of Capitol Square mostly unchecked. The conflagration was not completely extinguished until the mayor and other civilians went to the Union lines east of Richmond on New Market Road (now State Route 5) and surrendered the city the next day. Union troops put out the raging fires in the city. The event became known as the Evacuation Fire of 1865.

President Lincoln, who had been visiting General Grant and staying nearby at City Point, toured the fallen city (April 4–7) by foot and carriage with his young son Tad, and visited the former White House of the Confederacy and the Virginia State Capitol.

About one week after the evacuation of Richmond, General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Grant on April 9 ending the Battle of Appomattox Courthouse. Within the same week, on the evening of April 14, President Lincoln was assassinated in Washington D.C. by the Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richmond_in_the_American_Civil_War

[RKP5637]

1. And yet many are still fighting the civil war and they are so damn DUH! n/t

[angstlessk]

2. I was born in VA...as a kid we used to say

"the south will rise again" to which the answer was "shit floats"

[kwassa]

3. My great-grandfather was wounded in the Petersburg siege ...

but he survived, or I wouldn't be here.

First Maine Cavalry.

[arcane1]

4. I spent my first 32 of life living there, and totally took the history for granted.

I'd be a super-tourist going back now.

[thucythucy]

5. Why would Confederate "leaders' order the city's bridges

and other structures be destroyed?

The war was obviously lost. Further destruction was pointless, could serve no military value, and would (and did) only make life that much more miserable for the civilians who had to live in the resultant rubble.

I don't think it's too terribly hyperbolic to compare this behavior to Hitler ordering a "scorched earth" policy in Germany, after January 1945, even though the war was clearly lost.

The more I learn about the leaders of the rebellion, Jefferson Davis chief among them, the more detestable they seem.

[NutmegYankee]

6. To deny the USA the prize of occupying the city.

All the Military of the United States of America was able to occupy was ruins. This as opposed to Sherman, who took the cities from the traitors and then torched them.