As it circles to the east of Virginia\u2019s capital city, the Transamerican Bicycle Route 76 passes by several locations of Richmond Battlefield Park. The Cold Harbor National Cemetery and Battlefield Visitor Center are directly on the route. These facilities commemorate a battle that took place over ten days in early summer 1864. Union armies commanded by Ulysses S. Grant fought against Confederate armies led by Robert E. Lee. During the course of several days, the Confederate forces built a network of trenches which made it possible to fend off attacks by the numerically larger Union forces. Eventually, the battle ended in a stalemate, and Union forces withdrew. By the end of the battle, the number of men killed, wounded, missing, or captured reached 12,000 on the Union side and almost 4,000 on the side of the Confederacy. Visitors to this historical site will be able to view explanatory signs and walk along the ground where men from both sides fought and died. This experience provides insights into continuing debates over the implications of the Civil War for Virginia in the past, in the present, and into the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Welcome to episode 5 of the Virginia Bikecentennial Route 76 Podcast. This episode is connected to the capital city of Richmond, located just under 80 miles from Yorktown, the starting point for the westbound route, and about 470 miles from the Kentucky border, where eastbound riders enter Virginia. This podcast is a production of Virginia Tech, a public land grant university located in Blacksburg, just three miles from Route 76 in southwest Virginia. I am your host, Tom Ewing, and this podcast is produced by the digital humanities program in Virginia Tech University Libraries, under the direction of media manager Joe Forte.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Virginia was a contested space throughout the American Civil War. Virginia joined the secessionist states when a statewide referendum approved this radical break on May 23, 1861, just weeks after the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter. Among the Confederate States of America, Virginia had the largest population and the most industrial capacity. The First Battle of Manassas, the first major engagement of the war, took place in July 1861 along Bull Run in northern Virginia, not far from Washington DC. Richmond was the capital of the Confederacy, and thus the seat of government for the secessionist states. President Jefferson Davis remained in the capital city from his election in 1861 until spring 1865, when he fled advancing Union troops for Georgia, where he was later captured. In 1863, Virginia lost territory when counties led by Unionists loyal to the United States formed the new state of West Virginia. The surrender of Richmond in early April 1865 marked the final collapse of southern military resistance. The American civil war ended in Virginia, with the surrender of General Robert E. Lee at Appomattox on April 9, 1865. The war was very costly for Virginia, with more than 25,000 military deaths during the four years of battle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As cyclists ride across Virginia, they will encounter many monuments to the confederacy in towns and cities. In Abingdon, the statue of a Confederate soldier on Main Street, established in 1907, includes the phrase (in Latin): \u201cCourage and Strength for Country.\u201d In Christiansburg, an obelisk in front of the courthouse and old post office was placed in 1883 to commemorate soldiers from Montgomery County who served in the war. In Buchanan, an obelisk established in 1904 on the grounds of the courthouse identifies the companies from Botetourt County which fought in the war. This monument has two distinct features: a recognition of the role of Confederate women and of the costs of disease, which killed more soldiers than battlefield injuries. Lexington has four monuments related to the Confederacy: a confederate monument, a chapel named for Robert E. Lee, a statue of Stonewall Jackson, and a statue of Virginia mourning her dead, which recognizes the cadets from Virginia Military Institute who died in the battle of New Market. These monuments in Lexington were established over a fifty year period, from the early 1880s to the early 1930s. In Williamsburg, a monument to Confederate soldiers was established in 1908, moved to a city park in 2000, and then removed by a decision of the city council in the summer of 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Three themes connect these monuments across Virginia. First, many were placed in very visible locations, such as on Main Street, near a courthouse, or in other downtown locations. Second, most monuments were placed years or even decades after the Civil War ended in 1865. This timing confirmed that the placement of these monuments were as much about racial politics at the time as they were commemorations of the Confederacy. At a time when every resource of white America, including the legal system, law enforcement, business interests, religious institutions, educational programs, and cultural organizations were mobilized to separate the races, the creation of monuments to the memory of those who fought to preserve slavery was a clear message to African Americans in Virginia. Finally, despite all the controversy associated with Confederate monuments during the past decade, particularly during the summer of 2020 following protests about the murder of George Floyd, only one of the eight monuments listed above along Route 76 have been removed by local authorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The most famous, controversial, and recently eliminated manifestation of Virginia\u2019s complicated history with the American Civil War and its legacies is located just about ten miles to the east of Cold Harbor Visitor Center. For more than a century, Monument Avenue in downtown Richmond proclaimed the enduring power of Confederate history in the heart of Virginia\u2019s capital city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Monument Avenue was designed and constructed in the late nineteenth century, following the models of other European and American cities with a grand boulevarde leading to the center of downtown. On May 29, 1890, an estimated 100,000 people gathered to view the unveiling of a statue to Confederate General Robert E. Lee, who died twenty years earlier. This statue stood more than sixty feet tall, with a sixteen foot bronze statue of the general on his horse on top of a marble base. In the decades that followed, more monuments were established for other Confederate figures, including General J. E. B. Stuart, General Stonewall Jackson, Commander Matthew Fontaine Maury, and President Jefferson Davis. Each of these statues was established between 1907 and 1929, thus confirming the timeline outlined above. These statues were products of the Jim Crow era of rigid racial segregation, and thus must be seen as an extension of legal steps to declare that free access to public spaces was the exclusive right and privilege of white Americans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1996, the first statue for a non-Confederate leader was placed on Monument Avenue, with the establishment of a monument to Richmond native, Arthur Ashe, in recognition of his remarkable achievements on the tennis court and as an advocate for civil rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the last few decades, these monuments became the focus of criticism and protests from advocates for racial justice and equality. The central location and remarkable scale of these monuments appeared to many as proclamations that the white supremacy that motivated the civil war and resistance to civil rights remained a powerful force in Virginia\u2019s capital city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the last decade, however, the balance of opinion about Monument Avenue finally shifted. In 2017, following the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville connected to the Lee monument in that city, the prominence of the Confederate monuments in downtown Richmond became increasingly controversial. Finally, as noted above, the national protests for racial justice in summer 2020 finally forced city authorities to meet the demand of residents to have the statues removed. This process began in July 2020 and ended in February 2022, with the removal of the Lee statue. Only the statue to Arthur Ashe, and new gardens planted where other monuments once stood, remain as evidence of this conflicted history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As noted earlier, the monument to Confederate soldiers in Christiansburg has stood for more than one hundred years at the center of the downtown, in front of the post office and the county courthouse. This monument has been left standing, but is now accompanied by historical panels providing more context regarding the legacies of the civil war for this community. These panels reveal a more complicated history that restores African-Americans to the narrative of American history in ways that had been systematically denied or silenced by the Confederate monuments. This approach to enhancing existing monuments in ways that provide a more accurate and complete narrative of history provides a basis for community empowerment and education that may be replicated in other communities across Virginia, where the legacies of the Civil War remain contested spaces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Route 76 passes by the entrance to the Cold Harbor National Cemetery, located not far from the battlefield museum. More than two thousand soldiers are interred in this cemetery, which was established in 1866, the year following the battle and the subsequent surrender by Lee at Appomattox. More than one thousand soldiers who died on the battlefield were interred without being identified. A Monument to the Unknowns was erected in 1877 to recognize these soldiers. Only Union soldiers were buried at Cold Harbor National Cemetery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Confederate soldiers who died on the same battlefield were mostly relocated to Richmond. Hollywood Cemetery includes the bodies of more than 10,000 soldiers and officers. In most cases, these bodies were removed from temporary graves where soldiers died in battle. Hollywood cemetery is located just south of Monument Avenue in downtown Richmond. In 1869, just four years after the war ended, the Monument of the Confederate War Dead, a ninety foot high granite pyramid, was established in the cemetery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The fact that Union and Confederate soldiers who died on the same fields of battle were buried in separate cemeteries is eloquent testimony of how deeply the nation was divided during and after the civil war. The continued struggle over civil war memorials across Virginia is further evidence that these divisions have long lasting implications for the United States as we approach the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You have been listening to episode 5 of the Virginia Bikecentennial Route 76 Podcast. This episode is connected to the capital city of Richmond, located just under 80 miles from Yorktown, the starting point for the westbound route, and about 470 miles from the Kentucky border, where eastbound riders enter Virginia. This podcast is a production of Virginia Tech, a public land grant university located in Blacksburg, just three miles from Route 76 in southwest Virginia. I am your host, Tom Ewing, and this podcast is produced by the digital humanities program in Virginia Tech University Libraries, under the direction of media manager Joe Forte. To learn more about the stories in this episode, visit our website or follow us on social media, all accessible from the homepage for this podcast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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