Richmond is a Hard Road to Travel

Ed Ayers:
Finally, I want to take you back to April 3, 1865. On that day, Union soldiers marched into Richmond, Virginia and captured the Confederacy’s capital city. This momentous occasion set off a chain of events that shaped everything from the end of the Civil War to the creation of a lost cause mythology.

Ed Ayers:
In 2015, BackStory took part in a live show commemorating the 150th anniversary of the city’s liberation. It featured myself, Brian Balogh and former BackStory host Peter Onuf. We also got some help from Tony Field, the shows senior producer at the time. This day was an important one for Richmond. A lot of people, including myself, had been working for five years to have Richmond remember the Civil War, remember emancipation in a fuller way than it was frankly anywhere else in the United States.

Ed Ayers:
We felt a special responsibility having been the capital of the Confederacy and the center of the domestic slave trade. The governor of Virginia gave us the state Capitol and its grounds to help remember that day. United States colored troops re-enactors marched up the same street that black troops had marched up in April 1865, before they were put to work putting out the flames that the Confederates had set as they fled Richmond.

Ed Ayers:
BackStory was honored to have the opportunity to participate in this program. We were given a large room in the Virginia State Capitol, set up for a question and answer period and the room was filled with people who wanted to talk about what this day meant for Richmond, for Virginia and for the country. Brian and Peter and I were delighted to have a chance to answer some questions.

Ed Ayers:
In the clip I’m about to share with you, we play and discuss two short recordings before transitioning to an audience question and answer session. Brian starts us off in this segment. It appeared in the episode 1865: United States of Uncertainty.

Brian Balogh:
This next clip of tape that we’re going to hear gets at, I think a very familiar and common trope that has been used many times in the past. This is John Boudreau and he had many ancestors who fought for the Confederacy. And when our producer caught up with him, he was wearing a Confederate battle flag as a lapel pin, and our producer asked him about it.

John Boudreau:
It’s heritage, not hate. I love the South. I love the South. And if we understand the context in which we look at those symbols of our heritage, then I don’t think anybody should have a problem with that. The battle flag is not a political statement, it’s a soldier’s flag. It’s not a symbol of hate. I don’t express it that way. That’s a part of the South to me that needs to have been left behind way more than 150 years ago.

Peter Onuf:
Well, that I think encapsulates the traditional view and that is everybody’s got a good war that they can remember. Heritage, not hate. It’s a nice turn of phrase. The idea that Wars could take place and we could reenact them and somehow the hate would disappear, would not be part of the memory that we’re sustaining. It’s a hard one for me to get my mind around.

Peter Onuf:
And I think that John was testifying there certainly identifies with and loves his region. This is the meaning of patriotism, if you go back into the 18th century and before. Its a connection to the crown, to the country. You love your country and what could be more precious to you than your country. But what is the South? And I’d only suggest that something like the idea of a team, this is a totalizing concept.

Peter Onuf:
He knows what the South is. Well, there are many Souths and I think that’s the challenge for us. If there is going to be a South today, which is our challenge, not to recover a South of yesterday. How can that South of today bring together the people who actually live here? I’m sorry I got so loud.

Ed Ayers:
No, that’s the paradox. I mean, I believe him when he says he hates no one. I believe this is what he means. But the idea of heritage as like a big treasure chest that you can sort of rifle through and take out the parts that you like and call that your heritage is very convenient. Instead, people who’ve inherited things know you inherit debt as well as you inherit the silverware.

Ed Ayers:
That you don’t just get the things that you want, you get the mistakes that your ancestors made. And I think that what the challenge that folks like John find is that he says, “I look in my own heart. I don’t hate anybody, but I can’t understand why other people can’t just accept that that’s the case. And the fact that this symbol has been used in such hurtful and dangerous and threatening, deadly ways, I just asked them to ignore it.” And it just seems too much to ask anybody.

Peter Onuf:
I think in that slip, if it was a slip, we should have gotten over this business of hating when we celebrate the Confederacy, but he’s implicitly admitting that that has been what the Confederacy has stood for. He’s telling us it shouldn’t have to stand for that. Well, how’s that going to happen until we come to terms with what the Confederacy was?

Ed Ayers:
Part of the challenge is what other symbol would you use to show that you are a proud southerner? That you love the place where you live.

Peter Onuf:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Ed Ayers:
And I think that what you hear, there’s a kind of a pain and confusion, “Well, everybody else gets to be proud of where they’re from. Why don’t we get that?” And I think that-

Peter Onuf:
No, I’m from new England and I’m not proud. I’m full of conviction of original sin. Okay. And I just want to tell you, I’m sorry. Okay.

Ed Ayers:
On behalf of the rest of the nation we accept.

Brian Balogh:
I think as we go on, play a few more clips from our producers, I think you’ll see glimpses of this newer picture. It’s a picture of an old story, but these newer interpretations that are beginning to appear and really make an impact on some of the folks who are walking around over the last couple of days. Tony, why don’t we listen to the one from Roz Faines, she’s an African American woman who is talking here about how excited she was to see the United States Colored Troops March in to Richmond reenacting something that I’m sure was not part of the commemoration 50 years ago.

Roz Faines:
The previous picture was slaves marching across the 14th street bridge or being marched across from North Carolina. So we can be active in knowing that we helped bring about the ending of slavery. And for African Americans, that’s very, very important. I’m sure we have a lot of school children that don’t realize the active part that African Americans played in the war.

Ed Ayers:
It really was touching today to see the USC team marching in, followed by men and women from Fort Lee. And to see that continuity demonstrated. And to hear Major General Weitzel read the words he actually said out there, in which they recognize in this moment, that they are changing the view of the world and making people understand. “Not only did you free these 30,000 people” he said, “But you have demonstrated to the world that black men have fought to make this nation free.”

Ed Ayers:
And I think, in all honesty, if you’d asked people in Richmond three years ago, who set the fire? They would assume that it was the Yankee soldiers. And who put it out? They would have assumed somehow there were still Confederates here even though they fled. And if you told anybody that it was African American soldiers who walked in here and put the fire out, I just don’t think they would have known that.

Ed Ayers:
If you know that simple fact, the entire history of Richmond looks different.

Brian Balogh:
We concluded our program at the state Capitol in Richmond by taking a few questions from the audience. Here’s a little bit of our exchange.

Rob Nelson:
I’m Rob Nelson, so the question is, I could frame a couple of ways. The bicentennial, looking forward 50 years when you’re all dead, hopefully, cross my fingers.

Ed Ayers:
Thank you for that.

Rob Nelson:
I am there. Do you have-

Ed Ayers:
You don’t have to hope Rob, I will be dead in 50 years.

Rob Nelson:
Yeah, yeah. What would your dream for what that bicentennial would look like? Another way of putting that might be like if you’re thinking about your counterpart 50 years from now planning the bicentennial events in 2061, 2065, any advice you’d give them? Like if they’re digging out this recording at some point?

Ed Ayers:
Fortunately, we have a guy who lives in the 21st century. What’s it going to be like in 50 years, Brian?

Brian Balogh:
I can tell you what I hope it’s like. I hope we are not as surprised to discover the story of the role of African Americans in the Civil War. Because that has become a basic part of the story. And I hope in many ways, that we treat it and Peter may push back here, I’m stealing a bit of his thunder. I hope that we treat it a little bit more like we treat the Revolutionary War.

Brian Balogh:
In other words, it’s not in some ways as big a deal because it’s not addressing current problems as much 50 years from now. And by that, I mean current racial problems. I think one of the reasons that this remarkable commemoration, and I’ll go ahead and say it, celebration, has so much energy, is because these questions of racial tension in the United States have not gone away.

Brian Balogh:
And so I really hope that’s not the central focus 50 years from now because I believe that will be one indication that those issues really have gone away to a much greater degree than today.

Ed Ayers:
I just have one final comment about that. The trick is going to be that we never forget the visceral suffering of slavery and of the war itself. One danger of thinking of the war a two different teams is that we forget just how much profound suffering America inflicted on itself, sort of unintentionally. Thank goodness slavery ended as a result, but that would not have been known at the beginning.

Ed Ayers:
So the trick is going to be simultaneously to forget and to remember.

Rob Nelson:
Yeah, that’s good.

Ed Ayers:
And I think that’s the challenge of all history.

Brian Balogh:
Peter, I think we’re looking at the modern future.

Peter Onuf:
This is future, right?

Brian Balogh:
For our last question, I can’t think of a better young man. What’s your name?

Evan:
My name is Evan [crosstalk 00:34:25].

Brian Balogh:
Hi, Evan.

Evan:
My question is when Abraham Lincoln came here, did he come here guarded or unguarded?

Brian Balogh:
That’s a great question. I’m going to defer to our Civil War historian for that.

Peter Onuf:
Yeah.

Ed Ayers:
I’ll tell you this, Evan. It kind of scary to think about. So he’d been down the river, Hopewell. And when he heard that Richmond was falling and he took a big boat up the James, but it couldn’t get very far because of obstructions. And so they put him in a big rowboat. I’m not kidding. And with soldiers who rowed him, and he did have his big hat on and he was always six-foot-five or whatever. What do you think? Would that be very protected in a rowboat in the middle of the river with that on the other side?

Peter Onuf:
No, don’t think so.

Ed Ayers:
And then they landed not far from here and nobody knew they were coming. And so they just get out and walked through the city, all over the city. I mean, walked literally right here on his way to the White House of the Confederacy. He goes up and sits in Jefferson Davis’ chair to. It’s sort of like, all right. So since it turned out okay, we can be happy because he was surrounded by all the people who just the day before had been held in slavery.

Ed Ayers:
And now they were able to come up and some of them called him Father Abraham. They knew that without him to help hold the United States together, that they wouldn’t be there today. We all know he didn’t have much longer to live after that, right? It’s ironic isn’t it? That he can come and walk around the former capital of the Confederacy and survive, but can’t go to the theater just a few days later.

Ed Ayers:
So he was not protected and it tells you a lot about what kind of man he was that he wanted to experience what so many people had suffered for, for so long to bring to an end.

Brian Balogh:
Well, I want to thank you all for joining us today. This has been a very special day for me and thank you for helping us make it so special.

Ed Ayers:
Thanks everybody.

Ed Ayers:
That was an excerpt of a live event that BackStory hosted in April 2015 in Richmond, Virginia. The event commemorated the start of emancipation in the former capital of the Confederacy.

Ed Ayers:
That’s going to do it for us today. Thanks for joining me in this look back at some of my favorite moments from BackStory. I’d love to know what you thought about these segments or what some of your favorite BackStory moments have been. You’ll find this at BackStoryRadio.org or send an email to BackStory@Virginia.edu. We’re also on Facebook and Twitter @BackStoryRadio.

Ed Ayers:
BackStory is produced at Virginia Humanities. Major support is provided by an anonymous donor, The National Endowment for the Humanities, The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, The Johns Hopkins University and the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations. Additional support is provided by the Tomato Fund, cultivating fresh ideas in the arts, the humanities and the environment.

Speaker 11:
Brian Balogh is professor of history at the University of Virginia. Ed Ayers is professor of the humanities and president emeritus of the University of Richmond. Joanne Freeman is professor of history and American studies at Yale University. Nathan Connolly is the Herbert Baxter Adams associate professor of history at the Johns Hopkins University. BackStory was created by Andrew Wyndham for Virginia Humanities.