Richmond Is a Hard Road to Travel

BRIAN: This is BackStory. I’m Brian Balogh.

ED: I’m Ed Ayers.

PETER: And I’m Peter Onuf. We’re talking today about the end of the Civil War as the beginning of a whole lot of uncertainty in America. We started the show in Appomattox at a reenactment of the Confederate surrender. We’re going to close with tape from another recent reenactment– this one in the streets of Richmond, Virginia.

ED: What you’re hearing is a re-creation of April 3, 1865– a few days before the surrender at Appomattox. On that morning, Union soldiers under the command of Major General Godfrey Weitzel, marched into the former capital of the Confederacy. Richmond was still engulfed by fires that the fleeing Confederates had set in an effort to destroy the material and the goods they had left behind.

Two regiments of United States Colored Troops were among the first to enter the city. Linda Holmes of Portsmouth, Virginia, was among the many who were there to watch.

FEMALE SPEAKER: This was a snapshot of what was a gigantic happening at the time. And what it must have meant to African Americans who were enslaved, to see in the streets of Richmond, the Union soldiers, including the colored troops marching free, liberated, in victory– I mean, it’s like, to me– to me, this is our 4th of July. It is our Independence Day.

ED: The Colored Troop reenactors were followed by active duty military– young men and women of all skin colors. And bringing up the rear, African Americans in traditional African garb, playing drums and carrying pictures of influential black leaders.

BRIAN: All in all, it was a very different kind of event from those you might associate with Civil War history. It was part of a four day commemoration of the fall of Richmond that Ed here helped organize, and that the BackStory crew was lucky enough to play a small part in.

PETER: 150 years to the day since Abraham Lincoln walked the streets of that burned out city, and strolled through the capitol building where Jefferson Davis governed for four years, we hosted a live question and answer session in that very same building. We’re going to conclude our show today with tape from that event. As you’ll hear, it featured snippets from interviews our producers conducted over the course of a few days, with some of the people attending the events.

BRIAN: 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: 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 enact 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. 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.

It’s connection to the ground, 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. 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 go so loud.

ED: And that’s the paradox. 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.

You know 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 ask them to ignore it. And it just seems too much to ask anybody.

PETER: You know, and I think in that slip, if it was a slip, we should have gotten over this business of hating when we celebrate 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: Part of the challenge is, what other symbol would you used to show that you are a proud southerner, that you love the place where you live? And I think the what you hear, there’s a kind of 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: Nah, I’m from New England, and I’m not proud. I’m full of conviction of original sin– and I just want to tell you, I’m sorry.

ED: On behalf of the rest of the nation, we accept.

BRIAN: Well Ed started this session off by talking about telling two stories. And 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 were walking around over the last couple of days.

Tony, why don’t we listen to the one from Roz [? Pheins ?]? She’s an African American woman who is talking here about how excited she was to see the United States Colored Troops march into Richmond, reenacting something that I’m sure was not part of the commemoration 50 years ago.

FEMALE SPEAKER: You know, 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. We have a lot of school children that don’t realize the active part that African Americans played in the war.

ED: It really was touching today to see the USCT marching in, followed by men and women from Ft. Lee, and to see that continuity demonstrated. And to hear Major General Weitzel read the words he actually said out there, and which they recognized– 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.

And I think, in all honesty, if you’d asked people in Richmond three years ago, who set the fire? They would have summed it was the Yankee soldiers. And who put it out? They would assume, somehow, there were still Confederates here, even though they’d 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. If you’d know that simple fact, the entire history of Richmond looks different.

BRIAN: We concluded our program at the state capitol in Richmond by taking a few questions from the audience. Here is a little bit of our exchange.

ROB NELSON: I’m Rob Nelson. So the question is, I could frame it a couple ways. Like, the bicentennial. Looking forward 50 years, when you’re all dead, hopefully. Cross my fingers. Like, do–

ED: You don’t have to hope. I will be dead in 50 years.

ROB NELSON: What would be your dream for what that bicentennial would look like? Another way of putting that might be, 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: Well, fortunately, we have a guy who lives in the 21st century. What’s it going to be like in 50 years, Brian?

BRIAN: 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. 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. 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: I just have one final comment about that. The trick’s going to be that we never forget the visceral suffering of slavery, and of the war itself. One danger of thinking of the war as 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.

So the trick’s going to be simultaneously to forget and to remember. And I think that’s the challenge of all history.

BRIAN: Peter, I think we’re looking at the modern future for our last question. I can’t think of a better young man. What’s your name?

EVAN FISCHER: My name is Evan Fischer. My question is, when Abraham Lincoln came here, did he come here guarded or unguarded.

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

ED: And I’ll tell you this, Evan. It’s kind of scary to think about. So he’d been down the River Hopewell when he’d 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 bit 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 a river, with that on the other side?

And then they landed not far from here, and nobody knew they were coming. And so they just get out and walk 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’s chair, too. It’s sort of like– all right.

So since it turned out OK, we can be happy, because he was surrounded by all the people who, just the day before, had been held in slavery. And now, they were able to come up– and some of them called him Father Abraham. And they knew that without him to help hold 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 theatre just a few days later. 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: 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: Thanks, everybody.

PETER: That was an excerpt of a live event we hosted on April 4th, part of a larger commemoration of the surrender of Richmond and the beginning of emancipation in the former capital of the Confederacy.

BRIAN: That’s going to do it for us today. But there’s a whole lot more Civil War history on our website, including the show we did earlier this month on the anniversary of Lincoln’s assassination. Speaking of which, a few of you wrote in to point out a mistake we made in that episode. We said that John Wilkes Booth was found and killed in a Maryland barn.

In fact, Booth met his demise in Caroline County, Virginia. We regret the error, and we welcome your corrections and feedback on this and on all of our shows. Our email is BackStory@Virginia.edu . Whatever you do, don’t be a stranger.