Crucible of the Civil War: Virginia from Secession to Commemoration

Introduction

Introduction Gary W. Gallagher Virginia offers a feast of subjects for anyone interested in exploring the Confederate experience or the Civil War more broadly defined. The state endured a bitter internal debate about secession in 1861 that eventually led to the loss of its mountainous western counties, which joined the United States as West Virginia in 1863. Yet even as their western brethren departed, most citizens in Confederate Virginia overcame prewar divisions to achieve a striking sense of national purpose. Armies campaigning within the state’s borders fought a number of the most famous battles in American history, slaughtering each other in profusion and creating enormous disruption among the civilian population. To a degree unparalleled elsewhere during the conflict, Virginians in the most heavily contested areas of the state struggled to cope with a battlefront and a home front that literally blended together. Virginia’s decision to join the Confederacy undoubtedly lengthened the conflict, opening the way for dramatic social and economic changes among its white and black residents that would have been unthinkable to most observers in 1861. From the opening engagement at First Bull Run on July 21, 1861, until the surrender of the Confederacy’s principal field army at Appomattox on April 9, 1865, foreign observers, members of the rival national governments, and citizens in the eastern regions of both the United States and the Confederacy 2 K gary w. gallagher (where most of the populations lived) most often looked to Virginia to gauge the progress of the war. The state was thus central to expectations and fluctuations of morale on both sides—a phenomenon evident from the outset of the war. Abraham Lincoln gave particular attention to Virginia in his message of July 4, 1861, to a Congress called into special session to deal with the breakup of the Union. Detailing his response to the process by which eleven states had formed a new slaveholding republic, the president singled Virginia out among the four Upper South states that had withdrawn from the Union following his call for volunteers in the wake of Fort Sumter. Pro-Union sentiment had been repressed in Tennessee, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Virginia, observed Lincoln, but “[t]he course taken in Virginia was the most remarkable—perhaps the most important.” Virginia’s leaders had ordered the seizure of U.S. military property at Harpers Ferry and Norfolk and “received—perhaps invited—into their state, large bodies of troops, with their warlike appointments, from the so-called seceded States.” Most ominously, Virginia had allowed “the insurrectionary government ” of the Confederacy to be transferred from Montgomery, Alabama , to Richmond. “The people of Virginia have thus allowed this giant insurrection to make its nest within her borders,” remarked Lincoln with evident anger, “and this [U.S.] government has no choice left but to deal with it, where it finds it.” Well might Lincoln direct hard words toward Virginia, for he knew that its actions dramatically altered the landscape of the looming conflict. Repressing a rebellion of seven Deep South states had posed enough of a challenge to the U.S. government and its loyal citizenry, but Virginia’s secession undoubtedly enhanced Confederate chances for success. Less than three weeks after Lincoln’s message went to Congress, the battle of First Bull Run, a smashing Confederate victory fought thirty miles from Washington near Manassas Junction, featured Virginia generals and soldiers and ended any thoughts of a quick end to the national crisis. The fledgling Southern government similarly understood the Old Dominion ’s importance. On April 22, five days after Virginia’s convention voted to leave the United States, Vice President Alexander H. Stephens had visited Richmond to make a case for the Confederacy. As part of the wooing, he held out the promise of making Richmond the new national capital: “The enemy is now on your border—almost at your door—he must be met. This can best be done by having your military operations under the common head at Montgomery—or it may be at Richmond. . . . [I]t is quite within the range of probability that, if such an alliance is made, the introduction K 3 seat of our government will, within a few weeks, be moved to this place. . . . [S]hould Virginia become, as it probably will, the theatre of the war, the whole may be transfered here. . . . We want the voice of Virginia in our Confederate...