Rebel Richmond: Life and Death in the Confederate Capital by Stephen V. Ash (review)

Stephen V. Ash’s Rebel Richmond is a solid contribution to the growing field of Southern cities during the Civil War. Studies by Christopher Philips on Baltimore, Louis S. Gertis on St. Louis, Michael D. Pierson on New Orleans, Wendy Venet on Atlanta, Jacqueline Jones on Savannah, and Frank Towers and Andrew L. Slap on all of them have revealed how the South’s few urban areas experienced secession, emancipation, and the war’s consequences. Although fine books, they cover examples from the Border States that never came under Confederate rule, or those later occupied by Union forces. Ash (Tennessee-Knoxville) builds on his earlier works about Southern communities during the war, particularly Middle Tennessee Society Transformed (1988) and When the Yankees Came (1995), with this detailed study of the Confederate capital. He argues that the city’s population struggled under wartime conditions in a myriad of ways, but none of those conditions led to its collapse until its capture in April 1865. His research brings previously neglected groups ranging from refugees, the enslaved, and the free to soldiers, civilians, and bureaucrats, men and women, as well as upper-, middle-, and lower-class people, into his analysis. The result is a marvelous but flawed look into the Confederate urban home front.

Ash organizes the book thematically to maximize the range of Richmonders’ experiences during the war. The first chapters cover the material aspects of the daily struggles of the above groups. As the main target of the Union and Confederate war efforts for four long years, the city endured intense pressure that widened fissures among its populations. These diverse groups reacted, however, differently under those conditions. Fort Sumter, he argues, did not unite the population in favor of the rebellion as much as many believe. Instead, he found much resistance to volunteering, such as a Home Artillery unit agreeing to serve but only within the city limits. Maintaining coherence, moreover, proved to be difficult in a city filled with newcomers, including refugees, politicians, prisoners, and soldiers arriving with their own agendas. In the book’s best chapters, he covers how competing demands from the Confederate, Virginia, and city administrations stretched meager resources to the breaking point where even nails became scarce. Housing and food proved hard for most to find. Although plentiful, most jobs failed to keep pace with inflation and shortages. Yet, he shows how the authorities contained the problems or how the problems failed to split the city and its people despite their seriousness.

The next chapters deal with the sociocultural aspects of Richmond’s durability. The war generated much dissent, which troubled the authorities, yet he argues that the authorities succeeded in preventing trouble. Ash attributes the stability to “a restrained sort of martial law, far from a military dictatorship” (129) throughout the conflict. This is an understatement. The ruling white civilian government applied the same policies to guard against vice and protect the city’s social structure. Alcohol, prostitution, theft, and corruption strained law enforcement to the point they had to accept a certain level of each. Sometimes, however, the authorities promptly curtailed unrest. The support shown by many lower-class whites for the famed April 1863 bread riot forced the city to act fast by providing both relief and enhanced police patrols. On the other hand, Ash shows that despite the erosion of social cohesion, neither slavery nor white supremacy collapsed before the city’s capture. Assertions from enslaved and free Black people received rapid responses from the white population, who continued to blame outsiders for any disloyalty. Not even overflowing graveyards or hospitals cracked the rebel capital.

This superb array of research has two significant shortcomings. Ash claims that he was reluctant to engage in the “internal-collapse versus external force” debate on the causes of Confederate defeat. This is a mistake, but one born of overcaution. His evidence and analysis indicate that, as his title suggests, Richmond never came...