Confederate Citadel: Richmond and Its People at War by Mary A. DeCredico (review)

In Confederate Citadel, Mary A. DeCredico joins a growing list of scholars who examine the Confederacy’s capital city during the period 1861–65, a list that includes Emory M. Thomas, Ernest B. Furgurson, and Stephen V. Ash. DeCredico’s book is slim (151 pages of text) but covers a broad range of topics, including secession, the growth and importance of Richmond as capital city, deteriorating conditions in the wake of military defeat, and the city’s capture in April 1865. The breadth of coverage, range of sources consulted, and concise writing style make DeCredico’s book a good candidate for classroom use.

DeCredico characterizes Richmond as a “vibrant commercial, urban, and industrial complex” at the start of the war (2). As the author of a previous work about Georgia’s wartime industrialists,¹ she understandably gives special attention to Richmond as industrial powerhouse. Home to the Tredegar Iron Works, along with other factories and railroads, Richmond earned its reputation as an industrial center and prompted Confederate leaders to select it as capital.

Confederate Citadel follows a chronological format, with chapters devoted to Richmond replacing Montgomery, Alabama, as Confederate capital, Federal efforts to seize the city in 1862, increasing civilian hardship in 1863, the struggling city in 1864, and Richmond’s fall to the Union army in 1865. DeCredico does a good job of weaving the Confederate military narrative with the civilian story, especially in her chapter devoted to the “the campaigns of 1862,” when residents of Richmond feared their city would be captured by Major General George McClellan’s army. In addition to photographs, several nice maps are included in the book, depicting the city center, the Battle of the Seven Days in 1862, and the Richmond-Petersburg theater of war in 1865.

DeCredico provides an in-depth discussion of Richmond’s evolution from a Unionist city that voted for moderate John Bell in the presidential election of 1860 to a secessionist enclave after the fall of Fort Sumter. She considers the role of local newspaper editors in fanning the flames of secessionism, notably John Moncure Daniel of the Richmond Examiner. Her discussion of Richmond as Confederate capital is very solid, including the growth of hospitals, prisons, female benevolent groups, and the problems posed by infectious disease, crime, food shortages, and inflation, along with the city council’s sincere efforts to mitigate these problems. By 1864, DeCredico writes, Richmond’s population had reached at least 100,000 residents, possibly 130,000, and a widening gap existed between elites who held elegant parties and the city’s increasingly destitute under-class, a situation that drew the attention of both journalists and private citizens.

In addition to newspapers, DeCredico cites a variety of archival sources and quotes prominent residents, including diarist Mary Chesnut and Confederate Ordnance Department chief Josiah Gorgas, nurses Phoebe Pember and Sallie Tompkins, and Union spy Elizabeth Van Lew. She also includes less well known chroniclers such as Sallie Brock Putnam and John B. Jones, wartime residents who published books about Richmond after the war. DeCredico might have done more to pull material from some of her sources. Putnam is cited as an authority on changing wartime conditions but not on family relationships, a topic DeCredico does not treat with significant depth. Similarly, Jones, a Confederate civil servant, is cited frequently in discussions about deteriorating conditions but not used effectively as a source of information about the working lives of War Department clerks. DeCredico focuses on Jefferson Davis, his family, and their relationship with the city, with less discussion of Robert E. Lee’s family, although Mary Custis Lee is quoted at the end of the book, complaining about “Lincoln’s triumphal entry into Richmond. He was surrounded by a crowd of blacks, whooping & cheering like so many demons” (145).

DeCredico reminds us that Richmond was a city with a diverse population, including immigrant communities of Germans, Irish, and Jews, and free...