The South’s Capital Dilemma
By FORD RISLEY Disunion follows the Civil War as it unfolded.
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Library of CongressThe Confederate cabinet: President Jefferson Davis, Vice President Alexander Hamilton Stephens, Attorney General Judah P. Benjamin, Secretary of the Navy Stephen M. Mallory, Secretary of the Treasury C.S. Memminger, Secretary of War Leroy Pope Walker, Postmaster John H. Reagan and Secretary of State Robert Toombs.
But another subject was increasingly on the minds of delegates and Montgomery residents alike: whether the Alabama city would become the permanent capital of the Confederacy. The provisional Congress was meeting in Montgomery largely out of convenience; Alabama’s Secession Convention had invited delegates from other seceded states to form the new Confederate government there. Now they had to choose whether to remain there or seek another city — and if the latter, where? It wasn’t an easy question to answer. Even then Confederate politicians knew their decision could mean life or death for their young country.Montgomery was an attractive choice. It was a pleasant city on a high bluff overlooking the meandering Alabama River. It was centrally located among the seceded states of the Lower South, and it offered excellent transportation links across the region, with steamboat, train and stagecoach services converging there.
Moreover, it had been Alabama’s seat of government for over a decade, and so it had something of a political establishment already. The provisional Congress had met in the state capitol, a stately building dominated by large Grecian pillars. During the first weeks the Congress was in session, the ladies of Montgomery kept tables filled with meat, fruit and bread for members. However, they stopped once word spread that residents could find a good, free meal there.
But Montgomery’s shortcomings were quickly becoming apparent. With only about 9,000 residents, it was small, even by the standards of the mid-19th-century South. Montgomery had just three hotels, and only the Exchange offered first-class accommodations. Diarist Mary Boykin Chesnut, whose husband was a delegate from South Carolina, predicted that the members of Congress would not settle for anything but the finest accommodations. “Our statesmen love their ease,” she wrote.
For their part, some residents of Montgomery had mixed feelings about being the permanent seat of the Confederate government. “The choice of the Capital had turned a society, provincially content to run in accustomed grooves, quite topsy-turvy,” wrote Thomas C. DeLeon, a famed chronicler of Southern life, “and, perhaps for want of some other escape-valve under the new pressure, the townspeople grumbled consumedly.” Social leaders worried that Montgomery would go down the same path as Washington, D.C., a city they viewed as entirely disreputable.
That did not stop other cities and towns from quickly putting their communities forward when word got out that the Congress was considering moving the capital. Leaders of Atlanta and Nashville touted the accommodations and climate of their cities. Even the smallest burgs put out feelers: the editor of the Upson Pilot in little Thomaston, Ga., wrote, “We have a fine climate, a productive country, and a virtuous and intelligent population . . . [W]e can supply all the officers of the government with old bacon and fresh greens and a cigar and bottle of old Bourbon or Tice’s Best on Saturday nights.”
Library of CongressA view of Richmond before the war.
But when Virginia adopted a secession ordinance soon after the attack on Fort Sumter, Richmond quickly became the front runner. Richmond had already been a candidate, much to the disappointment of some in the Lower South, who resented the idea of moving the seat of government to a state where there had been considerable opposition to joining the Confederacy. The so-called “Cotton States” had been the first to leave the Union, and they maintained that a “Cotton Confederacy” should have its capital there. The Alabama state convention even offered to establish a 10-square-mile federal district, like the District of Columbia, if the capital remained in the state. The case for Virginia’s state capital was overwhelming, though: it was far larger than Montgomery and could provide whatever accommodations a national capital needed. Many leaders across the South argued that the government should honor the Old Dominion’s decision to secede — viewed by North and South as the key to making the Confederacy a viable entity — by moving the capital there. And unlike the lukewarm sentiment in Alabama, Virginia was all for hosting the new capital: on April 27, the Virginia legislature invited the Confederate government to select Richmond as its new capital, or any other place in the state.
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After more debate, a resolution to move the entire government to Richmond was put forth. The measure passed by a vote of 6-3 (Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina voted no). President Davis signed the resolution and Congress appropriated $40,000 to pay the cost of moving.
It was the right move in many ways. Richmond was situated between the plantations of the Tidewater and the farms of the Piedmont, and it benefited from its location along major trade routes. It was an industrial powerhouse as well: it had 52 tobacco manufacturers, 12 flour mills, a distillery and a brewery. It was the iron center of the South, with four rolling mills, 14 foundries and 50 iron and metal works lining the James River. The largest plant, the Tredegar Iron Works, employed 900 workers and was one of the city’s landmarks.
Richmond also had an outstanding school system that included a medical college and a college for women. The more than 30 houses of worship included three Roman Catholic churches, three synagogues and a Quaker meeting house. Four daily newspapers and a literary journal were published in the city.
But the decision to relocate the Southern capital to Richmond had vast implications, both for the city and for the fate of the South. Throughout the spring, members of Congress increasingly were joined by the thousands of eager army volunteers who turned Richmond into an armed camp. Mary Chesnut, who moved from Montgomery to Richmond with her husband, described the “noise of drums, tramp of marching regiments all day long, rattling artillery wagons, bands of music, [and] friends from every quarter coming in” to the new capital. But the onslaught of soldiers also brought problems: Drunkenness, fights and shootings became commonplace in the city. Prostitution flourished.
More significantly, by locating the Southern capital so close to Washington and the North, the Confederacy essentially doomed Virginia to constant warfare. Indeed, for all of Gen. George McClellan’s famous dithering, Richmond’s proximity baited Northern forces into repeated devastating campaigns in an attempt to reach it. The New York Times wasn’t alone in editorializing that the new location would shorten the war. “In selecting Virginia as their battleground, the rebels committed a crowning blunder,” the newspaper argued. “At Montgomery, its very remoteness would have secured to it a sort of immunity from punishment … but Virginia is not two days’ sail from the centres of population at the North.” Eventually Richmond itself would be put under siege and, finally, in April 1865, destroyed by fleeing Confederates and invading Union soldiers.
Yet in the early days of the Confederacy, nothing but bright days seemed ahead for the country and its new capital. “We ought to be miserable and anxious,” wrote Chesnut from Richmond, “and yet these are pleasant days.”
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Sources: Mary Boykin Chesnut, “A Diary from Dixie,” ed. Ben Ames Williams; Thomas C. DeLeon, “Four Years in Rebel Capitals: An Inside View of Life in the Confederacy”; Emory M. Thomas, “The Confederate State of Richmond”; Wilfred Buck Yearns, “The Confederate Congress.”
Ford Risley is professor of communications and head of the Department of Journalism at Penn State University. He is the author of “Abolition and the Press: The Moral Struggle Against Slavery.”
