Civil War anniversary: Cleburne's proposal to arm, free slavesMoving The Confederate Capital: Wisdom or Folly?

One of the many topics agitating the new Confederate States government in the spring of 1861 was the location of the national capital. Since February, the regime’s organizational meetings had been held in Montgomery, Ala., a place geographically central to the seven states — South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas — that had seceded by that time. On April 17, following the Confederate capture of Fort Sumter and President Lincoln’s call for 75,000 troops to suppress the “rebellion,” Virginia began the secession of the Upper South, to be joined during the first week of May by Arkansas and Tennessee, and by North Carolina on May 20. On that same day, the Confederate Congress voted finally to move the capital from Montgomery to Richmond, Va.

From a military standpoint, the transfer of the Confederacy’s central government from a site deep in the country’s interior to one only a hundred miles from its enemy’s capital and a hostile international boundary appears at first to be strategically and even tactically inexplicable. For both political and military reasons, however, the move had broad support at the time, and many historians have subsequently agreed. As Emory Thomas of the University of Georgia has observed, “Only during the war’s final 10 months did Richmond become a military millstone around the Confederacy’s neck, and by that time the attrition of war had nearly exhausted resistance everywhere.”

Neither Montgomery nor Richmond was ever intended to become the Southern nation’s permanent capital. Montgomery, a sleepy country town of about 9,000, had only been Alabama’s capital since 1846, and from the very beginning the Confederate politicians and civil servants who gathered there complained about its climate, its isolation, and the inadequacies of its hotels and other public facilities. The proposed Confederate Constitution provided for establishment of a jurisdiction comparable to the District of Columbia, and while numerous locations in the Lower South were suggested — besides Montgomery, Alabama offered Tuscaloosa, Huntsville, Opelika, Selma and Spring Hill, while Georgia nominated Atlanta and South Carolina put forth Pendleton — there was a general sense that the permanent capital would most likely be in the Upper South. Memphis and Nashville were mentioned, and in Virginia, Richmond and even Alexandria had supporters. A few zealous newspapers stated that Washington, D.C., should become the final seat of the Confederacy, on the assumption that the slave states of Maryland and Delaware would secede and perhaps be joined eventually by any non-slave states prepared to engage in a national reconstruction.

Of all these alternatives to Montgomery, Richmond was by far the most viable, at least in the immediate circumstances. Politically, its case was compelling. Once the Washington government had decided to take military action, Virginia became the most direct route toward the seceded states, and its attachment to the Confederacy was therefore critical. Lincoln’s call for troops brought an explosion of support for secession in Virginia, especially in previously pro-Union Richmond, and it soon became clear that moving the capital to Richmond would be major bait for luring the Old Dominion into the Southern nation.

As early as Feb. 5, Congressman William Boyce of South Carolina promised Virginia’s Sen. R.M.T. Hunter that the state could have “things exactly as she wants them, capital included” in return for secession. When Virginia’s governor, John Letcher, proposed a defensive military alliance with the Confederacy (rather than complete adherence), Jefferson Davis sent his vice president, Alexander Stephens, to Richmond to press for the state’s full incorporation into it. Stephens arrived in Richmond on April 22, and during the ensuing intense negotiations, he first spoke of Davis’s making his headquarters in the city and then hinted strongly about the likelihood of moving the entire Confederate government there. On April 25, Virginia’s Secession Convention ratified the military alliance, and two days later it formally invited the Montgomery regime to come to Richmond or some other location in the state.

After admitting Virginia to the Confederacy on May 7, the Confederate Congress resolved on May 11 to hold its next session in Richmond by a vote of five states to three — Alabama was naturally chagrined at losing the capital, while Florida and South Carolina doubted the depth of Virginia’s adherence to the Southern cause.

For his part, Davis vetoed the resolution, insisting that the entire government must move. A good deal of congressional wrangling followed, but on May 20 it was finally agreed that Congress would adjourn the next day, to reconvene in Richmond on July 20, and in the meantime all offices of the government would be transferred there. Davis and several members of his Cabinet departed Montgomery on the night of May 26, and four days later the last train carrying government records and personnel left the city. Davis’ journey was a triumphal progress, and he arrived in his new capital on the morning of May 29, to be greeted by large, enthusiastic crowds and joined over the next few days by about 1,000 government employees.

Although some — including, ironically, Alexander Stephens — continued to doubt the prudence of the shift to Richmond, cementing Virginia into the Confederacy overrode most misgivings. Moreover, the change could be justified on military grounds. Many had hoped that Davis, a West Point graduate, Mexican War veteran, and former Secretary of War, would take field command of Southern troops already gathering in Richmond. Even if he did not, having the organs of a war government close to what was likely to be the main theater of action seemed preferable to leaving them connected to a faraway front by only an underdeveloped railroad network and tenuous telegraph lines. Richmond itself, with a population of almost 38,000 in 1860, was the third largest city in the Confederacy, after New Orleans and Charleston, with access to good rail and water transportation (although the ease with which an enemy force controlling the lower James River might reach it was a disadvantage). It was one of the South’s major industrial centers, manufacturing and processing tobacco, grain, and most importantly, iron. More than 1,500 of its inhabitants worked in the iron industry, with 900 of these employed by the Tredegar Works, the only Southern plant that could produce heavy ordnance.

In retrospect, locating the capital in Richmond effectively made Virginia the cockpit of the war and hampered both the Confederacy’s administrative effectiveness and its military capabilities in its more distant regions, especially west of the Appalachians. It rendered Union lines of communication and supply short and easy to protect, while the perceived need to defend Richmond at all costs limited Southern capacity for large-scale strategic maneuvers. These could have forced the North to spread its forces much more widely, in formations more vulnerable to Confederate attack and requiring larger numbers of troops than were actually deployed. The Union probably would have overcome such challenges, but they still might have propelled the war along different courses, with different political effects that could have led to a negotiated peace.

The reverse of this argument is that having the Confederate capital so close to their own tempted Union strategists into the delusion that the city’s capture would bring an easy and early end to the war. “On to Richmond” became a near-obsession that limited Northern planning even more than that of the South. “For three years,” writes Emory Thomas, “Richmond was a magnet that lured Federal armies onto killing grounds and sidetracked the Union war effort into frustration.” For mid-19th century armies the numerous hills, river and stream valleys, swamps, and dense forests between Washington and Richmond were formidable obstacles which worked well for a defensive strategy, as the Army of Northern Virginia demonstrated repeatedly in the first half of the war.

All things considered, adopting Richmond as the Confederate capital may well have been a case of making the best of a difficult situation. By assuring Virginia’s accession to the Southern cause, it prevented the state from becoming the fulcrum of some sort of border-state confederation that several contemporaries suggested might serve as a buffering broker between the non-slave states and the Lower South. It thus gave the Confederacy Virginia’s vast economic resources, the prestige of its Revolutionary-era heritage, and perhaps the greatest of all Virginian assets — the allegiance of Robert E. Lee. Wisdom or folly, the action can be construed either way.

This article is part of a series of stories about Dalton and life in Dalton during the Civil War. The stories run on Sunday and are provided by the Dalton-Whitfield Civil War 150th Anniversary Committee. To find out more about the committee go to www.dalton 150th.com. If you have material that you would like to contribute for a future article contact Robert Jenkins at 706-259-4626 or robert.jenkins@robertdjenkins.com.

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