Richmond (, RITCH-mənd) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Virginia. Incorporated in 1742, Richmond has been an independent city since 1871. It is the fourth-most populous city in Virginia, with a population of 226,610 at the 2020 census. The Richmond metropolitan area, with over 1.37 million residents, is the third-most populous metropolitan area in Virginia and 44th-largest in the United States. Richmond is located at the James River's fall line.
Richmond was an important village in the Powhatan Confederacy and was briefly settled by English colonists from Jamestown from 1609 to 1611. Founded in 1737, it replaced Williamsburg as the capital of the Colony and Dominion of Virginia in 1780. During the Revolutionary War period, several notable events occurred in the city, including Patrick Henry's "Give me liberty or give me death!" speech in 1775 at St. John's Church and the passage of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom written by Thomas Jefferson. During the American Civil War, Richmond was the capital of the Confederate States of America.
Law, finance, and government primarily drive Richmond's economy. The downtown area is home to federal, state, and local governmental agencies as well as notable legal and banking firms. The greater metropolitan area includes several Fortune 500 companies: Performance Food Group, Altria, CarMax, Dominion Energy, Markel, Owens and Minor, Genworth Financial, and ARKO Corp. The city is one of about a dozen to have both a U.S. Court of Appeals and a Federal Reserve Bank.
History
Colonial era
After the first permanent English-speaking settlement was established at Jamestown, Virginia, in April 1607, Captain Christopher Newport led explorers northwest up the James River to an inhabited area in the Powhatan Nation, which takes its name from the location Pawat-hanne, or "falls in a stream," referring to the falls in the James River at present day Richmond, specifically Powhatan Hill.
Richmond was Arrohattoc territory where Arrohateck village was located. However, as time progressed relations between the Arrohattocs and English colonists declined, and by 1609 the tribe was unwilling to trade with the settlers. As the population began to dwindle, the tribe declined and was last mentioned in a 1610 report by the visiting William Strachey. By 1611 the tribe's Henrico town was found to be deserted when Sir Thomas Dale went to use the land to found Henricus.
In 1611, the first European settlement in Central Virginia was established at Henricus, where the Falling Creek empties into the James River. In 1619, early Virginia Company settlers established the Falling Creek Ironworks there. Decades of conflicts between the Powhatan and the settlers followed, including the Battle of Bloody Run, fought near Richmond in 1656, after tensions arose from an influx of Manahoacs and Nahyssans from the North. Nonetheless, the James Falls area saw more white settlement in the late 1600s and early 1700s.
In early 1737, planter William Byrd II commissioned Major William Mayo to lay out the original town grid, completed in April. Byrd named the city after the English town of Richmond near (and now part of) London, because the view of the James River's bend at the fall line reminded him of his home at Richmond Hill on the River Thames. In 1742, the settlement was incorporated as a town.
American Revolution
In 1775, Patrick Henry delivered his famous "Give me liberty or give me death!" speech in Richmond's St. John's Church, greatly influencing Virginia's participation in the First Continental Congress and the course of the American Revolution. On April 18, 1780, the state capital was moved from Williamsburg to Richmond, providing a more centralized location for Virginia's increasing western population and theoretically isolating the capital from a British attack from the coast. In 1781, Loyalist troops led by Benedict Arnold led a raid on Richmond and burnt it, leading Governor Thomas Jefferson to flee while the Virginian militia, led by Sampson Mathews, unsuccessfully defended the city.
Early United States
Richmond recovered quickly from the war, thriving within a year of its burning. In 1786, the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, drafted by Thomas Jefferson, was enacted, separating church and state and advancing the legal principle for freedom of religion in the United States. In 1788, the Virginia State Capitol, designed by Jefferson and Charles-Louis Clérisseau in the Greek Revival style, was completed.
To bypass Richmond's rapids on the upper James River and provide a water route across the Appalachian Mountains to the Kanawha River, which flows westward into the Ohio River and converges with the Mississippi River, George Washington helped design the James River and Kanawha Canal. The canal started in Westham and cut east to Richmond, facilitating the transfer of cargo from flat-bottomed James River bateaux above the fall line to the ocean-faring ships below. The canal boatmen legacy is represented by the figure in the center of the city flag.
Because of the canal and the hydropower the falls generated, Richmond emerged as an important industrial center after the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783). It became home to some of the largest manufacturing facilities, including iron works and flour mills, in the South and the country.
The City of Richmond was officially part of Henrico County until 1842, when it became a fully independent city. By 1850, Richmond was connected by the Richmond and Petersburg Railroad to Port Walthall, where ships carrying over 200 tons of cargo could connect to Baltimore or Philadelphia. Passenger liners could reach Norfolk, Virginia, through the Hampton Roads harbor. In the 19th century, Richmond was connected to the North by the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad, later replaced by CSXT.
The railroad also was used by some to escape slavery in the mid-19th century. In 1849, Henry "Box" Brown had himself nailed into a small box and shipped from Richmond to abolitionists in Philadelphia through Baltimore's President Street Station on the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad, often used by the Underground Railroad to assist escaping disguised slaves reach the free state of Pennsylvania.
American Civil War
Five days after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, the Virginia Convention voted on April 17, 1861, to secede from the United States, pending ratification by popular vote. On May 20, 1861, the Confederate States Congress voted to move its national capital from Montgomery, Alabama, to Richmond, and three days later, on May 23, 1861, Virginia voters ratified the Ordinance of Secession, making the action official.
Richmond held local, state and national Confederate government offices, hospitals, a railroad hub, and one of the largest slave markets. It also had the largest Confederate arms factory, the Tredegar Iron Works. The factory produced artillery and other munitions, including heavy ordnance machinery and the 723 tons of armor plating that covered the CSS Virginia, the world's first ironclad ship used in war. The Confederate States Congress shared quarters in the Jefferson-designed Virginia State Capitol with the Virginia General Assembly. The Confederacy's executive mansion, known as the "White House of the Confederacy", was two blocks away on Clay Street.
Historians and critic argue the move was risky because Richmond's proximity to Washington made it a prime Union target, but Confederate leaders accepted that danger to secure Virginia's industrial power and symbolic prestige. James Robertson Jr.'s quotation editors from Richmond Dispatch, underscores the prevalent 1861 consensus that Richmond's political, industrial, and symbolic significance rendered it the Confederacy's most vital stronghold, the loss of which would effectively undermine Southern resistance.
Located about 100 mi (160 km) from the national capital, Washington, D.C., Richmond was at the end of a long supply line and difficult to defend. For four years, its defense required the bulk of the Army of Northern Virginia and the Confederacy's best troops and commanders. The Union army made Richmond a main target in the campaigns of 1862 and 1864–65. In late June and early July 1862, Union General-in-Chief George B. McClellan threatened but failed to take Richmond under the defensive doctrine of Joseph E. Johnston, in the Seven Days Battles of the Peninsula campaign. Three years later, Richmond became indefensible in March 1865 after nearby Petersburg fell and several remaining rail supply lines to the south and southwest were broken.
On March 25, Confederate General John B. Gordon's desperate attack on Fort Stedman, east of Petersburg, failed. On April 1, Union Cavalry General Philip Sheridan, assigned to interdict the Southside Railroad, met brigades commanded by Southern General George Pickett at the Five Forks Junction, defeated them, took thousands of prisoners, and advised Union General-in-Chief Ulysses S. Grant to order a general advance. When the Union Sixth Corps broke through Confederate lines on the Boydton Plank Road south of Petersburg, Confederate casualties exceeded 5,000, about a tenth of Lee's defending army. Lee then informed President Jefferson Davis that he intended to evacuate Richmond.
On April 2, 1865, the Confederate Army began Richmond's evacuation. Confederate President Davis and his cabinet, Confederate government archives, and its treasury's gold, left the city that night by train. Confederate officials burned documents and troops burned tobacco and other warehouses to deny the Union any spoils. In the early morning of April 3, Confederate troops exploded the city's gunpowder magazine, killing several paupers in a temporary Almshouse and a man on 2nd St. The concussion shattered windows all over the city. Later that day, General Godfrey Weitzel, commander of the 25th Corps of the United States Colored Troops, accepted Richmond's surrender from the mayor and a group of leading citizens who did not evacuate. Union troops eventually contained the fires, but about 25% of the city's buildings were destroyed.
On April 3, President Abraham Lincoln visited Grant at Petersburg and took a launch up the James River to Richmond on April 4. While Davis attempted to organize the Confederate government in Danville, Lincoln met Confederate Assistant Secretary of War John A. Campbell, handing him a note inviting Virginia's state legislature to end their rebellion. After Campbell spun the note to Confederate legislators as a possible end to the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln rescinded his offer and ordered General Weitzel to prevent the state legislature from meeting.
On April 6, Union forces killed, wounded, or captured 8,000 Confederate troops at Sayler's Creek, southwest of Petersburg. The Confederate Army continued a general retreat southwestward, and General Lee continued to reject General Grant's surrender entreaties until Sheridan's infantry and cavalry encircled the shrinking Army of Northern Virginia and cut off its ability to retreat further on April 8. Lee surrendered his remaining approximately 10,000 troops the following morning at Appomattox Court House, meeting Grant at the McLean Home.
Davis was captured on May 10 near Irwinville, Georgia and taken back to Virginia, where he was imprisoned for two years at Fort Monroe until he was freed on bail.
Postbellum
A decade after the Civil War, Richmond resumed its position as a major urban center of economic productivity with iron front buildings and massive brick factories. Canal traffic peaked in the 1860s, with railroads becoming the dominant shipping method. Richmond became a major railroad crossroads, showcasing the world's first triple railroad crossing. Tobacco warehousing and processing continued to play a central economic role, advanced by the world's first cigarette-rolling machine that James Albert Bonsack of Roanoke invented between 1880 and 1881.
Lewis Ginter was the founder of Allen & Ginter which was at the time one of the world's largest tobacco companies. He would devote his philanthropy to Richmond and was quoted saying "I am for Richmond, first and last." He built the Jefferson Hotel and suburbs north of Richmond which would go on to be the model for much of the country.
Richmond had one of the world's first successful electric streetcar systems. An important contributor to Richmond's resurgence was the Richmond Union Passenger Railway, a trolley system developed by electric power pioneer Frank J. Sprague. The system opened its first Richmond line in 1888, using an overhead wire and a trolley pole to connect to the current and electric motors on the car's trucks. The success led to electric streetcar lines rapidly spreading to other cities. A post-World War II transition to buses from streetcars began in May 1947 and was completed on November 25, 1949.