The truth of the matter is this though, the period we glorify the most were not our glory days at all, far from it. It was in fact Richmond's worst and tragic period ever. Conditions during the time we served as the capital of the Confederate States of America were awful. One of the first things he did was declair martial law in the city. There was severe overcrowding because of the sudden and unprepared population boom, women rioting for bread on the streets, we were largely cut off and isolated from the outside world, thousands of wounded and dying soldiers were constantly streaming into makeshift hospitals in Shockoe Bottom and Church Hill and filling up Hollywood's cemetery plots, enemy prisoners were out in the open intentionally being starved on Belle Isle, a large portion of the population still enslaved and oh yeah, a massive army only miles away with the sole mission to conquer our city always pressing forward toward us. All resulting in what you might say was a pretty lousy standard of living for the majority of Richmond’s citizens back then.
And all this happened because a man from Mississippi, Jefferson Davis, decided to set up shop here and run his government from our fine town. Mr. Davis of course had no love for, or even any connections to, Richmond or Virginia; he was just using this great city because of its strategic location and industrial might. And what did his people do when they left? They burned the entire commercial district to the ground, leaving a vast stretch of downtown with nothing left but smoldering ruins. Some reward for Richmond playing the hospitable host to him and his family during their stay.
Mr. Davis’ reward for leaving Richmond in ruins has been a grand statue on Monument Avenue, a statue and prime grave location at Hollywood Cemetery, a bust in the Virginia state capital building, his former home perpetually preserved, a park and a highway that runs through our city and state named in his honor. So does Richmond need another monument, as proposed by a certain southern heritage group, to a man responsible for more damage to our city than any other person in our history? I think the answer is obvious when you think about it.
Oh yes, I know why this issue has come up, Lincoln got a new statue at Tredegar a few years ago so we have to put one there for Davis to provide “balance”. Well okay, if balance is the name of the game, let’s do it, but we better order up a new Lincoln statue to put on Monument across from Davis as well. While we’re at, can we get a Jimmy Connors statue made to put by Arthur Ashe?
But in all seriousness, this city has real issues to deal with today, the last thing we need is to get bogged down by yet another Civil War controversy that will only build division, create animosity and get us national headlines for all the wrong reasons. Let’s focus on the future of our city, instead of the past. We need to continue to improve our educational system. We need to continue to reduce crime. We need to continue to attract growth and economic development to downtown. We need to ensure there is quality affordable housing in our city. We need to improve our aging infrastructure. We need to continue to make Richmond a great place for all citizens to live, work and play. We need to replace our outgoing leaders with leaders that will lead us to the future and not bog us down in the past, leaders that will use our unique and compelling history to generate tourism dollars to build our community, rather than letting others use it to divide our citizens.
Our glory days are ahead of us not behind us, it’s time to start looking forward to those great days ahead and stop looking backwards to our defeated past.
