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As part of the American South, Charlottesville, Albemarle County and the University of Virginia were all affected by the Civil War between the Union and the Confederacy. The area largely survived the war unscathed, and was was spared from destruction in 1865 when city leaders surrendered to General George Custer.

Citizens of the area were likely to join the 19th Virginia Infantry Regiment, which fought as part of the Army of Northern Virginia.[1].

Charlottesville threw itself into the war effort. In the city and surrounding areas, soldiers were recruited, Confederate uniforms were made, and food and supplies were produced and shipped out by the nearby railroad.[1] Some buildings in Scottsville were used as Confederate hospitals. Charlottesville General Hospital treated tens of thousands of Confederate soldiers.[1]

African Americans composed the majority of the town and county’s population. Both enslaved and free African Americans alike were the subject of heightened white fears of violence.[1] African Americans were also impressed into Confederate service. As a result, racial violence and rules against African Americans were at a high. For most of the war, white Charlottesville enforced a curfew for Black Charlottesvillians.[1][2]

Key Sites

People

Timeline

April 1861: Four infantry companies—two each of town and university men—organize into the Charlottesville and University Battalion.[1]

May 1861: The 19th Virginia Infantry Regiment is formed mostly out of Charlottesville and Albemarle County recruits, with University of Virginia and West Point graduate Philip St. George Cocke as its colonel.[1]

July 1861: Charlottesville General Hospital, a sprawling Confederate military medical facility, opens in Charlottesville and takes over various public and private buildings throughout the town, including hotels, churches, and facilities belonging to the University of Virginia. Its first patients are Confederate soldiers wounded at Manassas.[1]

November 1861: Dr. Orianna Moon, Charlottesville General Hospital's superintendent of nurses, relocates to Richmond, having married her hospital colleague Dr. John Summerfield Andrews.[1]

1862—1864: Approximately 940 enslaved African Americans are impressed into labor by Confederate authorities in Charlottesville and Albemarle County.[1]

1862: The 19th Virginia Infantry's regimental band, formerly the Charlottesville Silver Cornet Band, dissolves.[1]

September 17, 1862: The 19th Virginia Infantry, composed mostly of men from Charlottesville and Albemarle County, suffers more than a 47 percent casualty rate at the Battle of Antietam.[1]

1863: An African American man named Jackson who had been living on University of Virginia property is removed on the grounds that he is married to a white woman.[1]

1863: Four enslaved African Americans in Charlottesville murder a Confederate officer attempting to impress their labor for the war effort.[1]

April 20, 1863: The March 16 petition by black congregants of Charlottesville's First Baptist Church to establish the Charlottesville African Church is accepted by white church leaders.[1]

July 3, 1863: The 19th Virginia Infantry, comprised mostly of men from Charlottesville and Albemarle County, suffers a 60 percent casualty rate and loses its flag during Pickett's Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg.[1]

1864: John A. Marchant sells the Charlottesville Manufacturing Company, which operates a cotton and woolen mills, to his son, Henry Clay Marchant. The factory is burned by occupying Union forces the following year.[1]

February 29, 1864: Union general George A. Custer menaces Charlottesville and Albemarle County as part of the Kilpatrick-Dahlgren Raid on Richmond. He is repulsed by local militia in a short skirmish on Rio Hill.[1]

April 18, 1864: In an essay, Basil L. Gildersleeve, a University of Virginia professor of Greek and Hebrew, speaks out against miscegenation, claiming that to prevent it is to guarantee white supremacy.[1]

March 2, 1865: The Third Battle of Waynesboro, in which General Sheridan encountered the last remnant of Confederate Gen. Jubal Early’s Valley army. More than 1,500 Confederates surrendered. Early and a few of his staff evaded capture.[1][3]

March 3, 1865: Charlottesville and University of Virginia officials surrender the town to Union generals Philip H. Sheridan and George A. Custer. Union forces burn the Charlottesville Manufacturing Company.[1]

April 6, 1865: The 19th Virginia Infantry, comprised mostly of men from Charlottesville and Albemarle County, surrenders its thirty remaining men to Union forces following the Battle of Sailor's Creek.[1]

Life During Wartime

The Confederacy forced African Americans into labor for the war effort. Free blacks between the ages of fifteen and fifty were required to report to the courthouse, where they were examined by a doctor from the Charlottesville General Hospital who determined how and where they should work. If they did not report, they were taken by gunpoint.[1] Against the protestations of their owners, slaves were taken, too. Between 1862 and 1864, about 940 slaves were impressed.[1] It is unknown how many free Black people were impressed. Isabella Gibbons was forced to treat Confederate soldiers as a nurse in Charlottesville General Hospital.

Liberation of Charlottesville

Union troops approached Charlottesville in early 1865, arriving on the morning of March 3. Many white Charlottesvillians were convinced that the troops would burn the University of Virginia, which was treating Confederate soldiers in their hospital for battlefield wounds and illnesses.[4][2] During the course of the Civil War, about 22,500 wounded Confederate soldiers and a few captured Union soldiers were tended to at the University-run 500-bed Charlottesville General Hospital. The superintendent was professor and doctor J.L. Cabell.[1]

The University also had produced over one thousand Confederate soldiers for the pro-slavery effort, second only to the Virginia Military Institute, which had been ransacked and burned by Custer’s troops en route to Charlottesville.[4] Charlottesville Mayor Christoper L. Fowler decided to surrender. The University of Virginia, represented by law professor John Barbee Minor, chairman of the faculty Socrates Maupin, and rector Thomas L. Preston, surrendered to the Union.[2] They argued that the University had been founded by President Jefferson and would be a benefit to the entire nation, not just the Confederacy.[4][1][2]

The major target was the iron railroad bridge that carried the Virginia Central Railroad over the Rivanna River, was destroyed. About a dozen warehouses storing foodstuff and military supplies were burned, along with Woolen Mills.[1][2] A mill owned by the Marchant family, which had been producing Confederate uniforms, was destroyed. Some homes in Charlottesville were ransacked, but not torched. Houses outside the city limits were generally fared worse. Monticello, a tourist destination for Union troops during occupation, was unharmed.[1][2]

Over half of Albemarle County was liberated from slavery that day as the Union line reached them, including the hundreds of people held in captivity by the university's professors, students, and the school itself.[4][1] Most chose to seek safety with the Union troops and followed them as the army moved east toward Richmond. The continuing Union occupation of Virginia meant that these self-emancipators did not need to leave the state, even after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox in 1865. March 3 is celebrated as Liberation and Freedom Day in Charlottesville.[4]

Remembrance of the War

Statues

Paul Goodloe McIntire assembled several parcels of land, knocked down existing buildings, and then deeded the land as Market Street Park to the city in 1917 for the specific purpose of erecting the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee; he donated the completed statue seven years later in 1924.[5] The reveal of the statue was celebrated with a reunion of confederate soldiers, a parade, and a speech by University of Virginia President, Edwin A. Alderman. [6]

McIntire also purchased the land that was once McKee Row, next to the Circuit Courthouse.[7] He deeded this land as Court Square Park to the city on the specific condition that a sculpture representing Confederate General Jackson would be displayed there.[8][9] McIntire's deed requires that the land "will never be used other than for a park and that no other monument except Jackson’s would ever occupy it.”[8] In June 2021, Charlottesville City Council voted to remove both of the statues.[10]

In 1909, a mass-produced bronze statue of a Confederate soldier leaning on musket was posted in Court Square facing south; titled “At Ready.” The plaque featured inscriptions about valor. The sculptor is unknown.[11] Flanked by two bronze smoothbore 12-pounder Napoleons, and cannonballs. The statue was unveiled on May 5, 1909, the anniversary of the 1857 creation of the Monticello Guard,[12] a militia company in Charlottesville that formed in front of the Albemarle County Courthouse when Virginia seceded from the union in 1861, and became part of the 19th Virginia Infantry. The statue and nearby cannon, and cannonballs were removed to be placed on display at the Third Winchester Battlefield,[11] part of the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields National Historic District.[13] On August 6, 2020, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to remove the statue.[14]

Organizations

In 1866, a group of Charlottesville women, most of whom had cared for sick and wounded soldiers during the war, started the Ladies Confederate Memorial Association. Week after week they copied from hospital registers the names, states, companies and regiments of those who had died. The women transferred the information onto rough wood markers that were placed at the head of each grave. They also collected $1,500, used to build a stone wall around the Confederate Cemetery.[15]

References

  1. 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 1.17 1.18 1.19 1.20 1.21 1.22 1.23 1.24 1.25 1.26 1.27 1.28 Jordan Jr., Ervin L. "Charlottesville During the Civil War." Encyclopedia Virginia. Ed. Brendan Wolfe. December 14, 2020. Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. July 7, 2021 <http://www.EncyclopediaVirginia.org/Charlottesville_During_the_Civil_War>.
  2. 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 Web. Remembering 150th anniversary of the surrender of Charlottesville, UVa to troops under Custer and Sheridan, David A. Maurer, Daily Progress, Berkshire Hathaway, March 1, 2015, retrieved May 18, 2021.
  3. Web. Battle of Waynesboro, Website, Shenendoah Valley Battlefields, retrieved July 7, 2021.
  4. 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Web. I'll Fly Away, Ineke La Fleur, Website, March 2019, retrieved July 7, 2021.
  5. Robert Kuhlthau, Preliminary Notes on the Robert E. Lee Statue, 20 September 1995, (on deposit Albemarle Historical Society, Monuments file).
  6. Rourke. Kristen. "Marking History in Charlottesville." np. City Council Chambers, Charlottesville, VA. 30 May 2012. presentation.
  7. Rourke. Kristen. "Marking History in Charlottesville." np. City Council Chambers, Charlottesville, VA. 30 May 2012. presentation.
  8. 8.0 8.1 National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service Form 10-900-a, 1996, Section 8 page 3, on deposit Albemarle County Historical Society “Monuments“ file
  9. Mrs. J Rawlings Thompson, History of the Jackson Statue, Charlottesville Daily Progress, November 16, 1966, on deposit Albemalrle County Historical Society “Monuments“ file.
  10. Web. Charlottesville city council votes to remove Confederate statues that were the focus of violent 2017 ‘Unite the Right’ rally, Gregory S. Schneider, News Article, the Washington Post, June 7, 2021, retrieved June 8, 2021.
  11. 11.0 11.1 Web. Here are the (mostly Confederate) mementos in Johnny Reb's time capsule
  12. Template:Cite journal
  13. Template:Cite news
  14. Web. Albemarle County to remove "At Ready" confederate statue following public hearing
  15. After the Civil War a group of Charlottesville women, most of whom had cared for sick and wounded soldiers, started the Ladies Confederate Memorial Association to care for graves in the cemetary. On June 7, 1893 the Association unveiled the statue of the Confederate soldier. From: Set in Stone, David Maurer, Virginia Magazine, Spring 2008, accessed April 13, 2016.