BGuthrie Photos: VA -- Richmond -- Virginia Museum of History and Culture (VMHC) -- Exhibit: Story of Virginia

VA -- Richmond -- Virginia Museum of History and Culture (VMHC) -- Exhibit: Story of Virginia:

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. VHSSTO_210905_01.JPG: Plan showing positions of Union and Rebel armies, 8th and 9th April 1865. To the surrender of Lee. 2nd Corps at Cumberland Church.
2. VHSSTO_210905_08.JPG: The Last Full Measure Among 1.6 million Virginians, 398,000 men were eligible for military service. 193,000 eligible Virginians did not serve. 155,000 Virginians served in the Confederacy. 50,000 Virginians (including African Americans) served in the Union. 34,000 Virginians died.
3. VHSSTO_210905_11.JPG: "Let Us Have Peace" by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris, about 1920
4. VHSSTO_210905_23.JPG: Stars from Gen. Robert E. Lee's Uniform, about 1865 These stars were sent to family friend Belle Harrison in May 1865. Lee did not usually wear the proper collar insignia of a Confederate general -- three gold stars in a wreath. Instead he wore only the three gold stars of a colonel -- a rank he held in the US army for only twenty-three days before resigning to join the Confederacy on April 20, 1861.
5. VHSSTO_210905_41.JPG: The Burned District Union private Robert K. Sneden visited Richmond as a prisoner of war in 1863. Although many of the street names are incorrect, his map shows the area that would be engulfed in flames during the Confederate evacuation on April 3, 1865. More than twenty city blocks from Main Street to the river and all of the bridges across the James were destroyed.
6. VHSSTO_210905_49.JPG: The Evacuation Fire As southbound Confederates crossed over the James River on April 3, [1865] the rear guard set fire to Richmond's tobacco warehouses and railroad bridges. A sudden wind from the south blew flames and burning embers northward. As the last Confederates left the city, federal troops arrived from the east, accepted the formal surrender of the city, and began extinguishing the fires.
7. VHSSTO_210905_52.JPG: The Evacuation Fire As southbound Confederates crossed over the James River on April 3, [1865] the rear guard set fire to Richmond's tobacco warehouses and railroad bridges. A sudden wind from the south blew flames and burning embers northward. As the last Confederates left the city, federal troops arrived from the east, accepted the formal surrender of the city, and began extinguishing the fires.
8. VHSSTO_210905_56.JPG: Evacuation When its lines were broken by the pre-dawn assault of Union forces on April 2, 1865, the Confederate army began evacuating the fortifications defending Petersburg and Richmond. With the federals expected to enter Richmond the following day, and without the protection of the military, the Confederate government fled the capital.
9. VHSSTO_210905_62.JPG: "Battle of Five Forks" by Paul D. Phillippeteaux, late 19th century
10. VHSSTO_210905_78.JPG: Trench Warfare The extensive use of interconnected lines of field fortifications -- trenches and obstructions -- defined the campaign to capture Richmond and Petersburg. By April 1865, the opposing armies had constructed thirty-seven miles of earthen fortifications. These types of defenses were not new to war, and both sides understood that using them multiplied a defender's strength by a factor of three.
11. VHSSTO_210905_80.JPG: "All should unite in honest efforts to obliterate the effects of war, and to restore the blessings of peace." -- Robert E. Lee, August 1865 Thirty-One Star United States Flag, about 1858 One of the first US flags to fly over Richmond in April 1865. This 31-star United States flag was taken back to New Jersey by Maj. Frederick Martin. His granddaughter gave it to the Westfield New Jersey Historical Society, which gave it to the Virginia Historical Society "as a symbol of friendship between two historical societies, one in the South, and one in the North." The star patter reflects our national motto -- "Out of many, One."
12. VHSSTO_210905_85.JPG: "All should unite in honest efforts to obliterate the effects of war, and to restore the blessings of peace." -- Robert E. Lee, August 1865 Thirty-One Star United States Flag, about 1858 One of the first US flags to fly over Richmond in April 1865. This 31-star United States flag was taken back to New Jersey by Maj. Frederick Martin. His granddaughter gave it to the Westfield New Jersey Historical Society, which gave it to the Virginia Historical Society "as a symbol of friendship between two historical societies, one in the South, and one in the North." The star patter reflects our national motto -- "Out of many, One."
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Description of Subject Matter: From http://www.vahistorical.org/what-you-can-see/story-virginia/explore-story-virginia

This award-winning exhibition interprets 16,000 years of Virginia history—from the earliest Native American artifacts to life in the state at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Visitors can learn about the cultural and historical transformations of the commonwealth as they travel from one gallery to another. Enjoy exploring the Story of Virginia.

16,000 BCE to 1622 CE

At the time of the great northern glaciers, Native Americans followed the game they hunted to Virginia. Ten thousand years later, as the cold of the Ice Age gave way to a warmer, drier climate, they relied also on foraging and farming. After about 900 CE they settled into villages that united into chiefdoms. In 1607, in pursuit of opportunity in a new world, English settlers intruded into an eastern Virginia chiefdom of thirty-two tribes (15,000 to 20,000 people). Its leader then was Wahunsenacawh, whom the new settlers called by his title, Powhatan.

1622 to 1763

The colony prospered. Tobacco—grown by indentured servants and enslaved Africans—sustained the economy. The first popularly elected legislative body in the New World was established. Following the failed Indian uprising in 1622 and on orders from London, the native peoples were “removed” and reduced in number to 3,000 by a “War of Extermination.” During the next hundred years, the remainder of Virginia’s population expanded a hundred fold. Social inequalities, however, and frontier conflicts with the French and with Indians made this distant dominion increasingly difficult to govern from London.

1763 to 1825

British taxation—introduced to pay for a British military presence in America—was unexpected by the Virginia gentry and resented. Those Americans began to view British policy as a plot against their liberty. They played leading roles in the Continental Congresses that debated independence, in the fighting of the American Revolution, and in the conception and implementation of a new government. Virginia also provided four of the new nation’s first five presidents. Virginia leaders advocated equality for all but they never considered extending it to women and African Americans.

1825 to 1861

The decades following the presidency of Virginian James Monroe (1817–1825) saw populations shift, the economy expand, and attitudes about slavery harden. More and more families migrated from the soil-depleted Tidewater and Piedmont, while new and diverse peoples in the Shenandoah Valley prospered. The beginnings of the Industrial Revolution encouraged the growth of industry, urban centers, and “internal improvements” (transportation by road, rail, and canal). Those “improvements”––funded by taxes––became a subject of political debate. Slavery was as vehemently attacked by abolitionists as it was defended by proponents.

1861 to 1876

If Virginians were instrumental in creating the Union in 1776, they were also pivotal in breaking it apart eighty-five years later. Most Virginians rejected secession until they were called upon to provide troops after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter. The far northwestern counties refused to secede and instead formed West Virginia. Virginia became the bloodiest battleground of the war. At its conclusion, slavery was ended and black males could vote, but the daily lives and standard of living of African Americans changed little. Virginia was put under military rule for three years.

1876 to 1924

After the Civil War, Virginia remained largely rural, but Virginians embraced economic development and the new technologies that were revolutionizing everyday life. At the same time, however, they resisted political and social change––especially racial and gender equality. Living standards improved and income rose, but the political system became less democratic and society was rigidly segregated by race. “The New South” brought economic renewal but little reform. The Virginia legislature rejected a woman’s right to vote in 1919, and it passed a regressive Racial Integrity Act in 1924.

1924 to Today

A century of foreign wars expanded the presence of both the federal government in Northern Virginia and the military in the Hampton Roads area. Growth in those regions helped transform the state from a rural to a primarily urban one, from a poor to a relatively affluent one, and from a state with few non-natives to one with many. Only painstakingly, however, have minorities gained equality. Since 1960, the population has doubled. The largest employer now is the government, next is agriculture, which adds billions of dollars to the state’s economy.
Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.) I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
2021 photos: Overnight trips this year: (May, October) After getting fully vaccinated, I made two trips down to Asheville, NC to visit my dad and his wife Dixie, and (July) Stockbridge, MA to see the Norman Rockwell Museum again as well as Daniel Chester French's place @ Chesterwood. Equipment this year: I continued to use my Fuji XS-1 cameras but, depending on the event, I also used a Nikon D7000. Number of photos taken this year: about 283,000, up slightly from 2020 levels but still really low.
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Photo Contact: [Email Bruce Guthrie].