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This weekend I took a break from Washington and travelled to Richmond, Virginia. This short excursion took me the farthest south I have been since our freedom tour two years ago. If you’re familiar with your American history, you may recall that Richmond served as the capital for the Confederate States of America; consequently there are a plethora of Civil War sites there to explore. Although I was only there for a short while, I was able to visit Belle Isle — a POW camp, the Confederate White House, and a bridge which explains the evacuation of Richmond at the end of the war through a timeline.

The Civil War remains an extremely sensitive topic within our country, and it was very interesting to see how the legacy of this city and the events which transpired in it were represented at the various sites. On Belle Isle, a living memorial had been created to honor all of the Union POWs who had perished in the encampment there: a bike rack in the shape and size of one of the tents the prisoners would have lived in. The field itself where the camp had been was now filled with tall grass. This reminded me in part of other memorials I have visited in Europe, where the absence of development is utilized to mark a space; however I suspect that part of the state of this field was simply due to inability to upkeep it for financial reasons. I did find the idea of a living memorial in the form a of useful structure an interesting one, but I’m not sure how impactful it was in this situation.

The bridge timeline commemorating the evacuation of Richmond was extremely well done. Every few paces a segment of the bridge offered a contemporary quote in relation to the event for that section of the bridge. The quotes came from a wide spread of sources — a female Union spy, upper class and enslaved inhabitants of Richmond, confederate and union troops, and Abraham Lincoln. I thought the bridge did an extremely good job of showing the many facets of this same story, offering a glimpse into both the fear of the Confederate elites and soldiers and the sense of liberation and elation of the enslaved people which the evacuation and Union occupation of the city inspired. This brief to tour memorial was meaningful in the way that it effectively communicated how the events of the Civil War held such diverse and divisive consequences for those who lived through them.

Clay Street in Richmond could easily be denoted the most infamous in America, as both the executive buildings of the CSA and the house of the lawyer who defended Aaron Burr from charges of treason for his own proposed secessionist plot stand upon it. The CSA White House has a run-down appearance but ultimately still stands, with a museum accompanying it in another building adjacent to it. While the paint is peeling, the garden and burbling fountain behind it are well-maintained and rather lovely; a somewhat disturbing find as the plaque along the garden path notes that they are maintained by the “President Davis Chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy.”

I am a firm believer in preserving historical sites and learning from the past, but I will admit this plaque, as well as the obvious effort put into the flowerbeds around the house, was somewhat disturbing. It was unsettling because it hinted at the fervor to which certain individuals seek to uphold and maintain the memory of a dark and treasonous portion of American history. I strongly advocate that we study this portion — but studying is not the same as venerating this past; an attitude which I continually oppose whenever I come into contact with it.

I would end by saying that, given my academic background, I can most easily draw comparisons between the U.S. and Germany, and that while some former Nazi buildings, like the Gestapo Headquarters in Köln still stand (having escaped aerial bombing during the war and other purges) and exist as a museum today, there is no scenario in which a “daughters of the National Socialist party” organization would ever be allowed to maintain such a site (not that it would ever be allowed to exist in the first place).