Richmond National Battlefield Park ⓘ

The Confederacy's Cannon Maker Tredegar Ironworks was one of the largest iron foundries in the south and, prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, helped shape Richmond, VA into more of an industrial city. For much of its life in the 19th Century, Tredegar Iron Works was owned and operated by Joseph Reid Anderson.

Anderson was born in 1813 near the town of Fincastle in Botetourt County, VA, nestled between the Blue Ridge Mountains on the east and the Appalachians on the West. The son of a veteran of both the Revolution and the War of 1812, he received an appointment to the Unites States Military Academy at West Point from which he graduated 4th in his Class of 1836. Serving briefly as a second lieutenant in the 3rd United States Artillery, Anderson was later transferred to the Corps of Engineers where he worked, among other things, on the construction of Fort Pulaski at the mouth of the Savannah River in Georgia. He married Sarah Eliza Archer of Norfolk, VA in May 1837 and soon after resigned his commission. That same year he became a civil engineer and went on to work as an Assistant State Engineer under the Virginia Board of Public Works where he oversaw the construction of the Valley Turnpike between the towns of Staunton and Winchester in the Shenandoah Valley.

In 1841, Joseph Reid Anderson began his long association with the Tredegar Iron Company, becoming the commercial agent for the business in March of that year. In that post, Anderson was able to help turn things around financially for the struggling company by contracting with the federal government to provide munitions and other manufactured goods for the United States army and navy. He began leasing the company in 1843 and, five years later, purchased the operation outright. During this time Anderson began using enslaved people as skilled industrial laborers. When skilled white workers went on strike in 1847 in protest, Anderson fired them and replaced them with slaves. Many of these enslaved workers were owned by the company; more were leased from plantation owners.

In the decade before the Civil War, Joseph Reid Anderson entered Virginia state politics, being elected to a vacant seat in the Virginia House of Delegates in 1852. He was re-elected in 1853 and 1857. In 1860, with the election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency, Anderson favored secession from the United States and advocated for the sale of military arms to the south. When war broke out in 1861, he organized white workers into a home guard known as the Tredegar Battalion. In September of that year, he was commissioned a Brigadier General in the Confederate Army. Outside Richmond during the Seven Days Battles in 1862, Anderson commanded a brigade in A.P. Hill’s “Light Division” in the Army of Northern Virginia and was wounded. He resigned his commission later that summer to resume as superintendent of Tredegar Iron Works.

Tredegar’s operations grew tremendously during the war. The company supplied nearly half of all cannon used by the Confederacy. It also produced machinery and armor plating for Confederate warships, including the ironclad CSS Virginia, and produced iron for use by southern railroads. With the fall of Richmond in early April 1865, however, Joseph Reid Anderson became a strong advocate of peace. He, along with several Richmond City leaders, met with Abraham Lincoln during the latter’s visit to the city on April 4 to discuss bringing the war to an end. He also worked to call the General Assembly into session in order to remove Virginia from the Confederacy. He requested and received a pardon from President Andrew Johnson on September 21, 1865 and was able to resume ownership of Tredegar Iron Works shortly thereafter.

The company was profitable in the years following the war, employing up to 1,200 workers but the economic panic of 1873 resulted in financial difficulties that kept Tredegar from transitioning to steel

production. It remained a going concern well into the 20th century however, providing munitions and other supplies to the United States Army during World Wars I and II.

After the death of his wife Sarah in 1881, Joseph Reid Anderson remarried the following year. He died on September 7, 1892.

C.M. Bell, photographer. Walker, Dr. Mary. [Between 1873 and 1916] Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.

Mary Walker was born on November 26, 1832 and raised in Oswego, NY. Her parents, Alvah and Vesta Walker, instilled progressive values in their children at a young age – they split domestic chores equally, sheltered freedom seekers on the Underground Railroad , and encouraged their five daughters to pursue professional educations and careers. To this end, Mary attended Syracuse Medical College, graduating in 1855 to become one of only a handful of female doctors in America.

Dr. Walker struggled to be taken seriously by potential patients, who were reluctant to accept that a woman could be a competent doctor. She was also regarded as an oddity for rejecting Victorian-era dress codes. She believed corsets and long, heavy skirts were bad for women’s health, instead preferring a style which she called Reform Dress; it included a pair of loose-fitting pants covered by a simple, knee-length skirt. Dr. Walker faced ridicule for her clothing choices throughout her life and was often harassed or arrested for nonconformity.

After the Battle of Bull Run in 1861, Dr. Walker traveled to Washington, hoping that the Union’s urgent need for surgeons would outweigh their unwillingness to legitimize a woman doctor. Despite her optimism, she was denied a commission. Instead, she worked as a volunteer surgeon, first in a makeshift soldiers’ hospital in the US Patent Office, then at field hospitals in Warrenton, Fredericksburg , and Chattanooga .

In early 1864, Dr. Walker was granted an unofficial contract as an Acting Assistant Surgeon for the 52nd Ohio Volunteers (Army of the Cumberland) and joined them in Tennessee. In addition to treating wounded soldiers, she often crossed into Confederate-held territory to provide medical assistance to injured, sick, and starving civilians, and, perhaps, to gather intelligence for the Union. On April 10, 1864, Dr. Walker had an unlucky encounter with a Confederate sentry in enemy territory – she was captured and sent to Castle Thunder military prison in Richmond, VA.

Castle Thunder was created from a former tobacco warehouse and two adjacent buildings on Cary Street. It became increasingly overcrowded as the war continued, and when Dr. Walker arrived in 1864 it likely held between 700 and 1000 prisoners – mostly Confederate deserters, captured Union civilians, political prisoners, and African Americans. The notoriously harsh prison guards had recently been investigated by the Confederate House of Representatives for excessive brutality and accidental shootings of prisoners. Dr. Walker described filthy cells infested with bed bugs, lice, and rats, and meager rations riddled with mold. She became very ill during her time in Castle Thunder, suffering bronchitis, severe weight loss, and permanent damage to her eyesight.

On August 12, 1864, Dr. Walker was freed in a prisoner exchange, traded for a Confederate Major, which she considered an affirmation of her worth to the United States. She spent the next six months in the Union’s Louisville Female Military Prison serving as an Acting Assistant Surgeon, a role which she found difficult – male coworkers continually undermined her authority by encouraging prisoners to refuse treatment and medication from her. Dr. Walker also may have struggled with her mental health after having spent nearly five months in Castle Thunder as a prisoner herself. In April 1865, she wrote to Post Medical Director Dr. Edward Phelps requesting to be transferred out of the prison. Shortly after, the end of the war signaled the end of Dr. Walker’s tenure as an Army Surgeon.

In the ensuing year, Dr. Walker contacted numerous authorities to request a pension for her service and compensation for having damaged her vision at Castle Thunder, which prevented her from a full return to medical practice. After countless denials, she and her friends appealed directly to President Johnson. Though he agreed that Dr. Walker had rendered valuable services to the United States, he argued that she could not be granted a pension since she had never been an officially commissioned officer in the Army. Instead, he awarded Dr. Walker with the Medal of Honor on January 25, 1866, making her the first and only woman to receive this accolade.

Dr. Walker devoted herself to many causes after the war: securing pensions for wartime nurses, advocating for universal suffrage, promoting dress reform, and keeping up with medical advancements. She published two books and spent many years traveling internationally, giving speeches about her experiences in the war and the causes she was passionate about. She passed away on February 21, 1919, firmly believing it was only a matter of time before her then-radical ideas became commonly accepted.

On April 4, 1865, two days after Confederate forces evacuated Richmond, President Abraham Lincoln and his son Tad visited the still smoldering ruins of the South's former Capital. As they stepped ashore, they were instantly recognized by the former slaves, who greeted them ecstatically. "No electric wire could have carried the news of the President's arrival sooner than it was circulated through Richmond. As far as the eye could see the streets were alive with negroes and poor whites rushing in our direction, and the crowd increased so fast that I had to surround the President with the sailors with fixed bayonets to keep them off….They all wanted to shake hands with Mr. Lincoln or his coat tail or even to kneel down and kiss his boots!" said Admiral David D. Porter, who landed with Lincoln.

The crowd around Lincoln grew as he attempted to make his way to the former Confederate White House, now the U. S. military headquarters. Incredibly, only a few sailors were on hand to guard the President against attack. The distance to the White House was not great, but the crowd made movement nearly impossible. Military authorities eventually spotted the President and guided him to the house once occupied by Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy. It was here he hoped to meet with the commanding general of the occupying forces. Instead, he found a delegation of Southerners waiting to see him to discuss how the war might be brought to a speedy, peaceful conclusion.

After the meeting a carriage was brought out, and Lincoln and Tad rode through Richmond, touring the sites made famous during the previous four years of war, including the State Capitol and Libby Prison. Finally, the President reached Rocketts Landing, where the USS Malvern had arrived, and boarded the warship for the night. The next morning, he resumed his peace talks and then departed Richmond, never to return. General Robert E. Lee's surrender four days later at Appomattox Court House ended attempts at a negotiated end to the war.

Reflecting on the heady events of the past few days, Admiral Porter said, "I should have preferred to see the President of the United States entering the subjugated stronghold of the rebels with an escort more befitting his high station, yet that would have looked as if he came as a conqueror to exult over a brave but fallen enemy. He came instead as a peacemaker, his hand extended to all who desired to take it."

In the spring of 1862 General George B. McClellan’s army of more than 100,000 Union soldiers landed at Fort Monroe and fought its way up the peninsula. By mid-May the Army of the Potomac lay on the outskirts of Richmond. McClellan planned to capture the capital of the Confederacy and perhaps end the war. If his strategy succeeded the nation might be reunited, but without the abolition of slavery.

In June the city’s defenders, members of the Army of Northern Virginia, had a new leader. Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston had conducted the campaign through May, but he fell wounded at the Battle of Seven Pines just east of the city on May 31. His successor, General Robert E. Lee, inherited a gloomy set of circumstances. His 65,000 man army would fight with its back to Richmond.

Several variables affected the events in June. Sickness ravaged both armies, particularly McClellan’s. The volatile weather, with extensive rain, greatly injured the Union army’s complicated supply system. Being far from home, that army relied on shipping, wagon trains, and the Richmond & York River Railroad to keep itself fed and clothed. McClellan required an estimated 700 tons of supplies every day merely to stay in the field. The rain produced unbelievably muddy roads, forcing the railroad to assume an even greater portion of the transportation burden. The Chickahominy River, swampy even in the best of times, raged across a wide valley northeast of Richmond. That river divided the Army of the Potomac.

General Lee reorganized his army and through the first three weeks of June emphasized the construction of earthen fortifications nearly encircling the city. That unpopular directive earned Lee the derisive nickname “King of Spades.” But Lee had a plan for the salvation of Richmond, and those fortifications were a key ingredient. By erecting powerful defenses, he intended to leave a relatively small portion of his army to guard the direct line to Richmond while he took the balance and attacked McClellan. Confederate general Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson and his army were important components in Lee’s strategy. On June 8-9, Jackson completed the defeat of three Union armies in the Shenandoah Valley. With the Valley temporarily secure, Jackson could reinforce the imperiled capital. His 20,000 men would bring Lee closer to numerical parity with McClellan. Their arrival, under Lee’s plan, would trigger the offensive. Jackson’s men moved by railroad and by foot. When they approached Richmond from the northwest on June 26, Lee struck.

With Stonewall Jackson advancing along the northern side of the Chickahominy, Lee began moving much of Richmond’s defense force toward Jackson. Together, Lee hoped, they could threaten McClellan’s supply railroad and trigger a decisive battle for the fate of Richmond. The ensuing week of operations produced five major battles and several smaller ones and resulted in the Union army retreating to the banks of the James River. With Richmond secure, Lee’s army moved north, defeated Union forces at Cedar Mountain and Second Manassas (Bull Run) , and then marched toward Maryland and the first invasion of the North .

The American Civil War drew several million men to serve the Confederacy or the Union. Many fell sick in unprecedented numbers, and they died from wounds and disease by the hundreds of thousands. Neither side was prepared for the burden of caring for so many sick and wounded. With the sudden burden of caring for so many men, hundreds of hospitals sprouted up around the Confederacy. The five converging railroads near Richmond, Virgina and the city’s proximity to many of the war’s greatest battles meant that Richmond became a booming hospital center. 1

In response to the sudden need to care for a large number of patients, the Confederate government began to build large hospital complexes, starting with Chimborazo. It took its name from the hill on which it sat - Chimborazo Hill, on the eastern edge of the city of Richmond. That hill, in turn, was named for Mount Chimborazo, a 20,549 foot (6,263 meter) mountain in Ecuador. 2 Alexander von Humboldt had explored Chimborazo earlier in the century and consequently the peak was much better known in the 1800s than it is today. 3

When the war started, soldiers from around the Confederacy converged on Richmond for organization and drill. The Confederates had wooden barracks built on Chimborazo Hill with intention of housing newly arrived soldiers over the coming winter. By fall, so many soldiers had become sick that the Surgeon General of the Confederate States of America, Dr. Samuel P. Moore, commandeered the buildings for his department. In October 1861, Chimborazo Hospital was established. 4

Dr. James B. McCaw, a prominent Richmond surgeon, assumed control of the new hospital. He served as its chief until it ceased operations at the end of the war. 5 McCaw managed the complex of more than 100 patient wards and support structures as a large military post hospital. Chimborazo operated like a small city, maintaining its own livestock and gardens, producing necessities like bread and soap, as well as providing medical care. A staff of surgeons - usually somewhere between 20 and 30 men- watched over an enormous crowd of patients. 6 The corps of men who performed the daily nursing consisted of a large contingent of enslaved workers, as well as detailed and disabled Confederate soldiers. A small number of white women also served at Chimborazo, in a position known as matron. Matrons helped feed soldiers, wrote letters for them, administered medicine, organized the kitchens, and directed the labor of the enslaved workers. 7

The bed capacity at Chimborazo was approximately 3500. On occasion, the number of patients at Chimborazo approached 4000. The majority of men receiving treatment were sick rather than wounded. Chimborazo was not a field hospital, but rather a general hospital where patients received active care while they recovered from illness or wounds. Most wounded soldiers arriving there from the battlefield had been injured several days earlier, had received emergency treatment soon thereafter, and then went to Chimborazo by railroad or ambulance. 8

Chimborazo operated as a Confederate hospital until April 3, 1865, when United States forces captured Richmond. Approximately 70,000 patients were treated there over the course of three and a half years. About 4,000 of them died. The mortality hovered around 6%. 9 Men who died at Chimborazo Hospital typically received burial in the Confederate section of the Oakwood Cemetery, one mile northeast of the complex. 10 At the end of the war, African American refugees found shelter in Chimborazo’s wooden barracks buildings. The complex was administered, for a time, by the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (or “Freedmen’s Bureau”) – a federal agency tasked with assisting African Americans in the transition from slavery to freedom. 11 Northern aid organizations operated a school for the formerly enslaved. 12 The city of Richmond cleared the land of residents and structures for the formation of a city park in the 1870s. By 1877, it was reported that “all of the old buildings have been removed from Chimborazo Hill within the new park.” 13

Today Richmond National Battlefield Park uses one portion of the hill for its “Chimborazo Medical Museum,” which is housed in a 20th century building atop the site of the historic hospital. Visitors to the museum will learn about the notable hospital, other hospitals in Civil War Richmond, and about the practice of medicine in the 1860s.

Chimborazo Operating Hours and Seasons 1 Rebecca Barbour Calcutt, Richmond’s Wartime Hospitals (Pelican Publishing Company, 2005). 2 Carol C. Green, Chimborazo: The Confederacy’s Largest Hospital (University of Tennessee Press, 2004), 7-8. 3 Greg Miller, “The Pioneering Maps of Alexander von Humboldt: Beautiful and insightful, the illustrations of the German naturalist helped shape a new understanding of the world,” Smithsonian, October 15, 2009. 4 Green, Chimborazo, 8. 5 National Park Service, “Dr. James McCaw,” https://www.nps.gov/rich/learn/historyculture/dr-james-mccaw.htm. 6 Green, Chimborazo, 19. 7 Green, Chimborazo, 46-50. 8 Green, Chimborazo, 66. 9 Green, Chimborazo, 114, 154. 10 “THE DEAD AT OAKWOOD – WORK OF THE OAKWOOD ASSOCIATION,” Richmond Dispatch, June 5, 1867. “HISTORY OF CHIMBORAZO HOSPITAL, C. S. A.,” Richmond News Leader, January 7, 1909. 11 “Colonel Brown’s Report,” Washington (Pa.) Reporter, August 26, 1865. 12 “Misses Cooke’s School Room, Chimborazo Hospital, Richmond, Va.,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, November 17, 1866, 132. 13 “TRUSTEES’ SALE OF LARGE NUMBER OF HANDSOME BUILDING LOTS ON CHIMBORAZO HEIGHTS, ADJOINING THE NEW CITY PARK,” Richmond Dispatch, June 13, 1877.

Many of Virginia's native animal species can be found within the habitats that make up Richmond National Battlefield Park. Visitors may glimpse deer, groundhogs, raccoons and many other creatures not commonly seen outside of protected lands.

The transition between maintained and unmaintained park areas provides an excellent variety of habitats. This variety is essential for supporting a diverse animal population. The savannah-like forest created at Cold Harbor by prescribed burning attracts a large diversity of woodpeckers and cavity nesting birds. The wetland areas at Malvern Hill and Beaver Dam Creek, enhanced by beaver activity, provide habitat for fish, water birds, and turtles. The old growth forest community at Gaines' Mill is ideal habitat for flying squirrels, and the open field areas at Gaines' Mill and Malvern Hill create habitat for snakes, rodents and grassland birds.

When conditions are suitable, visitors to Richmond National Battlefield Park may see reptilian species.

Although most arthropods are easily overlooked when enjoying the natural beauty of the park, their impact on park ecosystems is profound.

Located along the transition from Virginia's piedmont region on its western side to the coastal plain on its eastern side, the park's many units share a variable combination of natural features. Each ecosystem found at Richmond National Battlefield Park - streams, wetlands, forests, and grasslands - creates habitat for its own suite of plants and animals. The transition zones between these ecosystems further increase the diversity of native communities. Careful management and preservation of these natural resources ensures that visitors will be able to enjoy a variety of habitats and landscapes at Richmond National Battlefield Park for generations to come.

Learn about Richmond National Battlefield Park's forest communities and how the park strives to protect these habitats.

Many acres of the park are maintained as open grasslands to re-create the historic appearances of Richmond's battlefields.

Rivers and streams contribute to the park's diverse ecosystems and landscapes and serve as excellent habitats for fish and amphibians.

Wetlands are some of the most diverse and productive community types in Richmond National Battlefield Park.

Richmond National Battlefield Park is made up of a variety of habitats that support many native mammals. Protected forests, meadows, and wetlands afford mammals the space and safety to live and raise young within Richmond's urban and suburban landscapes.

Managed fields provide Whitetail Deer with optimal foraging and bedding areas, while keeping them close to the security of nearby forest boundaries. The dense undergrowth of emergent forests creates cover for smaller mammals such as the Eastern Cottontail Rabbit. Grey and Flying Squirrels rely on hardwood trees in the park's old-growth forests for food and nesting habitats. Streams and wetlands within the park serve as excellent foraging grounds for the park's Raccoon population, while roadside clearings are favored by Groundhogs. Grey Foxes can be found throughout the park, although sightings are most likely around dawn and dusk when they are most active. Richmond National Battlefield Park provides mammals with an important refuge from hunting and development pressures. Undisturbed natural areas connect us with our heritage and help these species thrive, now and in the future.

Biologists are studying how local bat populations are changing and keeping a careful eye on rare and endangered bat species in the park.