robert e. lee lithograph ca. 1890 tabor fine art

( Here's why the Confederate battle flag made a 20th century comeback.) The ideal emissary, one of the governor’s secretaries confided, was a handsome but “crippled, maimed Confederate” who could “interest the women.” Contributions poured in.

In 1886 the general assembly put him in charge of a memorial association, and his agents fanned out across the South to solicit donations. Governor Lee made erecting a monument to his uncle a priority, in order to keep the fires of Confederate memory kindled. By 1885, Lee was in the governor’s mansion, and the Democratic Party regained the legislative majority, though a few cities, like Richmond, remained Readjuster strongholds. Fitzhugh Lee, who had fought under his uncle in the Civil War, led the charge. The Readjusters quickly won control of the state’s general assembly, the governorship, and municipalities like Richmond, and launched an ambitious effort to boost funding for schools for both Blacks and whites and abolish laws designed to discourage Black voting.Ĭonservative Democrats resolved to break this formidable alliance by reviving the fading passions for the Lost Cause. Its leader was William Mahone, an industrialist who had served with General Lee. An alliance of white, working-class Democrats and Black Republicans formed a powerful movement called the Readjusters, a term referring to those who wanted to renegotiate Virginia’s pre-war debt in order to invest in the future. That new epoch brought political change as well. An impressed New York Times lauded Richmond’s “snap and go” that heralded “a new epoch” of commercial ambition. The city was slow to recover, but by the early 1880s its factories boomed, drawing Black, white, and immigrant workers. Unauthorized use is prohibited.Īs Union troops approached the beleaguered city in April 1865, Confederate soldiers set fire to its warehouses, and the conflagration eventually destroyed a quarter of Richmond.

Robert e. lee lithograph ca. 1890 tabor fine art