Today in History

At approximately 7 A.M. on Sunday, April 2, 1865,

Ulysses S. Grant's army attacked Confederate lines at Petersburg, Virginia. By mid-afternoon, Confederate troops had begun to evacuate the town. The Union victory ensured the fall of Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, located just 25 miles north of Petersburg. President Jefferson Davis received word of the events in Petersburg while attending services at St. Paul's Church in Richmond. He abandoned the capital late that night on a train bound for Danville, Virginia.

Richmond, meanwhile, burned, as fires set by fleeing Confederates and looters raged out of control. Davis was eventually captured by Union soldiers, but not until May 10, 1865.² photographs of the siege of Petersburg and Richmond in 1865. To narrow the selection, try searching the collection on Petersburg AND Union, Petersburg AND Confederate, or Richmond AND burned.

By 1861, telegraph lines networked much of the United States and were an important means of wartime communication. Less than 20 years earlier, on May 24, 1844, the first telegram was sent by inventor Samuel F. B. Morse. See the preview of the Samuel F. B. Morse collection in Uniting a Nation: Two Giants of Telecommunications.

Long after the fall of Richmond, the Confederate States of America echoed on in Southern culture. Julia A. Wood's 1877 sheet music, Virginia Cotillions (which pays homage to Confederate heroes Jeff Davis, Robert E. Lee, Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, P.G.T. Beauregard, James Longstreet and "Jeb" Stuart) is found in Music for the Nation, 1870-1885, consisting of tens of thousands of pieces of sheet music registered for copyright during the post-Civil War era. The Cotillion was a popular ballroom dance in both the antebellum and post-Civil War periods.