Founded in
1737 at the furthest navigable point on the James River,
RICHMOND remained a small outpost until just
before the end of the colonial era, when
independence-minded Virginians, realizing that their
capital at Williamsburg was open to British attack,
shifted it fifty miles further inland. The move to
Richmond failed to offer much protection the city was
raided many times and twice put to the torch, once by
troops under the command of Benedict Arnold.
Richmond subsequently
flourished, its population reaching 100,000 by the time
of the Civil War. When war broke out it was named the
capital of the Confederacy, despite the fact that
Virginia had voted two-to-one against secession from the
Union just a month before. The massive Tredegar Iron
Works, now a dedicated visitor center-cum-museum,
became the main engine of the Confederate war machine.
For four years the city was the focus of Southern
defenses and Union attacks, but despite an almost
constant state of siege General McClellan came within
six miles as early as 1862, and General Grant
steamrolled remorselessly towards it through the last
months of the war it held on until the very end. It
was less than a week after the fall of Richmond, on
April 3, 1865, that General Lee surrendered to General
Grant at Appomattox, a hundred miles west.
After the war, Richmond
was devastated. Much of its downtown was burned,
allegedly by fleeing Confederates who wanted to keep its
stores of weapons, and its warehouses full of tobacco,
out of the victors' hands. Rebuilding, however, was
quick, and the city's economy has remained among the
strongest in the South. Today's Richmond is a remarkably
elegant city, with an extensive inventory of
architecturally significant older buildings alongside
its modern office towers.
Information by Rough Guides
That the
marshy swamp where WASHINGTON DC now stands was
chosen as the site of the capital of the newly
independent United States of America says a lot about
then-prevalent attitudes toward government. Washington,
District of Columbia (the boundaries of the two are
identical) also known as "DC" and "The
District" can be unbearably hot and humid in
summer, and bitterly cold in winter. Such an unpleasant
climate, it was hoped, would discourage elected leaders
from making government a full-time job. This disdain for
politics is still apparent: DC is run as a virtual
colony of Congress, where residents have just one,
nonvoting representative and couldn't vote in
presidential elections until the 23rd Amendment was
passed in 1961.
Other than the federal government, tourism is
DC's biggest industry. The city attracts almost twenty
million visitors each year. Conveniently, most arrive in
midsummer, when the lawmakers have gone home, so
overcrowding is rarely a problem. The nation's showcase
puts on quite a display for its guests, and admission to
virtually all major attractions is free. The most famous
sites are concentrated along the central Mall,
including the White House, individual memorials to four
of the greatest presidents, and the superb museums of
the Smithsonian Institution. Downtown, however (broadly
speaking the area immediately north of the Mall, between
the White House and the Capitol), can seem very empty,
even intimidating, at night, and you're more likely to
spend your evenings in the hotels and restaurants of the
city's more motherly neighborhoods, such as historic
Georgetown, arty Dupont Circle and the
funkier Adams Morgan district.
Information by Rough Guides
A year
after mosquito-plagued Jamestown burned down, the
colonial capital was moved inland to a small village
known as the Middle Plantation, soon rechristened
WILLIAMSBURG in honor of King William III. To
reflect the increasing wealth of the colony, a grand
city was laid out, centering upon a mile-long,
hundred-foot-wide avenue. Suitable buildings were
constructed, beginning with the capitol in 1704
and culminating in the opulent Governor's Palace
in 1720. By the mid-1700s, tobacco-rich Virginia was the
most prosperous of the American colonies, and
Williamsburg was its largest city though with some two
thousand residents, not on the scale of Philadelphia,
New York or Boston. Williamsburg remained the seat of
colonial government, and emerged as one of the leading
centers of revolutionary thought: at the College
of William and Mary, George Wythe, Thomas Jefferson,
James Monroe and George Mason argued the finer points of
law and democracy, while in the capitol, and in the many
raucous taverns that surrounded it, firebrand
politicians like Patrick Henry held forth on the
iniquities of colonialism and organized the first
resistance to British rule. When the Revolutionary War
broke out, the government moved to the more secure
Richmond, and Williamsburg slowly faded from view, all
but unrecognized for its place in American history.
Information by Rough Guides
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