Richmond, Virginia, 1865. Source.
From an interview with Dr. Nelson D. Lankford:
What surprised you the most in the process of writing your book?
I supposed the greatest surprise I encountered, other than the pervasive sense of uncertainty, was the sweep of characters who populated the postwar city. They truly constituted an amazing kaleidoscope of personalities, all grappling with their altered circumstances in their different ways. A minority of white Unionists forging a new polity amid the ruins of the old, the former Confederates who opposed them because they could not envision a new Virginia, Black entrepreneurs building new businesses, industrialists trying to revive their shattered fortunes—they all played their roles in the Richmond that arose from the devastation and loss of total war.
What’s your favorite anecdote from your book?
My favorite anecdote is about Garland White, a chaplain with a Black Union regiment that entered Richmond on April 3, 1865, the day of Confederate collapse. White had been born into slavery in Virginia but as a child escaped to the North. When freed people crowded around his regiment to welcome their liberation, an old woman bend with age and toil quizzed White. When he answered her queries to her satisfaction, she told the startled chaplain she was his mother. A true story!
Garland White’s account of that reunion:
“What is your name, sir?”
“My name is Garland H. White.”
“What was your mother’s name?”
“Nancy.”
“Where was you born?”
“In Hanover County, in this State.”
“Where was you sold from?”
“From this city.”
“What was the name of the man who bought you?”
“Robert Toombs.”
“Where did he live?”
“In the State of Georgia.”
“Where did you leave him?”
“At Washington.”
“Where did you go then?”
“To Canada.”
“Where do you live now?”
“In Ohio.”
“This is your mother, Garland, whom you are now talking to, who has spent twenty years of grief about her son.”
I cannot express the joy I felt at this happy meeting of my mother and other friends.
White, Garland H. Letter to the Christian Recorderdated April 12, 1865. Published in the Christian Recorder, April 22, 1865