Themes in American History

Richmond, Virginia, like New York, was a fast growing city between 1800 and 1860. Of course it didn’t grow as quick as New York. There are a variety of things that the two cities had in common even though New York was more business-related, whereas Richmond was more of a plantation/farm-based city. Richmond was following the same path as New York, having their first City Hall built in 1816, says visitrichmondva.com. In the 19th century, slavery was common in both of these cities. It’s obvious that a city as large as New York would need slaves to help regulate the flow of business and in Virginia, there were over a hundred slaves per plantation. Fortunately, slavery was abolished in New York in 1827. On the other hand, in the South, farming was a big part of daily life and they needed slaves and it was impossible for them to free a slave. “Only in Richmond, where slave manpower was essential to iron and tobacco provessiong, did a large proportion of slaves still persist in 1860” (Chudacoff 64). Due to their selfishness to keep slaves, Virginia joined the Confederacy, the states that supported slavery. Havoc broke loose in the mid 19th-century when the slave-free North, also known as the Union, and pro-slavery South clashed in a war known as the Civil War. The outcome of this war shaped the way for slavery for years to come. According to visitrichmondva.com, Richmond actually became the capital of the Confederate States. As common as Richmond was, it’s population didn’t burst until the mid to late 19th century, whereas New York experienced a sudden population growth starting from the 1820s, onward. “The establishment and expansion of the COnfederate government’s bureaucracy helped to triple the population of Richmond” (Chudacoff 74).

Slave auction in Richmond, Virginia on September 27th, 1856.

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Compare Richmond to New York City, one difference is that the population of free black increased fourfold between 1790 and 1810. However, for New York City, the population of free black increasing started by 1810, increased even more after the Gradual Manumission Act (Chudacoff 60).

On the other hand, both cities remained a larger proportion of slaves in 1860. Because of the increasing of unskilled white laborers and selling slaves to the plantations. The number of slaves in the southern cities decreased largely. Only in Richmond, the slave manpower demand of processing iron and tobacco kept the population of slaves basically unchanged in 1860 (Chudacoff 64). 

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