We also asked them to share their favorite tales of Richmond. The following is a sampling of their stories.
Edward Ragan, staff historian, Valentine Richmond History Center, likes the story of Richard Gill Forrester because it shows how Richmond's history is more complex and intertwined than we may think.
Richard was 13 when the Civil War began. He worked as a page in the Virginia Assembly. As soon as that Secession Convention voted to secede, they pulled down the U.S. flag. Richard grabbed it from the trash heap and took it home, kept it tucked it under his bed for the duration of the war. And this was the first flag to fly above the capital at the end of the Civil War. On the morning when Union troops entered Richmond, Richard ran out and raised that flag for just a moment. But we got to see his commitment.
The reason that story is so striking to me is because Richard was both a free black man and Jewish. His father was Jewish, his mother was African-American. He grew up in a Jewish household. He's kosher. Yet at the same time he also participated in the First African Baptist Church.
Ultimately this story shows us that Richmond's story is more than a simple black-and-white story. It's never as simple as we think it is.
S. Waite Rawls, III, president and CEO, Museum of the Confederacy, chose the story of Phoebe Pember, who was the head nurse at Chimborazo Hospital here in Richmond during the Civil War.
One of her patients was a young man who had had an experimental surgery done on his leg to mend it, but it didn't work. He rolled over in his sleep one night and the broken leg bone severed his femoral artery. He started spurting blood and people started yelling.
Phoebe Pember came in and reached into the wound and pinched the artery closed. They called for a doctor, who looked at the young man and whispered in her ear and left.
The young man said to her, "What did he say?" and she said, "It's not good."
He said, "Am I going to die?" and she said, "Yes, you are."
And he said, "When?" and she said, "As soon as I let go of this artery."
He said, "Ma'am, would you say a short prayer for me?" She did.
And then he looked up at her and he said, "Ma'am, it's OK. You can let go."
Jim Triesler, a history teacher at Clover Hill High School and 2007 teacher of the year for Chesterfield County and the region, uses the story of Lee and Grant after Appomattox to teach the value of keeping your word.
Gen. Ulysses S. Grant paroled the Confederate soldiers who were at Appomattox Courthouse, when Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia in April 1865. Lee was also covered by the agreements of the surrender and parole of the Confederate troops.
Lee returned to Richmond to be with his wife. A short time later, Federal troops came to arrest General Lee. When General Grant got word that Lee was going to be arrested, he threatened to resign. Grant was the highest ranking general in the United States Army since George Washington and he threatened to resign because his enemy was going to be arrested!
The reason was that Grant had given his word to Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia when he paroled them at Appomattox. Grant's word meant so much to him that he would resign his commission rather than have it be broken. Lee was not arrested and Grant did not resign.
Many students today think that it is OK to say anything in order to get what they want. Their "word" sometimes has no value or meaning. That is why I think it is so important that we share stories like the one of Lee and Grant. We must help students to value the things that they say to others.
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