Richmond

Richmond became the Confederate capital because it could make cannons. On May 20, 1861, the Confederate Congress voted to move from Montgomery to Richmond, drawn primarily by the Tredegar Iron Works—the most industrialized facility in the South, capable of manufacturing locomotives, railroad track, naval armor, and heavy ordnance. The city's tobacco wealth and railroad network sealed the decision. Population tripled overnight as soldiers, refugees, and profiteers flooded in.

Before the war, Richmond's economy ran on tobacco and flour milling. The Confederacy converted its workshops to weapons production, but when Richmond fell on April 3, 1865, Confederate forces burned the industrial district to deny it to Union troops. Yet Richmond recovered faster than most Southern cities, precisely because tobacco doesn't care about politics—demand resumed immediately. P.H. Mayo & Bros. introduced cigarette manufacturing in 1874, and tobacco sustained the city through Reconstruction and the Depression.

The old tobacco warehouses now house law firms and finance companies. Richmond is Virginia's capital—the seat of state government since 1780—and government employment anchors the modern economy. The city's Confederate monuments became flashpoints in 2020, with most removed in 2021, as Richmond reckons with the identity that made it famous and the history that made it rich.

Today Richmond blends state bureaucracy, banking, pharmaceuticals, and a growing craft brewing scene. The metro population exceeds 1.3 million. By 2026, Richmond's challenge is the same one it faced after 1865: can a city defined by one era successfully transition to the next? The tobacco economy is mostly memory, but the legal and financial infrastructure it built remains—path dependence at work, layer upon layer.