We are staying in a wonderful, very comfortable Airbnb and
had a great night’s sleep. Our host had given us some great local information
and so refreshed we headed out this morning to check out some history! After
breakfast our first stop was Monument Avenue. Down the centre of this avenue is
a beautiful grassed and tree filled island which has several huge statues of
Virginian Confederate veterans of the Civil War. It also has a statue of Arthur
Ashe (who was from Richmond) which was unveiled in 1996. The avenue is now
quite controversial as people argue that the statues (apart from Ashe’s) symbolize,
a lost cause, massive resistance to school integration and they also indicate “white
supremacy”. It will be interesting to see what will happen in the future to the
statues. There may be some “re-interpreting” signs erected rather that the
pulling down of the monuments. From here we drove to the White House and Museum
of Confederacy. In the museum there was an excellent explanation of the civil
war, a timeline of the events and great artefacts and historical memorabilia from
the civil war. We also visited the restored “White House”. This was a fine
mansion that served as Jefferson Davis’s home from August 1861 to April 1865
when he was the President of the Confederates during the civil war. The house
had been meticulously restored and refurbished so it was just like the house
would have been while he lived there with his family. Some of the gas-lit light
fittings were original and quite a lot of the furniture had been tracked down
and returned to the house.
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