Fire & Water for the Old Capital
Richmond is one of those cities that has always been shaped by the elements. It was by water that Christopher Newport and John Smith first came to Richmond in 1607. They had set sail with 120 men from the colony at Jamestown traveling up Powhatan’s River as far as Powhatan Hill and waterfalls that blocked their progress.
They made a settlement between what is now the 14th street bridge and the Pony Pasture. A few years later Thomas Dale, the new governor of Jamestown organized another expedition which established a small settlement just below the falls, building the first hospital there and housing among other, Pocahontas.
As time went on, and tobacco increasingly became the stock in trade for Virginians - the Falls of the James became an important center for inspecting and grading tobacco. Again, the river was to play the central role in the area’s development – as William Byrd looked down at the way the river cut through the landscape in a way which reminded him of his native London. ‘Richmond’ he called the place after Richmond-on-Thames.
And from the development of Washington’s Kanawha canal to increasing traffic on the James for the flour, iron and tobacco produced by the city – steamboats, canal boats and in time railroads found their way to Richmond and water provided for her growth in the way it had led to her founding. But alongside water trade, there has been another element in Richmond’s history –
fire.
When the state capital was hurriedly moved from Williamsburg to Richmond during the Revolutionary War, Benedict Arnold defended the city and saw it not only captured in 1781 but also burned by British troops. Richmond recovered and as it grew under the Industrial Revolution with its ironworks, the fires of its furnaces and foundries downtown, people would escape for the weekend to a small but popular resort for the wealthy a few miles upstream in the country for the ‘good air’ at Bon Air.a
In 1811 the city was threatened by a fire in its theater district but it was as the Civil War came to a crashing end that fire came to leave its mark on the city. Realizing that he must retreat from his capital in April 1865, Robert E. Lee left confederate soldiers to set fire to the city. Yet the fire spread out of control and it was the image of Richmond burning which greeted Union troops when they captured Richmond, and Richmond in ruins that awaited first Lee returning from Appomattox and then Abraham Lincoln.
Both fire and water have in their time shaped Richmond – sometimes for trade and for growth, often for disaster. As we look at Greater Richmond today we are still faced with a city which bears the promises and the scars of fire and water. The waters of prosperity have not run equally downstream – the city is still a patchwork of marked disparity between its east end and its west.
The fires which burned as the Civil War ended have in another sense continued to burn with the practical segregation of white and African American communities in the city – and not even a “city of churches” has been able or daring enough to address old wounds between them.
In all of this, from the wealthy western and southwestern suburbs to the struggling and crime-ridden neighborhoods of the ungentrified east end – we see massive opportunities for the Gospel of Jesus. Surely, only the fire of the Holy Spirit can convict men and women of their need to serve not themselves and their own interests but Christ as Lord; only the water of His grace can heal such deep divisions in our hopeful but blighted city.
Jesus once said “Is anyone thirsty? Is anyone thirsty? Let him come to me and drink.” It is our conviction that our mission must be to join with other Gospel churches in giving greater Richmond the hope of Christ’s salvation, not simply in words but in what we do in justice, in evangelism, and in reconciliation. It is how we live and pray and hope in His mercy that will make our city young and whole again.