“The Richmond Resistance: How Citizens Became Spies" Walking Tour

“The Richmond Resistance: How Citizens Became Spies" Walking Tour

This two-hour tour by Park Ranger Nathan Hall will trace the story of a remarkable prison escape in Civil War Richmond that turned many of the city’s loyal Unionist citizens into espionage agents, fighting the Confederacy in secret from inside its capital city.

“H.S. Howard” was aided in escaping Confederate captivity in 1863 by a secret group of Richmond Union supporters. He made the remarkable decision to sneak back into the Confederate capital a week later in order to recruit those citizens as spies for the United States. Newly uncovered research sheds light on the remarkable, rarely told story of how men, women, and children, Black and white, enslaved and free, from all walks of life, chose to risk their lives in the service of the United States in Richmond during  the Civil War.

Tour stops will include the location of the coal & ice dealership of Burnham Wardwell, a businessman who chose to become one of Richmond’s most effective Civil War spies when Confederate prisons were established literally at his doorstep.
It will visit the sites of Libby Prison, Castle Thunder, and Prison Hospital 21 - the jails where military prisoners and suspected spies were held, and where residents of Richmond orchestrated ingenuous prison breaks from Confederate captivity.
The tour will end at the former site of the Van Lew mansion on Church Hill, where Richmond heiress Elizabeth Van Lew fought the Civil War in secret as the leader of Richmond’s anti-Confederate underground spy network.

Saturday, March 29
10am to 12pm

Meet your guide at the corner of 18th and Cary Streets in downtown Richmond. Free and paid hourly parking is available on public city streets nearby.
People with limited mobility should be advised that the tour covers approximately one mile on city sidewalks, much of it uphill on a steep grade.