Downtown Petersburg, Virginia

We've been to the Petersburg Battlefield - which is somewhat of a misnomer.  The whole CITY of Petersburg was a battlefield:  it was under siege for nine months!  Every day, day in and day out, for 270 days, HUNDREDS of days! incoming mortar rounds exploding offices and homes and PEOPLE!  Roads in and out blocked by the Union army.  All of this in an effort to get Robert E. Lee to surrender his Confederate forces.    According to one website, "No campaign of the Civil War equaled the siege of Petersburg, Virginia.  Petersburg was the object of the longest military action ever waged against an American city.  More battles were fought and more lives lost in its defense than over any other, better-known Southern citadels:  Richmond, Atlanta, and Vicksburg."

So, we are at the downtown Petersburg Visitor's Center.  Not too impressive when we walk in.  Very old feeling, kind of empty.  A couple of very nice folks greet us and are extremely helpful.  I browse brochures while John gets the scoop on what we might want to do.  After that's settled we get a tour of sorts of this old, empty building.  It is a former bank.  It is where the Confederate gold was stored in a safe which we are not allowed to take pictures of.  That safe was manually moved every night into another room and with (probably) block-and-tackle, lowered into a vault underground that had no entrance except for the hole it was lowered through.  This could be the gold that was moved to Danville, Virginia, the last seat of the Confederate government.  The same gold that has disappeared into the mist of time.  Was it stolen by Confederates for their own use?  stolen in hopes of financing a resurrection of the South?   is it buried somewhere in Danville?  remember the episode on the History Channel discussing that?

Turns out, several of the locations our host suggested we check out are former banks.  He explained:  After the surrender of Petersburg, the gold in all of the banks was either confiscated by the Union forces or simply disappeared.  Regardless - there was no money for the banks to operate with.  The confederate paper money was no longer any good because there was no gold to back it.  There was no need for banks!!  So the old bank buildings stood empty until merchants or historians took them over.

On our way to one of the locations that John had picked out we see this sign on a street corner:

Corling's Corner  By the 1820's, Petersburg was developing into a major industrial city.  The backbone of the city's workforce was enslaved labor.  At this highly visible downtown intersection known as Corling's Corner, local manufacturers, railroad companies, building contractors, and private individuals inspected and rented enslaved people to work for one-year terms in their businesses and homes.  Petersburg tobacco factories were probably the largest users of rented labor.  At the end of every year, enslaved men and women were hired under a legal contract that set forth the renter's obligations to the owner.  The rental of bondspeople was quite common in the South before the Civil War.

I think every city today has it's "corner" where day laborers sit and wait for an opportunity to earn some money.  The difference today is that they rent themselves out and receive money instead of room and board.  (At the price of housing and food today, room and board may be the better deal...)