Friday, September 7, 2007

Two Richmond Hotels

Mrs. Pryor mentions two hotels she stayed at in Richmond during Civil War days, neither of which still exists. One was the Exchange Hotel (see photo at
http://www.vahistorical.org/lva/exchange.htm and the other was the Spotswood Hotel - http://richmondthenandnow.com/Newspaper-Articles/Spotswood-Fire.html

Mrs. Pryor's descriptions of the effects of the battles around Richmond during the first year of the war are moving. The reader meets women following their husbands as they move from battle to battle, the agony of suspense waiting for news of the fate of their beloved. She relates stories of how soldiers amused themselves, stories they told, stories told by slaves who had accompanied soldiers to the battlefields.

Surprisingly, at least surprising to me, Mrs. Pryor wrote kindly and sympathetically of General McClellan.

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