About White House of the Confederacy
The White House of the Confederacy is an 1818 National Historic Landmark that served as the official residence of Confederate president Jefferson Davis and his family from August 1861 until Richmond's evacuation in April 1865. The house functioned simultaneously as a family home, a center of government ceremony, and a workplace and residence for both enslaved and free servants.
After Confederate officials fled Richmond, Union general Godfrey Weitzel established his headquarters in the building. President Abraham Lincoln visited there on April 4, 1865, and the house later accommodated United States Army officers during Reconstruction before becoming a public school and, eventually, a museum.
A 45-minute guided tour leads through two furnished floors of public rooms and private living quarters, with many period pieces and some objects associated with the wartime household. Interpretation addresses the Black and white, enslaved and free people who lived or worked there, as well as the building's changing use after the Confederacy's collapse. Its unusually intact interior makes it one of Richmond's most immediate places for examining political power, domestic life, slavery, occupation, and memory during and after the Civil War.
