Renwick Courthouse

The courthouse stands at the center of Fredericksburg, and the city stands at the center of an old catastrophe. Fredericksburg sits halfway between Washington and Richmond — which made it the pivot of the Civil War. The Battle of Fredericksburg was fought here in 1862. So was the Second Battle of Fredericksburg. More than 10,000 African Americans in the region left slavery for freedom in 1862 alone, getting behind Union lines. The battles are preserved as the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. The courthouse remains at the center of a city that rebuilt itself around what it survived.