Browse Items (17 total)

This document is a parole slip that was given to the Confederate officer Captain James M. Garnett. It is dated April 10, 1865 and noted there is its location, Appomattox Court House, VA. The day prior, April 9, 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee…

On February 3, 1865, Confederate vice president Alexander Stephens and two other commissioners met with Abraham Lincoln on the steamer River Queen near Fort Monroe in Hampton in a futile effort to end the Civil War and ensure Southern independence.…

Enslaved Virginians were often hired out by their owners during the course of their lives. Industries such as the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond and the many iron and woolen mills throughout the state employed skilled and unskilled slaves to augment…

The Southern Illustrated News was printed in Richmond from 1862 to 1865. The cartoon lampoons Lincoln’s revolving door of generals that had faced—and lost to—Southern armies in Virginia. After General Winfield Scott retired at the beginning of the…

The importance of slavery in the secession crisis and as a cause of the Civil War was well understood in 1861. Voters in the counties where the enslaved population was greatest elected more supporters of secession to the Virginia Convention than did…

The Democratic Party split in two in 1860. John C. Breckinridge, vice president of the United States, became the presidential nominee of the faction sometimes referred to as the Southern Democrats. The party advocated the expansion of slavery into…

CONTENT WARNING: Materials in the Library of Virginia's collections contain historical terms, phrases, and images that are offensive to modern readers. These include demeaning and dehumanizing references to race, ethinicity, and nationality; enslaved…