Browse Items (24 total)

Illustrated periodicals like Harper's Weekly were popular with Americans in the middle of the 19th century. After southern states formed the Confederate States of America, residents there could not easily receive newspapers and magazines printed in…

As women participated in the movement to abolish slavery during the first half of the 19th century, some of them also began to advocate for women's rights. In July 1848, a group of women and men held a convention in Seneca Falls, New York. They…

Hiring out enslaved men, women, and children was a common business arrangement among Virginians prior to emancipation and the abolishment of slavery with the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The practice of hiring out, which occurred in…

In March 1865, before the Civil War had ended, Congress created the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands (generally known as the Freedmen’s Bureau) to supervise matters related to freed people as well as to distribute land "abandoned" by…

After the Civil War, Virginia and other Confederate states were required by Congress to write new state constitutions in order for their representatives to be seated in Congress. Virginia's convention met from December 3, 1867 to April 17, 1868, and…

On April 9, 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House. The surrender effectively ended the American Civil War in Virginia, although fighting continued in…

After the Civil War ended and slavery was abolished in 1865, Radical Republicans in Congress became frustrated with the opposition that many white southerners exhibited to extending full rights of citizenship to African Americans. Congress proposed…

Using the data from the 1860 census, this map was created in 1861. It shows the distribution of enslaved Virginians in each of the state's counties, with the darker shades showing the counties with the highest percentage of enslaved men, women, and…

The power of the president to pardon those who commit offenses against the United States is enumerated in the Article Two of the U. S. Constitution. A presidential pardon is an executive order granting clemency for a conviction of a crime, with the…

Even before the end of the Civil War, newly freed Black people called on the government to grant them equal suffrage (the right to vote). A committee of Black residents in Norfolk made this demand in June 1865, shortly after the war ended. Norfolk’s…