Browse Items (17 total)
- Collection: Civil War and Reconstruction
The First Vote, Engraving published in Harper's Weekly, 1867
With the end of the Civil War came the end of slavery in the American South. When the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified on December 9, 1865, slavery was officially outlawed. Racial hostilities towards formerly…
The Age of Iron, Broadside Satirizing Women's Suffrage Movement, 1869
“The Age of Iron” was published by the New York printing firm of Currier and Ives in 1869. It satirized the woman suffrage movement that was gaining widespread support in America during that time.The woman suffrage movement took root in 1848 at the…
Roanoke County Cohabitation Register, 1866
Prior to the Civil War, enslaved men and women were not legally allowed to marry. However, during slavery many men and women did consider themselves to be married despite the lack of legal protection and recognition, which meant that husbands and…
Resolutions Adopted by a Meeting of the People of Powhatan County, 1865
On February 3, 1865, Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens and two other commissioners met with United States President Abraham Lincoln on the steamship River Queen near Fort Monroe in Hampton. The meeting was a futile effort to end the…
President Andrew Johnson Pardons Confederate John C. Shelton, 1866
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…
Letter Notifying the Governor that Virginia Representatives were Readmitted to Congress, 1870
The American Civil War was fought between 1861 and 1865. The war began after eleven southern states, including Virginia, seceded from the United States in the months after Abraham Lincoln was elected president in November 1860. After four years of…
John Brown, Portrait, 1859
In October 1859, abolitionist John Brown and a small group of white and Black men slipped across the border between Maryland and Virginia (now West Virginia) with a plan to occupy the federal arsenal, armory, and rifle factory at Harper's Ferry.…
Jefferson Township School District Map, 1870
Prior to the Civil War, Virginia did not have a comprehensive public school system. Some localities provided some "free schools" or "charity schools" for the children of indigent white families. African Americans, free and enslaved, were excluded…
Edmund Bradford Seeks a Pardon, 1865
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…
Distribution of Virginia's Slave Population, Map, 1861
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…