Browse Items (215 total)
Copy of the Fifteenth Amendment Sent to North Carolina Legislature, 1869
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…
“The Age of Brass: Or the Triumphs of Woman's Rights,” Lithograph, 1869
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…
Attendance Records of the state Constitutional Convention, 1867–1868
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…
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. The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified on December 9, 1865, officially outlawed slavery. Racial hostilities towards formerly enslaved men and…
Racial Violence Reported in Norfolk Newspapers, 1866
Emancipation at the end of the Civil War did not bestow citizenship or legal protections on formerly enslaved men and women. Concerned that the newly freed African Americans would not be treated equally in courts of law, Congress passed a Civil…
Apprenticeship Contracts, Brunswick County, 1866
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…
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…
Roanoke County Cohabitation Register, 1866
Prior to the Civil War, enslaved men and women were not legally allowed to marry. However, many enslaved couples considered themselves married, despite the lack of legal protection and recognition. Often, families were split apart by enslavers who…
Equal Suffrage Address, Norfolk, 1865
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…
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…