Browse Items (215 total)

The Sons of Liberty threw hundreds of tea chests into Boston harbor in December 1773 to protest the passage of the Townshend Acts, which taxed a number of goods, including tea. The next year, Parliament responded to this destruction of about $1.7…

During World War II, the American government asked civilians to participate in the war effort. A common way for the government to communicate with civilians was through posters hung in public places. Inspirational, informative, and instructive, the…

This map is attributed to Captain John Smith (1580–1631) and is one of the earliest representations of Virginia. Smith began a three-month exploration of the Chesapeake Bay and its adjacent waterways in June 1608. He interacted with Indigenous…

Waterways provided the people of the Eastern Shore and Hampton Roads regions with access to food, supplies, and transport long before English colonists arrived in 1607. As English settlements displaced and removed Indigenous people from the land near…

In 1806, Virginia's General Assembly passed a law that required enslaved people who had been freed after that date to leave the state within one year's time. Those who remained in the Commonwealth more than a year could be re-enslaved and sold.…

Historically, coal has been one of Virginia’s most valuable natural resources. The first coal mines were developed after coal deposits were discovered early in the 1700s west of the falls of the James River in the area that is now Midlothian, in…

Cockacoeske was a significant figure in the history of the Pamunkey tribe in Virginia. She was a descendant of Opechancanough, the brother of Powhatan, who had been the paramount chief of the Powhatan Confederacy. Cockacoeske became weroansqua, or…

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…

The Cuban Missile Crisis occurred during John F. Kennedy’s presidency. In October 1962 a United States spy plane captured evidence that the Soviet Union was moving nuclear missiles into Cuba. Located just 90 miles off the coast of Florida, Cuba had…