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Commonwealth causes are criminal cases filed by a county's prosecuting attorney (commonwealth's attorney) against individuals who violate Virginia law. Prior to the abolition of slavery in Virginia in 1865, criminal offenders and victims included…

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) was born at Shadwell, along the Rivanna River in what is now Albemarle County. When his father died, the fourteen-year-old Jefferson inherited more than 5,000 acres of land, about twenty enslaved laborers, and his…

Nat Turner was born enslaved in Southampton County, Virginia, in 1800. He became a preacher and self-proclaimed prophet who believed that he had been called to lead a rebellion against slavery. On August 21, 1831, Turner began a slave revolt that…

Black Hawk, born in 1767 and known in his native language as Makataimeshekiakiak, was a Sauk warrior and tribal leader. The Sauk lived on the Rock River, a tributary of the Mississippi, in what is now Illinois, and fought against the United States…

Virginia's economy was based on slavery until the Civil War and emancipation. In 1860, Virginia was home to 500,000 enslaved people, more than any other state. Although most Virginians were not enslavers, farmers and planters used enslaved laborers…

In December 1833, a group of about sixty Black and white men met in Philadelphia and organized the American Anti-Slavery Society to seek the immediate emancipation of enslaved people. The Society viewed slavery as a violation of the principle of…

Before the end of slavery, free Black Virginians found their liberty in constant jeopardy because they were not considered citizens. After Gabriel's attempted slave rebellion in 1800, the General Assembly passed an act in 1801 requiring county…

On January 20, 1843, a petition from residents of King William County was presented to the House of Delegates. The men who signed it asked the General Assembly to sell the lands that the royal government had set aside for the Pamunkey Indians by…

After a public notice appeared in a Richmond newspaper in October 1842 that a petition would be presented to the Virginia General Assembly to sell King William County property known as "Indian town lands," members of the Pamunkey tribe took action.…

The temperance movement, or the movement to make alcohol consumption illegal, became widespread in nineteenth-century America. Since the European settlement of North America, alcohol consumption had been common. By the 1830s, Americans consumed an…