Browse Items (31 total)
The Virginia Declaration of Rights (George Mason's Draft)
Virginia's Fifth Revolutionary Convention met at the Capitol in Williamsburg from May 6 to July 5, 1776, and declared independence from Great Britain. The delegates also voted to prepare a constitution for Virginia as well as a statement of rights.…
Petition of 10,000 Dissenters for Religious Freedom, 1776
Since the establishment of the Virginia colony in 1607, the Church of England (Anglican) was the only religious denomination recognized by the government. Anyone not worshipping with the recognized church was labeled a dissenter. Dissenters did not…
Act for Establishing Religious Freedom, January 16, 1786
When the first English settlers arrived in 1607, the Church of England served as the official church of the Virginia Colony. Under the 1689 English Act of Toleration, Protestants who were not members of the Church of England were still required to…
George Washington, Statue, 1788
George Washington was born in 1732 in Westmoreland County, Virginia, to a relatively prosperous family. His father died when he was eleven and so he was not sent to school in England like his older half-brothers, but studied with tutors. He trained…
The Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution, December 15, 1791
The struggle for the ratification of the United States Constitution convinced some political leaders that amendments were needed to protect individual liberties from the strengthened national government created by the Constitution. During the First…
"The Bottle," Illustrated Panels, George Cruikshank, 1848
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…
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.…
Hiram Bartee, Indictment for Abolitionism, Scott County, 1859
In October 1859, white abolitionist John Brown led an armed raid on the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), in an attempt to overthrow the system of slavery. Sixteen people died in the raid. Brown and six of his…
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 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…