Throughout the Civil War thousands of enslaved men, women, and children attained their freedom by seeking refuge with United States troops as they moved across Virginia. They were declared "contraband of war" in May 1861.
In 1863, Elias M. Greene, chief quartermaster of the military department of Washington, D.C., established a community for some of the many freedpeople who escaped slavery during the Civil War. This broadside printed the regulations for the government…
This is the second page of an itemized list of the expenses that the state's engineer department incurred in renting slaves and horses to work on defensive works at Gloucester Point, on the north bank of the York River, in the month of April 1861.…