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Sketches in the Free and Slave States of America
Engravings to accompany article
"Slaves Waiting for Sale, Virginia"
Sketch of enslaved people
"In the Richmond Slave Market"
Sketch of enslaved people in auction room
Slaves Waiting for Sale
Enslaved women, men, and children waiting to be sold at auction
Pay Roll of Slaves Employed by the Commonwealth of Virginia, for Coast, Harbor and River Defenses, on the Defensive Works at Gloucester Point in the Month of April 1861
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.…
Regulations for the Government of Freedman's Village, Greene Heights, Arlington, Va.
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…
Contrabands escaping
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.
Copy of Ed. H. Smith to Presiding Justices, Culpeper County Court, February 2, 1866, enclosed in T. Frank P. Crandon to Presiding Justices, Louisa County, March 3, 1866
Before the Civil War, white Virginians feared slave rebellions and thus exerted repressive control over enslaved people. After the war they feared retribution by the freedpeople and in some parts of the state they attempted to disarm African…
E. Val Putnam to Governor William Hodges Mann
Virginia Christian's case drew national attention. Governor Mann received numerous letters from Chicago requesting clemency for Christian including this telegram from E. Val Putnam, editor of the socialist newspaper Chicago Daily World, dated…