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This page of the official roster of the convention contains the names of twenty-three of the 105 delegates, how many days each attended during the last two months that it met, and how much payment they were due for their service.

As required by federal law to be readmitted to the United States, a convention met to write a new state constitution. It reformed local government on the more democratic model of the New England township; it required the General Assembly to create a…

Opponents of the constitution produced this political broadside to frighten white Virginians into voting against ratification of the constitution by spreading fears that African Americans would be able to beat white children in the new public schools…

This page from the convention's attendance book records the attendance and per diem allowances for Delegate William H. Andrews, who represented Isle of Wight and Surry Counties. A native of New Jersey, Andrews moved to Virginia to teach at the end of…

After the money the convention appropriated to pay its expenses had been exhausted, the convention required the auditor of public accounts to issue coupons to cover the unpaid per diem allowances of convention members. The delegates either redeemed…

The Republican slate of candidates in 1869 included the current governor Henry Horatio Wells, the current attorney general Thomas Russell Bowden, and an African American physician, Joseph Dennis Harris, for lieutenant governor. In the election, the…

For decades, Virginia localities kept separate registers for African American and white voters. These registers are for Southampton County and record the African Americans and whites who voted at the first precinct of the second magisterial district…

On January 11, 1871, entrepreneur and woman suffrage advocate Victoria Woodhull became the first woman to address a congressional committee. In her remarks she declared that the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments granted women the right to vote. She…

Mary Peake began teaching contraband at Fort Monroe in the autumn of 1861. Two years later, General Benjamin F. Butler had this school constructed and it remained under military control until 1865, when the American Missionary Association began…

The Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution prohibits the United States government and the government of any state from denying the vote to any citizen "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." It was passed by Congress in…