Welcome to the Virginia History Blog. Titles selected for book reviews are taken from the bibliographies of scholarly, peer reviewed Virginia history surveys. Titles related to the topic and recent publications by authors are also included.
Additional books are chosen from those reviewed in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, the Journal of Southern History and the Journal of American History.
After the books are reviewed in the Blog, they are redistributed among historical eras at The Virginia Historian.com: (1) Early and Late Colonial 1600-1763, (2) Revolution-Constitutional-New Nation 1750-1824, (3) Antebellum, Civil War-Reconstruction 1820-1883, (4) Gilded Age, New South, 20th Century 1880-present.
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Secession Comes to Virginia part one
We begin our survey of Secession comes to Virginia with three books related to the American mind as the crisis of secession and civil war approached. “The Slave Power” describes Southern state domination of U.S. national government first in the Congressional Caucus system, and then in the Second Party System of nominating conventions and nationalized...
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Antebellum Virginia Society
The best of Virginia’s antebellum social histories include six titles from a focus of local, ethnic, gender and religious investigation. We also include seven titles from bibliographies citing out of print books. Social and cultural histories include “American City, Southern Place” investigating antebellum Richmond, and “The Virginia Germans” looks at the two major influxes of a...
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Virginia’s Antebellum Economy
This blog focuses on Virginia’s Antebellum economy. Like other border states, it grew apart from the Deep South mono-agricultural economies before the Civil War, though not at the frenetic changes of the magnitude seen in the North. To begin we look at Virginia’s “Urban Growth in the Age of Sectionalism” and at the comparative economic...
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African Americans in Antebellum Virginia part four
This is the fourth of four blogs focusing on African American history in antebellum Virginia. We first look at social history in small plantation slavery in Virginia’s Appalachia in “The African-American Family”, and then at the mid-sized and large plantations of Loudoun County in “Life in White and Black”. Antibellum mix-race liaisons and families are...
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African Americans in Antebellum Virginia part three
This is the third of four blogs focusing on African American history in antebellum Virginia. We look at resistance by those held in slavery, including rebellion and escape to freedom. “The River Flows On” includes New York, South Carolina and two Virginia revolts, while “Gabriel’s Rebellion” focuses on conspiracies in 1800 and 1802. Nat Turner’s...
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African Americans in Antebellum Virginia part two
We begin the second of four blogs focusing on African American History in Antebellum Virginia with a look at the rise of the domestic slave trade after the legal prohibition of the trans-Atlantic trade in the Middle Passage from Africa with “A Troublesome Commerce” and “Carry Me Back”. At the same time half a million...
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African Americans in Antebellum Virginia part one
We begin the first of four blogs focusing on African Americans in Antebellum Virginia with a look at the enslaved themselves in North America and Virginia in “Generations of Captivity”, then “The Slaveholding Republic” looks at the U.S. Government’s complicity in the slavery establishment throughout the South and in western territories. “The World the Slaveholders...
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Jacksonian Antebellum Virginia part two
We continue our look at Jacksonian Antebellum Virginia by looking at the “Yankeefication” of Virginia with “Rise of the Whigs” and “Migrants Against Slavery”. The classic “Road from Monticello” investigates the Slavery Debate of 1831-32, as does the “Drift Towards Dissolution” referring to the Virginia’s east-west sectional division. “Road to Disunion” examines the political currents...
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Jacksonian Antebellum Virginia part one
We begin our first of two blogs on Jacksonian Antebellum Virginia political history in the years 1810-1850 by first looking at “Sectionalism in Virginia” east and west, “Intellectual Life in the American South” with important Virginia contributions, and “The Second American Party System” explaining the growth of political parties in the states rather than Congressional...
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New Nation Virginia Migration, Slavery and Indians
We look at the social history of the New Nation from perspectives of Virginia migration among whites and blacks in “Bound Away”. A structural analysis of the Constitution and its pro-slavery uses by Courts and Congresses in the New Nation is considered in “Slavery and the Founders”. “Plowshares into Swords” looks at the development of...
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