We begin our look at titles about antebellum Virginia as a slave state 1824-1860 with two studies of slave rebellion. “Whispers of Rebellion” explores the slave agency in the 1800 Gabriel Conspiracy, and “”The Land Shall be Deluged in Blood” describes the 1830 Nat Turner Rebellion and its aftermath. We continue our antebellum Virginia reviews...
Category: Antebellum Era
Secession Comes to Virginia – part two (revised)
This second revised blog on “Secession comes to Virginia” begins with a review of the “Roots of Secession” in slave-holding Virginia. “Road to Disunion” investigates the divisions among Southerners. “Apostles of Disunion” describes the appeals of the Deep South commissioners to border state secessionist conventions, “Showdown in Virginia” relates the delegate debate in convention, and...
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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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Virginia’s Free African Americans, 1780-1865
Here are four histories of free Blacks in Virginia highlighting self reliant communities in a slave society. Of course, Virginia’s free African Americans have a history dating from 1619 with their importation as “servants” with subsequent freedom and voting rights in the 1600s. But these focus on the era of their substantial expansion and integration...
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The 1800s Industrialization of Virginia
Four books offer an introduction to Virginia’s industrialization throughout the 1800s. The first as an introduction is “Tredegar Iron Works” by Nathan Vernon Madison in a short popular history spanning the antebellum period into the 1920s. Richmond’s first railroad was built to transport Midlothian coal and the second volume on Virginia industry is “Old Dominion,...
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