In this Virginia History Blog, we explore the developments leading antebellum Virginia to hold the largest free black population, with artisans free and slave, with slave hires for industrial work and construction on canals and railroads. Virginia 1820-1860 was a slave state with an emerging market economy, industrialization and substantial out-migration of whites and blacks....
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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...
We look at Civil War memory, white and black, in our Jim Crow Virginia part four. We begin with looking at how differences emerged in shared memories using “Race and Reunion”, “Cities of the Dead” and “Southern Past”. How women in associations and in their published writing of memoirs, novels and histories established the Lost...
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In our blog on Reconstruction in Virginia part two, we begin looking at the passage of the 14th amendment in the former Confederate states in”No Easy Walk to Freedom”. The development of social, economic and political community in black Hampton, Virginia is described in “Freedom’s First Generation”. And race as a social construction is explored...
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We begin Reconstruction in Virginia part one with a survey of the period, 1863-1877 in “Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution”. Virginia’s Reconstruction was extended by Readjusters to 1883 as described in “Two Paths to the New South”. The politics of race in post emancipation Virginia is studied in “Before Jim Crow”. “Shattered Nation” investigates the intellectual...
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Our third blog on the Civil War in Virginia considers a biographical focus, social history and local histories during the Civil War. Starting with Confederate General “Robert E. Lee”, the review is paired with bibliographical references to five other prominent Civil War Virginians. “Southern Lady, Yankee Spy” is both biography and social history. Individual biographies are...
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In part two of Civil War in Virginia, we investigate the war issues of slavery and emancipation on both sides, Union and Confederate. In part three, we focus on Virginians and local histories of the war. We begin our look at Civil War slavery and emancipation with “Without Consent or Contract” that surveys the rise...
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We begin our first of three blogs on the Civil War in Virginia with reviews on five books in print and listing seven out of print books available online. Additional reviews on books about the Civil War are available at Antebellum, Civil War and Reconstruction under the subheading “Wars in Virginia, 1820-1883”. “Battle Cry of Freedom”...
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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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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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