Survey histories of Virginia are important to beginning your discovery of Virginia History. Reading Virginia history books with bibliographies enables the amateur historian to drill down in a field of interest by paying attention to the writer’s sources. These can become a to-buy list for building a personal library. See Twelve Steps to a Personal Library on Virginia....
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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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For those interested in the political and social history of Civil War home front Virginia, four books are recommended. Unionists, Secessionists, free blacks and slaves are studied in “Old Southampton”, from the sectional crisis through the conflict and into Reconstruction. The black Virginian experience in the Civil War, whether slave or free, for blue or...
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The Civil War in Virginia, for those interested in political and social history, can be introduced with four books from the battlefield, the naval war and amphibious operations, motives of the fighting men, and Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Battle Cry of Freedom is perhaps the best single volume of the Civil War that places...
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Three important books survey the U.S. Constitution’s ratification process for Virginia historians. “The Fate of the Revolution: Virginians Debate the Constitution” is a 204 page book which conveys the immediate contingency of a patriot-founder generation aroused and consumed by the question of nationhood and governance for their posterity. The issues resonate to this day. “Ratification:...
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“Slaves for Hire” surveys the practice of renting enslaved laborers in Antebellum Virginia, “Black Jacks” looks at rented slaves and free blacks in seafaring roles across the 18th and 19 centuries, and “Divided Mastery” looks at the common practices of slave hiring throughout the entire South, especially in the Antebellum period. Slaves for Hire Slaves...
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