Browse Items (97 total)

An African American soldier was photographed in his United States Army uniform, along with his wife and two daughters. In May 1863, U.S. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton issued General Order No. 143 creating the Bureau of U. S. Colored Troops.…

This is the second page of an itemized list of the expenses that the state's engineer department incurred in renting slaves and horses to work on defensive works at Gloucester Point, on the north bank of the York River, in the month of April 1861.…

This composite set of sketches illustrates the variety of ways in which African Americans served the United States Army, as laborers and scouts, as drovers, as washer women, and as soldiers.

During the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House in May 1864, Major General Edward Johnson and Brigadier G. H. Stewart were captured.

After the United States Army captured Petersburg, Confederate and Virginia officials fled Richmond during the night of April 2

For several months after the end of the war, the army stationed soldiers, including African Americans, throughout Virginia to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation and protect the freedpeople. White Lunenburg County residents petitioned Governor…

A joint Congressional committee was appointed in 1865 to determine whether the former Confederate states were entitled to have representation in Congress. More than one hundred witnesses testified early in 1866 about the situations in the four…

The freedmen of Petersburg chose a man named David May to represent them to the Freedmen's Bureau "to adjudicate in all claims, or cases of difficulty arising between Whites and Freedmen, or between Negroes themselves."

The Freedmen's Bureau also had responsibility for administering land (plantations) that white Southerners abandoned, although in Virginia that did not often happen. Nevertheless, many freedpeople believed that the property of their former owners…

The first page of an alphabetized list of male freed men in New Kent County recording who had formerly owned them and how much tax they owed. Under Virginia law, males older than sixteen paid an annual poll tax. At that time, payment of a poll tax…