In this day and age, newspapers rarely print fiction. Of course, there is the occasional magical story written by a third grade class that appears every once a week in the Arts and Entertainment section of the paper, but for the most part, fictional stories of real substance are not published in newspapers anymore. This was not the case in the 1800's. Appearing in The Valley Star each week was...
In June 1866, John and Carrie McGavock donated two acres of their land to serve as a Confederate cemetery to rebury the Confederate soldiers that lost their lives at the Battle of Franklin. After the battle in 1864, burial details started to inter the dead, choosing to place them in the area where they had fallen in battle. They recorded the name, rank, regiment, and company of the individuals upon...
On March 26, 1866, a member of the Digges family in New Orleans, Louisiana wrote a letter to N.A. Hanney of Rockport, Texas. The letter described the family's financial crisis as a result of the Civil War. The letter writer, whose name is obscured by damage to the document, blamed his financial problems on investment in Confederate bonds purchased in order to support the war effort. After the...
The Civil Rights Act, which put forth in detail the rights of former slaves, was passed by the United States Congress on April 9, 1866. On January 5th, 1866 Senator Trumbull from Illinois had presented “A Bill to protect all persons in the United States in their civil rights, and furnish a means for their vindication.' In an effort to counteract the Black Codes passed in many southern states...
West Virginia would not consider reunification in 1866. In 1866, Governor Boreman of West Virginia responded to Alexander H. H. Stuart's letter, which had asked Boreman for West Virginia's stance on reunification and the settlement of state debt. Boreman wrote that if the Virginia commissioners, whom Stuart numbered among, had presented themselves in front of the West Virginian legislature...
In Mid-March of 1866, the case of Father Cummings, a parish priest from rural Missouri, versus the state of Missouri, was brought before the Supreme Court which ended returning a 5-4 decision in his favor. In 1865, when Missouri was forming their new constitution, a very popular state leader by the name of Drake passed what was called the Iron-Clad Oath. The Iron-Clad Oath was a “severe and...
One of the main forms of entertainment for communities in the post-civil war South was the Circus. There were several different companies that would travel from city to city, stopping for a few days to do a few performances before moving on to their next venue. Mike Lipman's Colossal Combination or Circus Menagerie came to Louisville, Kentucky for four days in the middle of April 1866. According...
On April 26, 1866, the Virginia legislature passed a joint resolution with the state of West Virginia to charter the Covington and Ohio Railroad Company. The much needed line would run from the termination of the Virginia Central, at Covington, to the mouth of the Big Shady river off the Ohio, where it would connect to another rail line from Kentucky. According to the May 4th edition of The Louisville...
In 1866 Virginia, grand larceny included stealing someone's bacon. In Fluvanna County, a black man named William Holly stole the bacon and other property belonging to a white woman named Beverly Haden. Haden pressed charges for the offense, and the accused stood trial for his crimes, and was found guilty. After emancipation, trials involving free blacks in the South were often conducted carefully...
On May 02, 1866, Schuyler Colfax, the speaker of the House of Representatives delivered a speech in response to the President Andrew Johnson’s unsatisfactory message at the opening of the Thirty-ninth Congress. Colfax, serenaded by the public of Indiana, delivered a telling speech bathed in assurance of American “security under the protection of equal laws,” a tribute to “our noble President,...