After years of debate, the Confederate Congress agreed to use African American troops on March 13th, 1865. This had been a highly controversial issue and many continued to disagree with the black involvement. Black soldiers were seen as inferior in ability, and Confederate generals and soldiers did not want to fight along side them, and they didn't trust them. However, the law was passed and signed...
The process of Reconstruction played out differently for each Southern state. In Virginia, the process began smoothly but became more complicated in 1867, after the meeting of the Virginia Constitutional Convention.
Representatives from every county wanted to be a part of the re-drafting of the constitution. In Nelson County, W.C. Carrington announced his candidacy in a letter addressed...
Citizens of Richmond put together a proposal for constructing a railroad that connected Richmond, Virginia to Raleigh, North Carolina. In this proposal they laid out future profits that could be reaped if someone would finance the project. Richmond citizens were hoping to build this line to increase the inflow of crops and merchandise to both cities. They pointed out that one of the favored crops...
Virginia surprisingly had a large number of Union supporters within its borders. During the Virginia Convention, members debated the secession issue with much passion. Members of the convention were summoned to meet with President Lincoln in Washington, D.C. to discuss the matter further, which happened to be right after the bombardment of Fort Sumter. After Lincoln made a call for troops immediately...
On May 13, 1867, Jefferson Davis walked free from prison on bail from Fort Monroe Virginia, after just three months of legal litigation. His bail cost 10,000. The United States had kept him in prison for two years after the collapse of the Confederacy, when the Union army had captured and imprisoned him on May 10, 1865 for treason. Even at the time of Davis' release people predicted that his trial...
On March 6, 1862, in the House of Representatives of the Confederate Congress a bill was passed to prevent the capture of Confederate property by the Union. Specifically, the bill authorized the commanding generals of the Confederate Army to destroy cotton, tobacco and other agricultural products which may be liable to fall into the hands of the United States. During the hearings, inquiries of...
On March 18, 1862, a message was sent from President Jefferson Davis into a secret session of the Confederate Congress recommending that all prisoners who had been put on parole by the Union be released from the obligation of their parole, so as to bear arms for the Confederacy and fight for independence. The recommendation was urged in response to the North's infamous and reckless breach in good...
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...
Losing the Civil War crushed the South, both physically and psychologically, but the worst blow was yet to come. On June 13, 1866 in Norfolk, Virginia, Jefferson Davis, the former president of the Confederate States of America was indicted for treason. The physician who attended the imprisoned Jefferson Davis, Dr. John J. Craven, told of Davis' time in Fortress Monroe in his book, The Prison Life...
Written after the passage of an impressments law, explained in General Orders No. 69 on August 27, 1864, this circular from the Confederacy's War Department in Richmond decries the lack of subsistence being provided for the war effort. Essentially, General Orders No. 69 held that “every exempt and detailed agriculturists' (i.e. plantation farmers, mainly) was to provide “100 pounds of...