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The article focuses on the prevalence of dueling culture in Edgar Allan Poe's Richmond, exploring how insults often led to deadly feuds, and how the practice persisted despite being illegal. Topics include the historical context of dueling in the South, its influence on Poe's works, and instances of duels involving prominent figures in Richmond, providing insights into the societal norms and conflicts of the time.

Evangelical Protestantism helped frame the thinking of many Populist Party members in Virginia, providing them with a prophetic voice that criticized the political and economic status quo, while also furnishing a traditional language that privileged rural custom and community. Rowland Berthoff once characterized American Populism as a "mixture of static peasant-Puritan-republican nostalgia and dynamic secular-millennial progressivism." This article contends that Virginia Populists may best exemplify that peculiar hybrid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1860, with the Civil War looming, David and Elizabeth Frazier (a free Black couple), petitioned for a legal exemption to an 1806 statute demanding that any newly-freed African Americans emigrate from the Commonwealth within a year of their emancipation. Their petition capped a decade-long struggle to gain their freedom and keep their family intact, during which the Fraziers campaigned on fronts spanning from the courtroom to the slave market. Through a microhistory of the Fraziers' battle for the right to remain in the Commonwealth, this essay explores the ways in which a slave state used emigration policies to safeguard the institution of slavery. It also reveals the ferocity with which Black Virginians defended their families and communities, and, by examining the Fraziers' twin deployment of the law and of relationships built through a decade of work amid the horrors of the domestic slave trade, reveals how free people of color seized the scarce options available to them. Between the law of white supremacy and the maw of slave capitalism, the Fraziers carved out a modicum of liberty for themselves and their children, escaping forced migration in their bondage and forced emigration in their freedom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A case study is presented that examines the significance of the environment and the Rapidan River on the contending generals and personnel of the Army of the Potomac, led by general George G. Meade, and the Army of Northern Virginia, led by general Robert E. Lee, in the U.S. Civil War battle known as the Mine Run Campaign in Virginia between November 26, 1863, and December 2, 1863. The author attempts to demonstrate how the Mine Run campaign was used as a model for the Wilderness campaign of May 1864.

Using the 1832 political debates in Virginia following the 1831 Nat Turner Rebellion as a starting point, the article explores the public opinions regarding the work "Notes on the State of Virginia," written by Founding Father Thomas Jefferson. It considers both the justification of slavery and the antislavery movements, political comments made by Jefferson's nephew Thomas Jefferson Randolph, and Jefferson's ideals regarding the emancipation of slaves.

The article focuses on homicides of white Virginians during the Antebellum period and the enslaved women who were held responsible for those deaths. The author explores murder and attempted murder as a form of resistance by enslaved women and examines the leniency shown in their sentencing by Virginia courts.

The article focuses on the Chiswell lead mines in Virginia during and after the American Revolution. The author explores how the mines were utilized as prisons for public works, examines the role of the Virginia Committee of Safety and Provincial Conventions in capturing runaway slaves and sending them to do hard labor, and discusses the role of enslaved people in state formation.

This article employs previously underutilized tax records to quantify the level of economic distress in Virginia in the 1780s. Historians have offered sharply contrasting interpretations. While some scholars emphasize postwar prosperity, others suggest an economic crisis that may have rivaled the Great Depression. Tax records offer an opportunity to evaluate and reconcile these conflicting narratives. By counting the number of individuals who could not pay their taxes and dividing by the taxable population found in the assessment lists, the insolvency rate produces an indicator comparable to a modern bankruptcy rate. Regional insolvency patterns reveal that historians have tended to generalize from localized phenomena that are unrepresentative of the larger economy. Tax records demonstrate that the critical period was not imagined. Local commodity prices were most important in shaping economic outcomes. Insolvency trends support and contextualize existing interpretations of tax resistance and voting patterns during the ratification debates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information related to manuscript collections, accessioned by the Virginia Historical Society, as of October 2019.

The article offers information related to inattentive Anglicans, that are historiographical overlooked, and highlights the reception gap in Virginia's 18 century churches. Topics discussed include the fundamental deviation between ministerial prescriptive expectation and the lived religion of the laity, concept of a reception gap with omnipresent reality of parochial inattention that highlight the differences between what was preached by ministers and what was lived by parishioners.

The article discusses the brief history of the U.S. Union Army of Virginia during the U.S. Civil War in 1862. It examines the demographic characteristics of the unit, particularly the concentration of German Americans who had participated in European uprisings in 1848. It discusses the influence that the military leadership of U.S. Army of the Potomac general George Brinton McClellan had on the leadership of the Army of Virginia and the role that fugitive slaves played in the Army of Virginia. The article also discusses the political aspects of the war in the U.S. government, particularly the role of U.S. secretary of the treasury Salmon Portland Chase and his cultivation of U.S. Military Academy graduates in the U.S. Army.

An essay is presented on political controversies over history textbooks chosen for classroom use in Virginia. Particular focus is given to unsubstantiated claims in textbooks such as "Our Virginia: Past and Present" by Joy Masoff and "Virginia: History, Government, Geography" by Francis Butler Simkins regarding the nature of slavery in Virginia and African American participation in the U.S. Civil War. Details on the state's textbook review process are also presented.

The article explores Confederate conscription policies and substitution during the U.S. Civil War. The author reflects on enrolling books, census data, and other historical evidence from Rockingham County, Virginia to reveal public attitudes and Confederate loyalties. Topics discussed include class divisions and patriotism in the Confederacy, the role of religion in public reactions to conscription among Mennonites and Dunkers, and draft dodging following the end of the policy of substitution. Other topics include the wealth of principals, ineligibility for military service, and community censure.

The article presents a chronology of the events that led to the establishment of the state of West Virginia between 1861 and 1863. It describes how citizens in western Virginia mobilized in an effort to become an autonomous state following a decision by the Commonwealth of Virginia to secede from the U.S. in 1861, discusses the declaration of independence issued by separatists at the Second Wheeling Convention in the summer of 1861, and explores the role of lawyer Peter Gordon Van Winkle in the West Virginia Constitutional Convention. It also examines several topics which were debated at the West Virginia Constitution Convention including the state name, the electoral process and establishment of voting districts, and taxation for slaveholders.

This article analyzes the relationship between socioeconomic and demographic factors and rates of enlistment in Virginia during the American Civil War. There is a discussion regarding the desire to preserve the social, political and economic status quo of antebellum Virginia, the development of a distinct political ideology, and the presence of counties with very low rates of slaveholding but high rates of enlistment.

The article discusses the concepts of the separation of church and state and disestablishment, and resistance to late-18th century antislavery movements in Virginia, largely led by British Methodist minister Thomas Coke. It also examines the philosophy of political elites in Virginia such as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, and their views on religious establishment, and the religious establishment clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

This article explores the significance of the seventeenth-century Ferrar family’s involvement in Atlantic colonialism, and their interest in compiling natural histories of the various flora and fauna in the Virginia colony, particularly the silkworm. I argue that the Ferrars’ involvement in colonial enterprises, in particular the Virginia Company, was underpinned by a theology which centred upon the idea of recovering man’s original dominion over the earth, bestowed by God upon Adam in Eden, but lost in the Fall. The Ferrars’ commitment to this theology of repairing the post-lapsarian world enables us to integrate our understanding of the family’s colonial interests with their religiosity. There was no disjunction between the worldliness of the family’s commercial and colonial dealings with the Virginia Company, and the ascetic period of retreat at Little Gidding. This article contributes to a broader scholarly effort to understand the development of seventeenth-century Anglicanism in a colonial context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews the exhibition "The Commonwealth and the Great War" at the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

The article discusses how 19th century Virginia slaveholding entrepreneur Harry Heth utilized technological innovation to minimize risk in his coal mining business despite the potential of failure. The article discusses his willingness to utilize novel extraction techniques, focusing on a technique developed by Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, inventor George Hauto.

The article discusses the tactics and motivations of general Benedict Arnold's independent command of British troops during the Revolutionary War in Virginia between January 1781 and June 1781 following his defection from the Continental Army, particularly focusing on his quest to convince Americans to reconcile with the British Empire.

The free press clause in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is considered a unique and important part of our American democracy. While the origins of this right are a key to current legal interpretations, there is much misunderstanding about its genesis. This research uses eighteenth-century personal correspondence, other archival evidence, and published articles to demonstrate new connections between the Lee family of Virginia and the constitutional right to a free press. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Groups within southern society seized on John Jasper’s sermon arguing that the sun moved around the earth in order to reinforce ideas of African American inferiority. Jasper, however, took advantage of these efforts at exploitation. By embodying the stereotype whites sought to promote, Jasper became very popular with white visitors, and tourists to Richmond frequently requested renditions of the sermon. Through preaching his sun sermon on 253 occasions, Jasper was not only able to secure the financial and social independence of his church, but also provided inspiration to African Americans through highlighting that southern white supremacy could be overcome. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We study Virginia's suffrage from the early-17th century until the American Revolution using an analytical narrative and econometric analysis of unique data on franchise restrictions. First, we hold that suffrage changes reflected labour market dynamics. Indeed, Virginia's liberal institutions initially served to attract indentured servants from England who were needed in the labour-intensive tobacco farming but deteriorated once worker demand subsided and planters replaced white workers with slaves. Second, we argue that Virginia's suffrage was also the result of political bargaining influenced by shifting societal coalitions. We show that new politically influential coalitions of freemen and then of small and large slave-holding farmers emerged in the second half of the 17th and early-18th centuries, respectively. These coalitions were instrumental in reversing the earlier democratic institution\s. Our main contribution stems from integrating the labour markets and bargaining/coalitions arguments, thus proving a novel theoretical and empirical explanation for institutional change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the history and significance of four psychiatric asylums in Virginia, referred to as lunatic or insane asylums. It discusses the influence of 18th century Virginia governor Francis Fauquier in proposing the establishment of such asylums, the philosophy of Williamsburg, Virginia, asylum James Galt, and the significance of asylums in treating mental health patients.

This article uses evidence from the English High Court of Admiralty to examine the problem of mutiny and indiscipline among seafarers in the transatlantic trades during the 1680s and 1690s. It focuses on a venture of 1688, which is of particular interest not only for the light it sheds on maritime conditions, but also because it involved Daniel Defoe, a young and ambitious trader who was trying to establish a commercial opening in Chesapeake Bay. The article contextualizes this previously unknown venture, relating it to the development of the tobacco trade and its dependence on an expanding market and widening patterns of consumption. The failure of the voyage, in association with other business problems, had serious consequences for Defoe, leading to bankruptcy in 1692 and his withdrawal from direct involvement in overseas trade. Against a broader background of other voyages, the legal testimony heard by the court draws attention to the wider problem of mutinous conduct at sea. These cases were provoked by a range of grievances including pay, labour conditions and discipline. Repeatedly they raise questions about the conduct of masters at sea, including their rights and responsibilities. At the same time, the article argues that the upsurge in mutiny and indiscipline at sea, while revealing the inexorable tension between pay and productivity, also exposed deeper issues regarding seafaring custom and contract. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Northern Democrats desired to restore the American Union to the status quo antebellum, while Republicans sought to transform the United States, and especially the slave-owning southern states, into a free labour, industrialized nation. So runs the traditional tale. This article argues that a new twist on the story of sectional politics may be found if one adds the religious dimension of millenarian belief to the well-studied ideological flashpoints between Democratic and Republican combatants as they clashed in Virginia in the year leading up to the issuance of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews history websites including "Slave Revolt in Jamaica, 1760-1761: A Cartographic Narrative," created by Vincent Brown, available at http://revolt.axismaps.com/project.html, "Two Plantations: Enslaved Families in Virginia and Jamaica." available at: http://www.twoplantations.com/, and "Digital Harlem: Everyday Life, 1915-1930" available at digitalharlem.org.

Archaeologists studying the domestic landscapes that took shape in the Chesapeake region from the 1670s to 1730 typically conclude that these early settlements were the product of frontier environments, where functional utility dominated and aesthetic design had little value for all but the very wealthiest members of society. Reevaluation of two early Virginia plantations, Newman's Neck and the Clifts, suggests that the relationships between colonists and their domestic places bears further examination, and that, among lesser gentry, intentional design in early colonial landscapes is, in fact, evident. Analysis of this design can shed light on the changing dynamics of power relations within the family, the social relations of labor, and the ways that colonists reinterpreted changing aesthetics within the Atlantic World. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]