Browse Items (27 total)

Virginia's secession ordinance was created in April of 1861, after months of meeting as the Virginia Session. The Session was called on January 7, 1861, and met from February to May of that year. Many counties in the western part of the state felt…

David Walker was one of the most influential black voices of the antebellum era. Little is known about his early life. The son of a slave father and a free black mother, Walker was born in Wilmington, North Carolina, perhaps in 1796 or 1797. In…

Melton A. McLaurin, professor emeritus of history at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, recounted the story of Celia, an enslaved woman, and her trial for the murder of her sexually abusive master. McLaurin placed Celia's trial in the…

This lithograph by Currier & Ives, an American printmaking firm based in New York, satirized President Zachary Taylor's attempts to balance southern and northern interests in 1850 as they related to slavery in the territories gained in the Mexican…

Alexander H. Stephens (1812-1883), although originally opposed to secession, was elected vice-president of the Confederacy. After the war, he returned to political service in Georgia and in the House of Representatives. He served as governor of…

After the election of Republican Abraham Lincoln to the presidency on a sectional vote, South Carolina rejected cooperation with other slave states and seceded on December 20, 1860. In the following document, South Carolina set forth the state’s…

In the first image of the cartoon, a slave who has been given a pike by John Brown is depicted using the weapon as a potato-farming tool, rather than a weapon to fight with the revolt group as intended. In the bottom image, a southern plantation…

Born into slavery, Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897) thwarted repeated sexual advancements made by her master for years and then ran away to the North. She later published an account of her life (under the pseudonym Linda Brent) in her autobiography,…