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Time Period Chapter
Racial Inequality
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Confederate defeat threatened to change white southern identity. Suddenly African Americans were free to determine the...
Time Period Chapter
Reconstruction
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During the decade following the Civil War, former Confederate states were required to “reconstruct” their state...
Time Period Chapter
Slavery
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Virginia’s 550,000 slaves constituted one third of the state’s population in 1860.
Time Period Chapter
The Battlefront in Virginia
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Home to the Confederate capital, Virginia became a battleground.
Exhibition
The Commonwealth and the Great War
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This exhibition explored the role Virginians played in World War I and highlighted the stories of individual Virginians...
Exhibition
The League of Wives
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Featuring artifacts, photographs, and oral histories, this exhibition illustrated the dramatic story of how the spouses...
Article Set - Intro
The Portent: John Brown's Raid in American Memory
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John Brown remains one of the most controversial figures in our history. To destroy the institution of slavery, he firmly believed there was only one possible course of action. He saw what he thought was the ultimate wrong and tried in the only way he could imagine to right it. Which John Brown should we remember? The crusader for abolition or the bloodthirsty terrorist? Is it possible to list him among the great pantheon of American heroes, or do we still recoil from the image of his attack on an American military installation, an action that can be described by no term other than treason?
Time Period Chapter
The Revolutionary Era in Virginia
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Virginia—the largest and most populous colony—played a major role in winning independence and determining the values and...
Time Period Chapter
The Struggle for Equality
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The American concept that all people are equal and all have unalienable rights was introduced by Virginians George Mason...
Exhibition
Violins of Hope
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Violins of Hope features a selection of seven violins from a collection of more than sixty that survived the Holocaust...
Time Period Chapter
Virginia and the Planter Class
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Governor William Berkeley set out to imitate the society of inequality of wealth and education that he knew in England.
Time Period Chapter
Virginia and Women’s Suffrage
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Despite the socio-political changes that occurred during Reconstruction, women at the dawn of the twentieth century...
Article Set - Intro
Virginia's Colonial Dynasties
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In the colonial period, portraiture proved to be a particularly useful tool in establishing and preserving family status. This exhibit presents twenty-four portraits from the Virginia Historical Society's collection. Early Virginia portraits reveal much about the families that commissioned them, as well as how these Virginians valued how they were perceived by others.
Time Period Chapter
War on the Home Front
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For some, the war brought deprivation, horror, and loss right to their very doorsteps.