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First Military District – Encyclopedia Virginia encyclopediavirginia.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from encyclopediavirginia.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Thousands of enslaved people in effect freed themselves during the Civil War by escaping into areas where the Union army permitted them to live as if free. That began soon after the start of the war, when people living near Hampton sought refuge in the army camp at Fort Monroe. As more and more men, women, and children entered the camps, the army eventually adopted policies that protected the liberty of people who escaped from slavery. Other sites in Virginia became safe places for people seeking freedom, including the grounds of Robert E. Lee‘s mansion, Arlington, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. It is likely that more men than women or children found or made opportunities to free themselves during the war. Tabulations of the numbers of enslaved men subject to being forced to labor for the Confederacy suggest that a significant number of them escaped or failed to return home and that they gained their freedom even as Confederate authorities relied on ....
The sectional issues that culminated in the dismemberment of Virginia emerged during the revolutionary period. The Virginia Constitution of 1776 hampered western political participation by placing property-holding qualifications on voters and officeholders and allowing for disproportionate eastern political representation. Confronted with a tax code that benefited slaveholders and large landowners and eastern reluctance to dedicate taxes for western internal improvements, western Virginians clamored for reform. Following two reform conventions held in Staunton (in 1816 and 1825), western political leaders forced the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1829–1830 aimed at securing political concessions. Despite protestations from the outnumbered western delegates, the resulting constitution failed to include the expansion of the electorate or western legislative apportionment. Over the next twenty years, western political leaders secured concessions from easterners, including n ....