Browse Items (235 total)
Letter Notifying the Governor that Virginia Representatives were Readmitted to Congress, 1870
The American Civil War was fought between 1861 and 1865. The war began after eleven southern states, including Virginia, seceded from the United States in the months after Abraham Lincoln was elected president in November 1860. After four years of…
Edmund Bradford Seeks a Pardon, 1865
The power of the president to pardon those who commit offenses against the United States is enumerated in the Article Two of the U. S. Constitution. A presidential pardon is an executive order granting clemency for a conviction of a crime, with the…
Copy of the Fifteenth Amendment Sent to North Carolina Legislature, 1869
After the Civil War ended and slavery was abolished in 1865, Radical Republicans in Congress became frustrated with the opposition that many white southerners exhibited to extending full rights of citizenship to African Americans. Congress proposed…
Don't Go Back and Backward with Republicans, Broadside, 1936
In 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt won the presidential election, making him the first Democratic president in twelve years. As President, Roosevelt took quick action through his New Deal initiative to provide relief for struggling Americans through a…
Anti-Suffrage Arguments, Danger!, Broadside, circa 1918
Early in the twentieth century, some Virginia women embraced the fight for equal voting rights and organized the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia in 1909. Many women, however, opposed such efforts and a group in Richmond established the Virginia…
Appeal of the Women of Staunton, Broadside, c. 1910
Circulated in Staunton, Virginia, the broadside dates to sometime between 1900 and 1919. In it, the women of Staunton asked the men in their community to vote in favor of prohibition or the legal elimination of alcohol consumption and sale. The…
Voting Qualifications in Virginia, Equal Suffrage League Pamphlet, 1910s
This pamphlet was one of many produced by the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia (ESL) to advocate voting rights for women during the 1910s. About twenty women met in Richmond in 1909 to establish the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia. Many of the…
Yorktown Tea Party, November 7, 1774
In May 1773 the British Parliament passed the Tea Act, granting the British East India Company a monopoly on importing tea. Intended in part to discourage colonists from buying smuggled tea on which they paid no taxes, the act implicitly acknowledged…
State Conference to Complete Organization of Virginia League of Women Voters, Broadside, 1920
The woman suffrage movement coincided with major national reform movements seeking to improve public education, create public health programs, regulate business and industrial practices, and establish standards to ensure safety in food and public…
Richmond Federal Reserve Headquarters on Capitol Square, 1939.
The Federal Reserve System, sponsored by Virginia Senator Carter Glass, was signed into law on December 23, 1913, by President Woodrow Wilson. In 1914, the city of Richmond was selected to be the home to one of 12 central bank locations and was to…