Author: Patricia Miller

editor of Encyclopedia Virginia
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The Election of 1840 and the Long Arc of Women’s Political Participation

Author: Patricia MillerPublished:

Our newest entry is a biography of Virginia-born William Henry Harrison, the ninth president of the United States. One might think there isn’t much to say about Harrison, given that he still holds the distinction of being the shortest-serving U.S. president, dying in office thirty-one days after his inauguration. 

But Harrison’s military career covered the pivotal years of the early Republic when Native Americans were pushed out of much of the Northwest Territory, opening present-day Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin to white settlement, through to the War of 1812, which cemented American independence while opening still more territory to white pioneers. Read more about: The Election of 1840 and the Long Arc of Women’s Political Participation

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The Great Dismal Swamp: A Mythical Place of Enslaved Resistance and Rebellion

Author: Patricia MillerPublished:

The Great Dismal Swamp straddles many lines—the border between Virginia and North Carolina, the boundary between land and water, and the space between past and present. It exists today as one of the most ecologically sensitive and important areas on the East Coast, a natural carbon sink that plays a critical role in carbon sequestration, and as a repository of another type, holding the stories of the enslaved people who sought refuge in the swamp and claimed it as a place of resistance to slavery. Read more about: The Great Dismal Swamp: A Mythical Place of Enslaved Resistance and Rebellion

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Coming Soon: By the People

Author: Patricia MillerPublished:

Encyclopedia Virginia is pleased to announce that we are the recipients of a $350,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for a three-year project to tell the story of the American Revolution in Virginia. The project is funded in part by the NEH’s special initiative, A More Perfect Union, which is designed to demonstrate and enhance the critical role the humanities play in our nation, while also supporting projects that will help Americans commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026. Read more about: Coming Soon: By the People

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Virginia Luxuries and Moral Impossibilities

Author: Patricia MillerPublished:

Few things in the entirety of the ugly history of slavery in the United States were more reliably memory-holed than the widespread, persistent sexual exploitation of enslaved people. The painting entitled “Virginian Luxuries” that leads our new entry on the Sexual Exploitation of the Enslaved was painted around 1825 in New England, so the predacious nature of many male enslavers clearly was well understood by many at the time.  Read more about: Virginia Luxuries and Moral Impossibilities

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Making Invisible Women Visible

Author: Patricia MillerPublished:

Encyclopedia Virginia in conjunction with our partners at The Library of Virginia’s Dictionary of Virginia Biography is pleased to publish a biography of Janie Aurora Porter Barrett, a pathbreaking educator and social reformer who exemplifies Black women’s contributions to the Commonwealth in the Progressive Era. And we’re equally thrilled that Barrett’s biography was contributed by the legendary historian Anne Firor Scott before she passed away in 2019.  Read more about: Making Invisible Women Visible

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The Surprising Legal Career of Jane Webb

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Jane Webb was a woman of mixed race—her mother was a white indentured servant and her father was an enslaved Black man—who grew up in Northampton County on the Eastern Shore of Virginia in the late 1600s. Because her mother was free and the General Assembly had decreed that the status of the child followed that of the mother, Webb was a free woman. Read more about: The Surprising Legal Career of Jane Webb

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The Cotton Gin of the Midwest

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Many are familiar with the legacy of the cotton gin, the first machine to separate cotton seeds from cotton fiber, patented by Ely Whitney in 1794. The cotton gin made the widespread cultivation of short-staple cotton profitable just as the removal of Indians from vast swaths of the southeast opened up new farming territory for white settlers and the establishment of textile factories in New England created an insatiable demand for cotton. Read more about: The Cotton Gin of the Midwest

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The Missed Opportunity of the Emancipation Monument

Author: Patricia MillerPublished:

Our new entry on Archer Alexander, the formerly enslaved man who served as the model for the Emancipation Monument dedicated on the eleventh anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, touches on the controversy the monument generated, both when it was dedicated in 1876 and more recently when a replica of the monument was removed from downtown Boston.  Read more about: The Missed Opportunity of the Emancipation Monument

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Liberty is Sweet: A Conversation with Woody Holton

Author: Patricia MillerPublished:

Encyclopedia Virginia is thrilled to welcome Woody Holton for a virtual conversation about his much-anticipated new book Liberty is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution on Friday, October 29, at 12 PM.

In this sweeping reassessment of the American Revolution, Holton shows how the founders were influenced by overlooked Americans—women, Native Americans, African Americans, and religious dissenters. Read more about: Liberty is Sweet: A Conversation with Woody Holton

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Emancipation and Freedom Monument

Author: Patricia MillerPublished:

On September 22, the Virginia Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Commission unveiled the latest addition to Virginia’s commemorative landscape: the Emancipation and Freedom Monument on Brown’s Island in Richmond.

The monument, which features two bronze statues representing a man and a woman and an infant newly freed from slavery, is dedicated to the contributions of African American Virginians in the centuries-long fight for emancipation and freedom. Read more about: Emancipation and Freedom Monument

PRIMARY DOCUMENT

“Third report of a committee of the representatives of New York Yearly Meeting of Friends: upon the condition and wants of the colored refugees.” (May 1864)

In this report, dated May 1864, the Committee on Colored Refugees, who were representatives of the New York Yearly Meeting of Friends, gives its assessment of the needs of the formerly enslaved people escaping behind Union lines and how Quaker charity efforts were meeting them in contraband camps across Virginia, including Alexandria. One of their agents, Harriet Jacobs, wrote her own letter documenting what she saw in Alexandria and Washington, D.C. For Quakers, the abolition of slavery was a moral and religious imperative.

PRIMARY DOCUMENT

Letter from Sarah Stewart to Dolley Payne Todd Madison (July 5, 1844)

In this letter, dated July 5, 1884, Sarah Stewart, an enslaved domestic at Montpelier, writes to her enslaver, Dolley Madison, reporting that the Orange County sheriff had seized many of the people enslaved by the Madisons to pay their debts. Stewart implores Madison to ask her neighbors to purchase those enslaved people who had been seized to prevent their being permanently separated from their families by slave traders taking part in the domestic slave trade. Ultimately, the enslaved community at Montpelier was largely broken up because of Madison’s financial difficulty.

PRIMARY DOCUMENT

“Downing and the Fine Collector.” (December 21, 1855)

This article, published in the abolitionist newspaper the Liberator on December 21, 1855, gives an account of the New York state militia mistaking Thomas Downing for a white man of the same name who was trying to escape militia duty, which was required of male citizens between the ages of 18 and 45. At this time, Downing was famous across New York City for his restaurant, community organizing, and activism. The story originally appeared in the New York Evening Post.

 

 

PRIMARY DOCUMENT

Governor’s ‘Crucial Decision’ Program

This is a published version of the speech that Governor Mills Edwin Godwin Jr. gave in January 1968 proposing that the General Assembly revise the state’s constitution and submit a new document to the voters for ratification. Rather than summoning a constitutional convention, he argued that the legislators should authorize him to appoint a Commission on Constitutional Revision, who would revise the constitution. In November 1970, voters ratified the new constitution.

PRIMARY DOCUMENT

“Suit Seeks End of Virginia Poll Tax for Voting” (December 7, 1963)

In this article, published December 7, 1963, in the Norfolk Journal and Guide, Evelyn Butts states her reasons for filing suit against Governor Albertis S. Harrison Jr. and three Norfolk city employees: the unconstitutionality of the poll tax. Her case was combined with another case under the name Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections, and on March 24, 1966, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the poll tax was unconstitutional. In 1962, as Congress debated the Twenty-Fourth Amendment banning poll taxes in federal elections, Governor Harrison reaffirmed his support for the poll tax in Virginia’s state and local elections.

PRIMARY DOCUMENT

Surnames, by Counties and Cities, of Mixed Negroid Virginia Families Striving to Pass as “Indian” or White

Walter Plecker, Virginia’s registrar of vital statistics, compiled this list of the surnames of families he believed were Black and misidentifying themselves as white or Indian to distribute to public health personnel. This was part of Plecker and the state’s attempts to eliminate documentary records of Virginia Indians’ existence. These actions are known as the Paper Genocide and affected tribal communities’ efforts for federal recognition into the twenty-first century.

ENTRY

The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in Virginia

Between 1791 and 1804, the Haitian Revolution transformed Saint-Domingue from a slaveholding French colony into the free Black nation of Haiti. The Haitian Revolution sent shockwaves across the world and had a profound impact on people and politics in Virginia. Thousands of people, free and enslaved, arrived in Virginia from revolutionary Saint-Domingue. For free and enslaved Black Virginians, the revolution served as a model of a revolution that was predicated on Black liberation. Most white Virginians viewed the Haitian Revolution with horror, sympathizing with French enslavers and expressing fear that the revolution might inspire similar uprisings in Virginia. Over the next decade, conspiracies including the Secret Keeper Plot and Gabriel’s Conspiracy were alleged to have either been inspired by the Haitian Revolution or to have had direct French and Haitian involvement. These fears influenced not only white Virginian attitudes toward people from revolutionary Saint-Domingue but also affected national and foreign policy. Decades after the revolution, its memory continued to shape how Virginians understood slave revolt and abolition.

ENTRY

Education in Virginia in the Revolutionary Era

The American Revolution was an important but inconclusive moment in American educational history. Revolutionary republicanism provided an initial impulse for tax-supported, widespread public education, including in Virginia, where Thomas Jefferson proposed a plan for public education. Countervailing ideological trends, and a limited embrace of universal human equality, kept republican ideas about education from coming to fruition in the early republic, especially in the South. Still, gains were made toward universal public education. New England made primary education accessible to most children, and private academies increasingly served the needs of middling students, including girls and young women. In the North, institutions such as the New York African Free School expanded educational opportunities for free African Americans, while in Virginia, education for Black people was slowly criminalized. Jefferson realized his plan to create a free institution of higher education in the University of Virginia, but a system of widespread public education would have to wait until after the American Civil War (1861–1865).

ENTRY

The Continental Navy in Virginia during the American Revolution

At the outset of the American Revolution (1775–1783), the thirteen colonies faced Great Britain without an army or a navy. While a Continental Army was soon created, the question of building and outfitting a navy plagued the Continental Congress. Finally, a Continental fleet was given the green light and American naval ships slowly took to the seas. During the course of the war, the Continental Navy outfitted about sixty-five vessels. This small fighting force faced the greatest sea power of the eighteenth century, in addition to the challenges of weather, scarcity of supplies, dearth of manpower, and enemy privateers. Engagements between the Continental Navy and His Majesty’s Royal Navy along the shores and waters of Virginia were few. Yet the Continental Navy fought the enemy in the waters of Europe and the Caribbean, harassing the British and drawing their attention away from colonial ports. The size of the American fleet never came close to the might of the Royal Navy, however, and the hopes held at the time of its creation faded as the war raged on. By the time the final shots of the Revolution rang out, the Continental Navy was on its last legs, numbering only five ships, and would soon disappear completely.

ENTRY

Robert Mush (1758–1837)

Robert Mush (sometimes Mursh) was a member of the Pamunkey Indian Tribe who fought as a Patriot in the Revolutionary War (1775–1783). Mush was born around 1758 and attended the Brafferton Indian School at the College of William and Mary beginning in 1769. He enlisted in the Continental Army in 1776 and fought at the Battle of Brandywine (September 11, 1777) and the Battle of Germantown (October 4, 1777). In 1778, he marched south to Charleston, South Carolina, for the siege of that city, where he was captured by the British and spent time as a prisoner of war before being exchanged. He remained in the army and served under General Anthony Wayne in Georgia until the war ended in 1783. Mush subsequently returned to the Pamunkey Indian Reservation in King William County, where he married a woman named Elizabeth and served as a tribal leader. Mush became involved with the Baptist Church, and by 1800 he had moved his family to South Carolina, where he served as a minister among the Catawba Indian Tribe and later at the Flint Hill Baptist Church until his death on December 7, 1837. Following his death, Elizabeth Mush petitioned to receive the pension afforded to the widows of Revolutionary War veterans, and her claim file provides a rare glimpse into the life of an Indigenous Revolutionary War veteran.

ENTRY

William Fitzhugh of Chatham (1741–1809)

William Fitzhugh of Chatham was a wealthy Virginia planter, politician, and civic leader, descended from one of the colony’s earliest and most prominent families. He was born on September 4, 1741, in King George County, the only son of Henry Fitzhugh and Lucy Carter Fitzhugh, daughter of Robert “King” Carter. His father died when he was an infant, and a childhood accident left him blind in one eye. Educated at home under tutors, Fitzhugh inherited vast estates—including Eagle’s Nest, Somerset, and extensive lands in Fairfax County—making him one of the richest men in Virginia. In 1763 he married Ann Randolph, a cousin of Thomas Jefferson. The couple later built the grand Georgian mansion Chatham, overlooking Fredericksburg, which became famous for its hospitality. More than 100 enslaved people worked the plantation, cultivating crops and practicing skilled trades. Fitzhugh was also a noted horse breeder and racer, corresponding with both Jefferson and George Washington about horses. A supporter of the Patriot cause, Fitzhugh represented King George County in the House of Burgesses (1772–75), attended the Virginia Conventions of 1775 and 1776, and held numerous posts during and after the Revolution—including delegate to the Continental Congress (1779), member of the House of Delegates (1776–1777, 1780–1781, 1787–1788), and state senator (1780–85). After the war, Fitzhugh continued in public life, serving as a presidential elector in 1789. The financial burden of entertaining guests at Chatham eventually led him to relocate to Fairfax County and Alexandria. In 1805, an uprising by enslaved men at Chatham ended violently, reflecting widespread white fears following Gabriel’s Rebellion. Fitzhugh sold Chatham the following year. During his later years, Fitzhugh remained active in civic affairs. Fitzhugh died on December 19, 1809, and was buried at Ravensworth.

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