Virginia Vignettes

In late 1751, at the age of 19, George Washington made his only lifetime trip outside of the continental colonies.  He accompanied his older brother Lawrence, who sought relief for his tuberculosis in the climate of Barbados.  The choice of this Caribbean island was not fortuitous.
Barbados was a major British sugar and slave colony and [...]

In settling the Arlington estate of his father-in-law, George Washington Parke Custis, in 1857, Robert E. Lee confronted the political reality of slavery. He disliked the institution—more from its inefficiency than from its moral repugnance—yet defended it throughout his life. Custis, however, had liberated his slaves in a messy will that stipulated they be released [...]

The Ruffner Pamphlet was an economic argument for the gradual emancipation of slaves in western Virginia put forth in 1847 by Henry Ruffner, president of Washington College in Lexington. Ruffner was no William Lloyd Garrison; like the congressman and University of Virginia professor George Tucker, he opposed slavery for practical, not moral, reasons and made [...]

Sapphira is the protagonist of Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940), the last novel by Willa Cather and the Virginia-born writer’s only book set entirely in the state. Based on an incident in Cather’s own family, in which her maternal grandmother helped a slave escape in 1856, the novel details the complicated marriage of Henry [...]

George Tucker was a lawyer, philosopher, economist, historian, novelist, politician, and teacher. Born in Bermuda and cousin to the famed jurist St. George Tucker, Tucker served in the House of Delegates (1815-1816) representing Pittsylvania County and won election to three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives (1819-1825) before, at the invitation of Thomas Jefferson, [...]

Mary Elizabeth Bowser is a mysterious figure for historians. As the story goes, she was a slave belonging to Richmond’s wealthy Van Lew family. Freed through the efforts of the Van Lews’ abolitionist daughter, Elizabeth, she attended the Quaker Negro College in Philadelphia. During the Civil War, Elizabeth Van Lew worked as a Union spy, [...]

Moncure Daniel Conway was a Unitarian minister and abolitionist who was once described as “the most thoroughgoing white male radical produced by the antebellum South.” Born in Stafford County to a slave-owning family related to presidents George Washington and James Madison, Conway turned to abolitionism and Transcendentalism in his early 20s and moved to Boston [...]

Anthony Burns was an escaped slave from Stafford County who became a cause célèbre for the abolitionist movement when he was arrested in Boston in 1854. After stowing away on a ship to gain his freedom, Burns, who was unusual for being able to read and write, worked for a few months in a clothing [...]

Yes. While not recommended, it’s how the ingenious Henry Brown gained his freedom from slavery. To help him escape, Brown sought the help of two men: James Smith, a black freedman, and Samuel Smith, a white shoemaker who, ironically, owned slaves himself. On March 23, 1849, Brown crawled into a tiny wooden box – it [...]

Saul Matthews was a slave from Norfolk County who served the patriot cause in the double capacity of a soldier in the American army and as a spy for the American commanders in the British army during the Revolutionary War. During the time when many slaves of Norfolk and Princess Anne counties followed the [...]