Browse Items (7 total)

Your Excellency,

I have the honor to submit the petition covering application for pardon, and restoration to the rights of citizenship under your Amnesty Proclamation of May 29th, 1860.

Previous to the late rebellion, I was a man of no…

This document presents the census record for Thomas Day, a free black man, taken during 1850 in Caswell County. The census listed not only how many free people lived within a certain area, but it also showed how many slaves each person owned. Thomas…

I WAS born a slave; but I never knew it till six years of happy childhood had passed away. My father was a carpenter, and considered so intelligent and skilful in his trade, that, when buildings out of the common line were to be erected, he was sent…

Beaufort NC Oct 8th /62
Prompted by the necessity of the case, I have to make on you a requisition quite unpleasant- For the last two months I have supported my Family by the hire of two carpenters. They a few days ago refused to be hired & have…

THERE was a planter in the country, not far from us, whom I will call Mr. Litch. He was an ill-bred, uneducated man, but very wealthy. He had six hundred slaves, many of whom he did not know by sight. His extensive plantation was managed by well-paid…

“Effects of the Proclamation, Freed Negroes Coming Into Our Lines at New Bern, North Carolina,” was an illustration that appeared in Harper’s Weekly on February 21, 1863. In the spring of 1862, General Ambrose Burnside led an…

The sketch on page 164 represents a party of the
Union officers who lately escaped from Libey prison,
under the guidance and protection of negroes living
in the environs of Richmond. They are conducted
by one of these poor slaves to his cabin…