Katherine Stone’s family owned a 1,200-acre Louisiana plantation called Brokenburn and more than 150 slaves. The Louisiana State Universities Library.
Catherine Ann Devereux Edmondston and her husband owned two plantations in northeastern North Carolina. Courtesy of the North Carolina Office of Archives and History, Raleigh, NC.
Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas and her husband, Jefferson Thomas, owned a plantation in Georgia and ninety slaves. Permission from Ed Jackson.
Mary Boykin Chesnut of South Carolina in 1856. The Chesnut family owned almost 450 slaves in 1860.
Abraham Lincoln in 1860.
Robert Toombs of Georgia owned more than two thousand acres and 176 slaves. He became the Confederacy’s first secretary of state. The Library of Congress.
Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, owned a 1,400-acre Mississippi cotton plantation named Brierfield. The Library of Congress.
Robert E. Lee of Virginia. He and his wife, Mary Anna Custis Lee, owned sixty slaves and the 1,100-acre Arlington plantation. The Library of Congress.
An advertisement offering slaves for sale. The Library of Congress.
A map based on the 1860 census showing the location of slaves by county. The darkest shadings represent the heaviest concentrations of enslaved people. The census bureau produced copies of this map in 1861 and sold them to raise money for sick and wounded Union soldiers. The Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division.
A planter and his family on the South Carolina sea islands attend a sanctioned prayer meeting for their slaves. From The Illustrated London News, courtesy of the American Social History Project, CUNY.
Impressed slaves working on fortifications at Savannah, Georgia, 1863. From The Illustrated London News, courtesy of the American Social History Project, CUNY.
A mass meeting in New York City calls for suppressing secession, April 20, 1861. The Library of Congress.
Born a slave, Frederick Douglass escaped to the North and became a leading abolitionist. Collections of the New-York Historical Society.
Zebulon Vance in 1862. Initially opposed to secession, as North Carolina governor Vance supported the Confederate cause while opposing Jefferson Davis’s policies in the name of state rights and white families of little property. Courtesy of the North Carolina Office of Archives and History, Raleigh, NC.
William G. Brownlow, a newspaper editor in eastern Tennessee who steadfastly opposed secession. The Library of Congress.
Harper’s Weekly depicted unionists in eastern Tennessee meeting secretly to plan an uprising. The Library of Congress.
Virginia slaves seek refuge at Union-held Fort Monroe in the spring of 1861. From Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, courtesy of the American Social History Project, CUNY.
“Contrabands” crossing the Rappahannock River to reach Union lines in 1862. The Library of Congress.
Lincoln reads the Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet in 1862. The Library of Congress.
A Union army recruiting poster aimed at black men. The Library Company of Philadelphia.
Sgt. J. L. Balldwin of the Fifty-sixth U.S. Colored Infantry with a book in his hand. The Chicago History Museum (ICHi-22172).
Like many other black women, this unidentified “washerwoman” worked for the Union army in Virginia. Photographic History Collection, Division of Information Technology and Communications, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.
At age fourteen or fifteen, the former slave Susie King Taylor organized and taught in a school in the Union-occupied Georgia sea islands for other freedpeople.
Black Union troops in General Edward A. Wild’s command freeing slaves in North Carolina in 1863. From Harper’s Weekly.
Sketch of a Confederate cavalry officer impressing slave laborers from a South Carolina plantation. Collections of the New-York Historical Society.
This Harper’s Weekly engraving depicts Unionists welcoming General Burnside’s troops to Knoxville, in eastern Tennessee, September 1863. The Library of Congress.
Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper carried this depiction of the April 1863 riot in Richmond that demanded bread at lower prices. The Library of Congress.
North Carolina “peace” editor William Woods Holden. Courtesy of the North Carolina Office of Archives and History, Raleigh, NC.
Newton Knight, leader of anti-Confederate guerrilla forces in Jones County, Mississippi. Courtesy Victoria Bynum.
In April 1864 at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, Confederate soldiers led by General Nathan B. Forrest slaughtered surrendering Union soldiers, white and especially black. From Harper’s Weekly.
Members of the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts regiment singing John Brown’s song as they enter Charleston, February 12, 1865. From Harpers Weekly, courtesy of the American Social History Project, CUNY.
Members of Company E of the Fourth Regiment, United States Colored Troops (USCT), 1865. That regiment took part in the campaign at Richmond and Petersburg and the capture of Wilmington, North Carolina. The Library of Congress.
The fall of Richmond. Currier & Ives; The Library of Congress.
This engraving of a black Union soldier’s wedding in Vicksburg, 1866, appeared in Harper’s Weekly. Courtesy of the American Social History Project, CUNY.
Charleston’s “Zion” School for Colored Children at the end of 1865. From Harper’s Weekly, courtesy of the American Social History Project, CUNY.
Freedpeople discussing politics after the war. From Harper’s Weekly, courtesy of the American Social History Project, CUNY.