Today U.S. President Andrew Johnson appoints Lewis Parsons (1817-1895), New York native and Alabama lawyer, as provisional governor of Alabama. In the months following Parsons oversees the repeal of the state’s Ordinance of Secession and the abolishment of slavery. He serves as provisional governor until December, eventually returning to law practice. Meanwhile in Caroline, Virginia,…
A Freedmen’s Bureau superintendent of schools for freedom is appointed in Richmond, thus beginning the organization’s educational activities in the former Confederate capital city. The Bureau recruits teachers from the Northern states. Among the organizations supplying teachers are the American Missionary Association, the New York National Freedmen’s Relief Association, the New England Freedmen’s Aid Society,…
It is two-and-one-half years after U.S. President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, and two months after the war came to an effective end. And on this day, in the far reaches of the old Confederacy, Union Major General Gordon Granger arrives in Galveston, Texas bearing startling news for black persons living in Texas: you…