Today the complicated dynamics of African slavery are on vivid display when, three days prior to U.S. President Abraham Lincoln‘s much-anticipated Emancipation Proclamation, Confederate General Robert E. Lee, now devoted to defending human bondage in the Confederacy, is forced by law to free some 200 slaves previously-owned by his wife’s (Mary Anna Custis) father, George…
For the past month, Union Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac, en route to the Confederate capital of Virginia, has besieged Yorktown, Virginia. McClellan’s drive to Richmond, known as the Peninsula campaign (having begun March 17), has not proceeded as planned. Caution on the part of McClellan, the logistics of moving a…
Jefferson Davis is again inaugurated as the president of the Confederacy. This inauguration, held in the Confederate capital of Richmond, is the first in the fully-formed Confederate States of America. Upon his inauguration, Davis is installed as president for six years. In the ceremony, the Confederate president uses a Bible given to him by a…