Browse Collections (59 total)

Juneteenth

Commemorates the day Union Army General Gordon Granger delivered General Order No. 3 - decreeing enslaved people free - to the citizens of…

Forty Acres and a Mule

An unrealized promise included in Union General William Tecumseh Sherman’s Special Field Order No. 15 (January 16, 1865) that allotted land and…

Frederick Douglass

A Maryland born enslaved man who escaped slavery and became a public orator and writer known for his prominent role in the anti-slavery…

Abraham Lincoln's Reconstruction Plan & the Wade Davis Bill

Highlights of Lincoln's plan to rebuild the American South and unify the nation after the Civil War.


Andrew Johnson's Reconstruction Plan

Highlights of Johnson's plan for rebuilding the American South and unifying the nation after the Civil War.


Charlotte Forten Grimke

A free-born Pennsylvania abolitionist, writer, storyteller, poet and teacher. Recruited to teach newly freed people in the Port Royal Experiment in…

Robert Smalls

A formerly enslaved South Carolina man, Union Army officer, Congressman (R-SC) and businessman. Known for commandeering a Confederate gunboat during…

Freedmen's Bureau

A federal agency that was created to provide aid to displaced Southerners, including newly freed people, during and after the Civil War.


William Beverly Nash

A formerly enslaved Virginia barber and show shine man who became a South Carolina Senator (R-SC) during Reconstruction.


Elizabeth Ware Pearson

A Massachusetts-born, White abolitionist writer and educator who served as a teacher to newly freed people during the Port Royal Experiment in…

The Rollin Sisters

Free born wealthy sisters from Charleston, South Carolina who became abolitionists, writers, teachers, doctors, suffragettes and organizers in the…

The Mather School

A Reconstruction Era boarding school for newly freed girls in Beaufort, South Carolina.

William James Whipper

A free born Pennsylvania businessman, abolitionist and civil rights attorney who was married to Frances Anne Rollin (Black suffragette,…

Wade Hampton III

A White Confederate general and South Carolina Governor and Senator (D-SC) during Reconstruction. Opponent of Reconstruction.


David Hunter

A White, controversial, New York-born Union Army General known for issuing an unauthorized emancipation declaration for all enslaved people in the…

Samuel Ward

Born enslaved in Maryland, his family escaped to New Jersey/New York in the early 1800s. Later became a minister, newspaper editor, author, and…