Among the Founding Fathers, two in particular, Jefferson and Madison, played a pivotal role in passage of the landmark Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom in 1786. This act served as an important model for the new Constitution that would be adopted by the states in 1789.
The issues of the revolution were many and varied. They included erosion of self-government and increased taxes which royal authority needed in order to pay for the expenses of the recently concluded French and Indian War, called the Seven Years War in Europe, which lasted from 1756 to 1763.
The causes which made possible the assertion of American National Independence must be sought, not merely in the oppressive legislation which directly provoked the colonists into revolt, but, back of that, in the political institutions they had evolved for themselves.
Slavery was a part of everyday life in Tennessee during this time. About one in four of all the people living in Tennessee in 1860 were slaves. Although slavery existed throughout the state, most slaves lived in Middle and West Tennessee. The majority of African Americans who lived in the state were slaves. Twenty-five percent of…
The History of the Life of Rev. Wm. Mack Lee states that its author, William Mack Lee (1835-1932), was a body servant and cook for General Robert E. Lee during the Civil War and until the general’s death in 1870. However, this claim, like many others in W. M. Lee’s brief 1918 autobiography, has been disputed by…
The Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives (KDLA), in Frankfort, Kentucky, houses the largest collection of papers concerning Kentucky’s Civil War-era governors. Comprising a large portion of this collection are “Official correspondence and petitions related to appeals for pardons, remissions, and respites.” Each appeal for executive clemency provides historians with new glimpses into the complexities…
