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Chapter
1
War on the Home Front
The Battle Between the Monitor and the Merrimac
Chapter
2
The Battlefront in Virginia
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Chapter
3
Reconstruction
Time Period

1861 to 1876

The Battlefront in Virginia

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Virginia Pacificator, 1861. Lorenzo Sibert of Augusta County designed and patented this repeating rifle that could fire forty-eight shots without reloading. To judge from the inscriptions on its stock––“The Virginia Pacificator” (peacemaker) and “the American Union forever”––Sibert was one of many in the state who had hoped that Virginia’s leaders might keep the Union together. (VMHC 1990.100.50)
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Confederate-Made Springfield rifled musket, 1863. One of 31,000 manufactured by the Richmond Armory on machinery captured from Harpers Ferry in 1861. (VMHC 1990.100.137.A)
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Confederate "Sharps" Carbine made by S. C. Robinson Arms Manufactory, Richmond, 1862. (VMHC 1990.100.57)
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Leech & Rigdon revolver, 1863. Repeating firearms increased a soldier’s fire rate exponentially. (VMHC 2007.174)
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Bugle, about 1861. (Courtesy of Museum of the Confederacy)
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The Battle Between the Monitor and the Merrimac
The Battle Between the Monitor and the Merrimac
The painting, entitled The Battle Between the Monitor and the Merrimac, by Xanthus Smith (1839–1929) was completed about 1880. It depicts the famous sea battle between the USS Monitor and the USS Virginia (formerly USS Merrimac) at Hampton Roads on March 9, 1862. (Lora Robins Collection of Virginia Art; VMHC 1998.53)
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Elizabeth Van Lew operated a successful Union spy ring in Richmond that included prisoners of war, government workers, and free and enslaved African Americans. (VMHC 2002.689.1)
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Window from Libby Prison
This window is from Richmond's notorious Libby Prison, where an estimated 125,000 Union soldiers were confined throughout the war. The former tobacco warehouse was being leased by Libby and Sons when the Confederacy took it over in 1862 to house Union prisoners. After the war, an Illinois syndicate razed the building and then reconstructed it in Chicago as the National War Museum. After the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, the building was again demolished, this time permanently. David W. Sutherland of Chicago acquired the window and gave it to the local Union veterans' organization of the town of his birth, Pittsford, New York, near Rochester. It was presented to E. J. Tyler Post 288, Grand Army of the Republic, at a ceremony attended by two former inmates of the prison. In 1915 the GAR donated it to the Rochester Municipal Museum, now the Rochester Museum and Science Center. In 1990, the museum gave the window to the Virginia Historical Society. (VMHC 1990.100.481)
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“Richmond across the Canal Basin Showing Ruined Buildings, Capitol in Distance, April, 1865,” by Andrew J. Russell. (VMHC 1994.121.65)

Explore Time Periods

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16,000 BCE to 1622 CE
A Land of Opportunity: Creating Virginia
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1623 to 1763
A Distant Dominion
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1764 to 1824
From British Colony to American State
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1825 to 1860
Challenge of a New Century
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1861 to 1876
Civil War and Reconstruction
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1877 to 1924
Virginia in the New South
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1925 to Today
Dynamic Dominion

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