[Virginia]:

$500 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

ACTS OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF VIRGINIA, PASSED AT CALLED SESSION, 1862.... [bound with:] ACTS OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF VIRGINIA, PASSED AT ADJOURNED SESSION, 1863.... ... A trio of Confederate imprints, consisting of a pair of session laws passed by the Virginia General Assembly for 1862 and 1863, together with a printing of the revised Virginia constitution and bill of rights, with many of the laws pertaining directly to the ongoing Civil War. Notable among the laws is an early act concerning the impressment of slaves. The legislation, passed October 3, 1862, authorizes the governor to call enslaved men "into the service of the Confederate States, for labor on fortifications, and other works necessary for the public defence, for a period not exceeding sixty days." As historian Jaime Amanda Martinez notes, Virginia was one of "seven Confederate states that passed slave impressment laws in late 1862 and early 1863." According to Martinez, Virginia's "impressment legislation" was so effective at "marshaling slave labor for the war effort" that it became "a model for other states and the national government," leading the Confederate government to pass its own slave impressment legislation in March 1863. Such legislation became crucial to the Confederacy's ability to wage war and served also "as the justification for the U.S. Confiscation Acts, which paved the way toward the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment." Other laws include

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