This is a sketch of cannons on the upper deck of a fort.

Heritage Sites

The places highlighted here — formerly called the Civil War Discovery Trail â€” are not just any places. They are the celebrated sites and structures that bring the earliest chapters of the American story to life, such as battlefields, historic homes, stations on the Underground Railroad, cemeteries, and parks. Together, they constitute the essential stops on a trail to discovering not only America’s military history, but the political, social and human dimensions of the founding and forging of the United States.

lllustration by Alexander Rider from Jesse Torrey’s Portraiture of Domestic Slavery in the United States (1817).
Civil War  |  Historic Site

Kitty Payne

In the years before the Civil War, Virginia’s laws restricted free blacks and also tightened the legal grip on slaves. Some blacks, however, struggled...