James W. D. Bland and the eleections of 1867 & 1869
Appomattox County along with the rest of Virginia held an election in 1867 to choose cadidates for the Constitutional Convention that was required before the Commonweath could officially rejoin the Union it had left.
After the passage of the 14th Amendment in 1866 and as required by the Reconstruction Act of 1867 Virginia was required to hold a conventions to create a new state constitutions. This had to happen before the Commonwealth could rejoin the Union it had left. In 1867 over 105,000 Virginia freedmen were registered to vote in Virginia over 93,000 of the voted in the October election of that same year. Appomattox and Preince Edward County residents chose James W. D. Bland as their represetative to the Consitution and would vote for him again in 1869 as their representative in the Virginia Senate.
James W. D. Bland was born in Prince Edward County, VA in about 1838. His father Hercules Bland bought his mother Mary out of slavery ensuring that James and his two brothers would be born free. James was educated it is believed by the family of Alexander Bruce, his mother's former enslaver. James was elected as a delegate to the VA Constitutional Convention in 1878 where he 1867–1868. He served on three major committees and reached out to conservative whites by opposing test oaths and disfranchisement for former Confederates. He was elected to the Senate of Virginia in 1869, where he became a conciliatory figure in a racially volatile era. Focusing on education, he sponsored a successful bill that established Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (later Hampton University). The next year Bland was among a large crowd attending a session of the Supreme Court of Appeals in the State Capitol. The floor collapsed, killing him and about sixty other observers.