DAILY DISPATCH, Richmond, Virginia, Feb. 9, 1865 

* Rare from the capital of the Confederacy 
* re. Thirteenth 13th Amendment re. Slavery 

 It is difficult to find Confederate newspapers from late in the war, such as this one.
The special content in this issue would be the two items concerning the recent passage of the historic Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution which prohibited slavery.
The front page has a report beginning: "In yesterday's Dispatch we published the large legislation of the Yankee Congress abolishing slavery...The proposition which that body has passed is for the incorporation into the Constitution of an amendment ordaining that 'neither slavery nor involuntary servitude...shall exist within the United States..." with so much more.
Additionally, page 2 has: "The Yankee Abolition of Slavery--Speech from Lincoln" which begins: "The 'constitutional amendment' for the abolition & prohibition of slavery 
throughout the country' has been received by the Yankee people with enthusiasm & is being acted upon by the Legislature of some of the states..." with more.
The are other war-related reports in this issue, but they pale in comparison to the above.
Four pages, never bound nor trimmed, a 3 1/2 by 4 inch piece was clipped from an upper corner of the back leaf affecting just ads on page 3 but some reports on page 4, otherwise in nice condition.

Background: This rare, late-war issue of the Richmond Daily Dispatch from February 9, 1865, serves as a profound historical time capsule capturing the capital of the Confederacy at its psychological and political breaking point. Published less than two months before the fall of Richmond, the paper’s bitter reporting on the "Yankee Congress" and Abraham Lincoln's speech regarding the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment reveals the stark reality forcing its way into the Southern consciousness: the total, permanent destruction of the institution of slavery upon which their rebellion was built. For a besieged Confederate populace clinging to the hope of a negotiated peace that might preserve their social order, the enthusiastic northern reception of the amendment signaled that the United States would accept nothing less than total submission and the complete emancipation of millions of enslaved people. Surviving on coarse, blockade-era newsprint and remaining in its original, unbound state, this document is globally significant because it documents the precise historical inflection point where the legal death sentence of American slavery was defiantly recorded by the very empire created to protect it.