The National Bank Building, now Foode, was one of the headquarters for the Freedmen’s Bureau during the historic period known as Reconstruction. The Freedmen’s Bureau was set-up after the conclusion of the Civil War to help transition formerly enslaved people to become self-sufficient, as well as offering other services, such as assisting former soldiers in receiving their pensions.
When John Washington, an enslaved Black man, was a boy, he lived on the second floor of the National Bank Building. As the Union army approached Fredericksburg in the spring of 1862, John Washington was one of the first of over 10,000 enslaved people who gained their freedom by crossing the Rappahannock River. Eleven years later, he wrote a memoir of his experiences as an enslaved person in Fredericksburg.
