 Across Virginia and other Southern states, legislators made criminal the possession of abolitionist publications by either whites or blacks.Some free blacks chose to move their families north to obtain educations for their children.Some white people, such as teachers Thomas J. Jackson (later to be famous in the American Civil War as Gen. "Stonewall" Jackson) and Mary Smith Peake, and George H. Thomas (a future Union general and child at the time of his doing this) violated the laws and taught slaves to read.