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Showing results 1 – 10 of 190

Civil War–era sketches by David Stauffer

When the Civil War broke out, David McNeely Stauffer (1845–1913) was only sixteen years old. While attending Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania from September 1861 through June 1863, he served brief, emergency enlistments when the state of Pennsylvania was threatened by Robert E. Lee’s forces. He joined the 2nd Pennsylvania Emergency Regiment in September 1862 and served until winter. In June 1863, he joined in the defense of Gettysburg with the 
Independent Battery of Pennsylvania. When Stauffer’s enlistment expired in January...

Women in the Civil War: Vivandieres

Vivandieres, sometimes known as cantinieres, were women who followed the army to provide support for the troops. Ideally, a vivandiere would have been a young woman—the daughter of an officer or wife of a non-commissioned officer—who wore a uniform and braved battles to provide care for wounded soldiers on the battlefield. 

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A Civil War soldier’s letters: “Save them if it cost the farm”

George Tillotson from Greene, New York, enlisted with the 89th New York Infantry in November of 1861. This ambrotype (photograph made on glass) and a series of letters from the summer of 1862 remind us that soldiers and their families faced hardships on the home front as well as on the battlefield. George had been in the army for five months and was stationed at Roanoke Island, North Carolina, when his wife, Libby, sent him the photograph featured here. The photograph was damaged in the mail and began a heartbreaking series of...

Select images from the American Civil War

In October 1862, Mathew Brady opened a photography exhibition at his studio in New York City. Entitled The Dead of Antietam, the exhibition attracted large crowds and brought the war home in a way that news articles and casualty listings could not. On October 20, 1862, an editorial in the New York Times explained that “the dead of the battle-field come up to us very rarely, even in dreams. We see the list in the...

The Emancipation Proclamation: Raising money for sick and wounded soldiers

The Emancipation Proclamation stands as the single most important accomplishment of Lincoln’s presidency. The preliminary proclamation, announced on September 22, 1862, served as a warning for Southern states that if they did not abandon the war, they would lose their slaves. More important, it was the first step toward the official abolition of slavery in the United States. While many Northerners were not initially abolitionists, their support of Abraham Lincoln and the Union military, as well as the demonstrated determination of slaves to...

Robert E. Lee’s condolence letter to his son Rooney, 1864

In this beautifully written letter, Confederate general Robert E. Lee attempts to console his son William Fitzhugh “Rooney” Lee on the loss of his wife. The letter demonstrates the emotion that Lee felt for his family and offers a glimpse of the strength that carried Lee through the war. His faith in God, his empathy for others’ misfortunes, and his belief in the Confederate cause, all granted Lee the fortitude he needed to endure the war. One can see all of these attributes in this single, short missive.

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Essay

The American Civil War

The Civil War marked a defining moment in United States history. Long simmering sectional tensions reached a critical stage...

Essay

The Battle of Antietam: A Turning Point in the Civil War

Four days after the battle of Antietam, which took place near Sharpsburg, Maryland, on September 17...

Note of 1 shilling, 6 pence, printed in the colony of New Jersey, 1776. (GLC)

Essay

The US Banking System: Origin, Development, and Regulation

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Cover of Puck, November 25, 1903. (Library of Congress)

Essay

A History of the Thanksgiving Holiday

Thanksgiving stands as one of the most American of holidays, an autumnal ritual fixed in the imagination as honoring the piety and perseverance of the nation’s earliest arrivals during colonial days....