Top of page
Posted by: Neely Tucker
After the Union victory at Gettysburg in the Civil War in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln asked the nation set aside the fourth Thursday of November as a national holiday of thanksgiving. Congress made it official in 1870.
Posted in: Abraham Lincoln, Civil War, Music, Rare Book and Special Collections, Thanksgiving, U.S. Presidents
Posted by: Neely Tucker
How would freed slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass have sounded while delivering one of his classic speeches? A speech on John Brown offers a few clues.
Posted in: Abraham Lincoln, African American History, Civil War, Manuscripts, Newspapers, Writers
Posted by: Neely Tucker
The Library and the History Channel teamed up several years ago to produce a collection of more than two dozen short, entertaining videos that showcased some of the Library's greatest, most unusual and startling treasures.
Posted in: Abraham Lincoln, Civil War
Posted by: Neely Tucker
One summer night in the White House in 1862, John Nicolay, Lincoln's secretary, wrote his future wife a whimsical letter about how "all bugdom" was swarming his office, attracted by the light of gas lamp.
Posted in: Abraham Lincoln, Civil War, Manuscripts, New Online, Washington DC
Posted by: Neely Tucker
Readers can help transcribe letters written to President Abraham Lincoln in the Library's crowdsourcing campaign.
Posted in: Abraham Lincoln, By the People
Posted by: Neely Tucker
A conservator at the Library believes she has identified John Wood, an almost forgotten government photographer, as the man who took an iconic image of the first Lincoln inauguration.
Posted in: Abraham Lincoln, Capitol Hill, Civil War, Photos, U.S. Presidents, Washington DC
Posted by: Wendi Maloney
Peggy Lundeen Johnson is the great-great-granddaughter of Samuel J. Gibson. He fought for the Union during the Civil War and was incarcerated in the Confederate military prison in Andersonville, Georgia, in 1864. While there, he kept a daily log of his experience. Johnson was unaware of the diary until she encountered it on the Library’s …
Posted in: Abraham Lincoln, Civil War, Manuscripts, Researcher Stories
Posted by: Neely Tucker
An interview with author Louis Bayard, who will be speaking and signing books at the 2019 Library of Congress National Book Festival.
Posted in: Abraham Lincoln, National Book Festival, U.S. Presidents, Washington DC
Posted by: Neely Tucker
Two hundred years after his birth, Walt Whitman remains a towering figure. The Library of Congress, with the world's largest collection of Whitman's writings, marks the bicentennial with a flurry of events.
Posted in: Abraham Lincoln, Civil War, Washington DC