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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
Some of the origins of Juneteenth can be traced to the front porch of a plantation house in Limestone County, Texas, where a slaveowner told his 150 enslaved workers that they were free on June 19, 1865.
Posted in: African American History, Civil War, Today in History
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, Washington DC