Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address, delivered as the Civil War was in its final weeks, was one of most important in American history, featuring the immortal line, "With malice toward none, with charity for all." Michelle Krowl, the Library's Civil War and Reconstruction historian, explains how the day unfolded in this short video.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Fugitive slave ads abounded in American newspapers until the end of the Civil War; the Library of Congress collections offer insight into this ugly segment of U.S. history.
This is a guest post by Michelle Krowl, a historian in the Manuscript Division, who always writes so well about her specialty, the Civil War and Reconstruction era. Researchers discover all kinds of materials in the George Brinton McClellan Papers that suit their varied research interests, and this collection is now available online through the …
