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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: Mark Hartsell
Love letters dot the Library of Congress's collections — centuries of devotion, passion, longing, regret and heartbreak put down on paper.
Posted in: Civil War, Manuscripts, U.S. Presidents, Veterans History Project, World War II
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
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.
Posted in: Civil War, Newspapers
Posted by: Neely Tucker
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 …
Posted in: Civil War, Manuscripts, Researcher Stories
Posted by: Neely Tucker
The will of Claudia Smith Izard, written in 1854, is an uneasy mixture of women's rights and slave-owning sentiments.
Posted in: Civil War, Manuscripts, Women's History
Posted by: Neely Tucker
Ryan Semmes, an associate professor at Mississippi State University and archivist at the university's Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library, is researching Grant's presidential policies at the Library of Congress.
Posted in: Civil War, Manuscripts, Researcher Stories
Posted by: Neely Tucker
Photo and short bio of Walt Whitman, marking the 200th anniversary of his birth.
Posted in: By the People, Civil War, Pic of the Week, Poetry, Today in History