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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: Wendi Maloney
Jesse Holland wears a lot of different hats: he’s an award-winning political journalist, he’s a television host, he’s a professor and he’s a comics aficionado — he wrote the first novel about the Black Panther for Marvel in 2018. African American history is yet another of his passions — in particular documenting long-overlooked contributions of …
Posted in: African American History, Civil Rights, Civil War, Exhibitions, Kluge Center, Researcher Stories
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
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