In summer 1861, William J. Rhees, chief clerk of the Smithsonian Institution, wrote to his wife about Professor Thaddeus Lowe’s balloon experiments on the National Mall . . . including the reason one ascent never got off the ground. Because (almost) nothing in Washington happens without first securing a purchase order or an appropriation.
Join us on September 17, the anniversary of the 1862 battle of Antietam, as Manuscript Division historian Michelle Krowl and reference librarian Lara Szypszak interview historian George C. Rable about his new book Conflict of Command: George McClellan, Abraham Lincoln, and the Politics of War, which reevaluates the command relationship between General McClellan and President Lincoln during the Civil War.
Find out what kind of military duty Civil War soldier Private William M. Phile of the 27th Regiment Connecticut Infantry found to be particularly rough on his pants.
When the U.S. Army started moving into the Pentagon in 1942, author, artist, and U.S. Marine Corps officer Colonel John W. Thomason, Jr., penned a humorous, but not entirely complimentary, description of the new building.
Among all the administrative burdens that confronted President Abraham Lincoln in August 1862, helping a naval officer get married was one task he seemingly enjoyed.
In 1864, Anson Burlingame, an American diplomat in China, received a telegram from his counterpart in Russia with a simple message: Abraham Lincoln had been reelected president. Yet there was a complexity behind the simplicity.
