Today Barack Obama will be sworn in for his second term as president of the United States, although the public ceremony and inaugural speech won’t take place until Monday. In today’s New York Times, historian Ronald C. White Jr. explains why second inaugural addresses often fall flat, albeit with one … Continue reading
Category Archives: U.S. Civil War
EXHIBITIONS | Extending the Field of Photography
You have just a few more days to see the exhibition “A Strange and Fearful Interest: Death, Mourning, and Memory in the American Civil War.” Although it finishes its run on Monday, Jan. 14, you will be able to continue to explore the companion website, which allows you to take … Continue reading
VIDEO | The Poetry of Photography
Heavy boxes of glass. A portable darkroom. Noxious chemicals. A cumbersome camera. Field photography during the U.S. Civil War was an arduous process far removed from the relatively effortless digital image-snapping of today’s pocket-sized cameras and phones. And it was the strange beauty of this process—so labor intensive, so unfamiliar … Continue reading
Last Men of the Revolution
Veterans Day, an occasion to honor the nation’s servicemen and women, has roots stretching back to the First World War. Yet the desire to commemorate wartime sacrifice has a much longer history. In 1864, as the Civil War continued to rage, Connecticut minister Elias Brewster Hillard travelled through New York, … Continue reading
Come What Will, Part 2
Today we bring you the second part of a post by Olga Tsapina, the Norris Foundation Curator of American Historical Manuscripts and curator of the current exhibition “A Just Cause: Voices of the American Civil War.” Continuing her post from yesterday, she recounts the final dramatic months of Abraham Lincoln’s … Continue reading
Come What Will, Part 1
Today and tomorrow we bring you a two-part piece by Olga Tsapina, the Norris Foundation Curator of American Historical Manuscripts and curator of the current exhibition “A Just Cause: Voices of the American Civil War.” In these posts she recounts the final dramatic months of Abraham Lincoln’s reelection campaign in … Continue reading
AUDIO | The Work of Death
Historian Drew Gilpin Faust, president of Harvard University and author of This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, spoke at The Huntington last night about Ric Burns’ adaptation of her book into the new PBS documentary “Death and the Civil War.” You can download her talk from The … Continue reading
The Civil War Reflected
The Huntington Digital Library just launched a new collection—the United States Civil War. It features more than 2,000 images from our impressive holdings of Civil War materials, many of which are being displayed in two new Huntington exhibitions: “A Just Cause: Voices of the American Civil War” and “A Strange … Continue reading
VIDEO | Voices on the Civil War
The Huntington is abuzz with the Civil War this fall. Manuscript exhibition “A Just Cause: Voices of the American Civil War,” curated by Olga Tsapina, opened just a few weeks ago in the West Hall of the Library and gives its visitors an opportunity to try to make sense of … Continue reading
The Drew Gilpin Faust Effect
Tuesday night, PBS will premiere “Death and the Civil War,” an installment of “American Experience” produced by Ric Burns and inspired by the 2008 book This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, by Drew Gilpin Faust. The broadcast coincides with the anniversary of the Battle of Antietam, … Continue reading