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Civil War

Mark Bradford's installation Pickett’s Charge at the Hirshhorn spans almost 400 feet and consists of eight canvases measuring 12 feet tall and more than 45 feet long.

Mark Bradford’s Paintings Scratch at the Surface of a Conflicted America

The Hirshhorn Museum hosts the artist’s first solo show in Washington

An artist's rendering of "the great rebel prison-pen at Andersonville, Georgia" that was included in a newspaper during Wirz's trial.

How the Trial and Death of Henry Wirz Shaped Post-Civil War America

A monument to Wirz still stands not far from the Confederate prison camp he commanded

An Eagle Brand Condensed Milk ad from 1891.

Like Condensed Milk? Try the ‘Meat Biscuit’

The meat biscuit was a practical idea but Gail Borden, also the inventor of condensed milk, never made it work

Ships involved in the American slave trade before the Civil War.

When Enslaved People Commandeered a Ship and Hightailed it to Freedom in the Bahamas

It’s been called the most successful slave rebellion in U.S. history

Adelbert Ames

Commentary

Is it Time We Built a Museum of the History of American History?

A better understanding of how we interpret our past, and what and who we choose to remember, would go a long way to healing our nation’s wounds

Confederate Prisoners Being Conducted from Jonesborough to Atlanta by Kara Walker, 2005, from the portfolio Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated)

How Kara Walker Boldly Rewrote Civil War History

The artist gives 150-year-old illustrations a provocative update at the Smithsonian American Art Museum

President Grant gave the pen he used to sign the 15th Amendment to a fellow Civil War veteran, Herbert Preston.

What a Simple Pen Reminds Us About Ulysses S. Grant’s Vision for a Post-Civil War America

President Grant’s signature on the 15th Amendment was a bold stroke for equality

The Old House Chamber has been used as National Statuary Hall since July 1864.

History of Now

A Senator Speaks Out Against Confederate Monuments… in 1910

Alone in his stand, Weldon Heyburn despised that Robert E. Lee would be memorialized with a statue in the U.S. Capitol

H. J. Heinz started a condiment empire. His savvy marketing helped.

There Never Were 57 Varieties of Heinz Ketchup

The ‘57’ doesn’t actually refer to anything

Portrait of a Civil War soldier group, circa 1861-65.

The Most ‘Realistic’ Civil War Novel Was Written Three Decades After It Ended

By an author who wasn’t even alive when it occurred

A typical 17th-century coffeehouse scene. Controversial, right?

This 17th-Century “Women’s Petition Against Coffee” Probably Wasn’t About Women, or Coffee

It probably wasn’t written by angry, sex-deprived wives–although stranger things have happened

An engraving from later in the 1880s shows rioters burning an orphanage for black children.

The Civil War Draft Riots Brought Terror to New York’s Streets

This dark event remains the largest civil insurrection—the Civil War itself aside—in American history

A Minecraft rendering of the Smithsonian Castle in Washington, D.C. Participants in Minecraft: Education Edition online festivities will be able to let their own imaginations run wild this Museum Day.

Family Travel

Fans of Minecraft Are Sure to Dig this Nationwide Museum Fest

The indie hit is the perfect game for a day devoted to unearthing knowledge

The room where Abraham Lincoln died in the Petersen House

House Where Lincoln Died to Close for Renovations

The Petersen House, across the street from Ford’s Theatre, will undergo preservation work to keep it as a museum of the president’s final moments

In Charlottesville, Virginia, city workers drape a tarp over the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee in Emancipation park to symbolize the city's mourning for Heather Heyer, killed while protesting a white nationalist rally in August.

Commentary

We Legitimize the ‘So-Called’ Confederacy With Our Vocabulary, and That’s a Problem

Tearing down monuments is only the beginning to understanding the false narrative of Jim Crow

The H.L. Hunley, a confederate Civil War era submarine, sits in its water tank at the Hunley Lab in North Charleston, SC.

One Scientist May Have Finally Figured Out the Mystery of Why a Civil War Submarine Sank

A Navy engineer used creative modeling and her knowledge of underwater explosions to tackle the century-old Hunley conundrum

Unionville today: The photographer used a process called intaglio printing to give her pictures an antique appearance.

Secrets of American History

After the Civil War, African-American Veterans Created a Home of Their Own: Unionville

One-hundred-fifty years later, the Maryland town remains a bastion of resilience and a front line in the battle over Confederate monuments

Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial features General Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis—and has stirred up controversy in Georgia for years.

History of Now

What Will Happen to Stone Mountain, America’s Largest Confederate Memorial?

The Georgia landmark is a testament to the enduring legacy of white supremacy

Workers use a crane to lift the monument dedicated to U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney from outside Maryland State House, in Annapolis, Maryland, early Friday morning.

Statue of Roger B. Taney Removed From Maryland State House

Taney, the fifth chief justice of the Supreme Court, wrote the majority opinion in the infamous Dred Scott case

Looking at the east frieze of the Confederate Monument at Arlington National Cemtery in Arlington, Virginia, in the United States

History of Now

The Pernicious Myth of the ‘Loyal Slave’ Lives on in Confederate Memorials

Statues don’t need to venerate military leaders of the Civil War to promulgate false narratives

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