Articles tagged as Civil War | Smithsonian Magazine

Several armed guards accompanied Luiz Rocha and his colleagues throughout their work in Somaliland.

Meet the Researchers Who Scour the World’s Most Dangerous Corners in Search of Biological Riches

Militants, malaria and pirates are just some of the challenges these scientist-explorers face in their quest to map the world’s diversity

January 3, 2017

President Coolidge conducts the first official transatlantic phone call with the king of Spain in 1927

History of Now

From the Telegram to Twitter, How Presidents Make Contact With Foreign Leaders

Does faster communication cause more problems than it solves?

December 7, 2016

A brittle letter addressed to Orrin W. Shephard of Croton, Newagyo Co., Michigan from his son Nelson.

Mystery Solved: A Michigan Woman Says She Mailed Civil War Letters to the Post Office

Smithsonian curator Nancy Pope learns how and why these letters showed up in the mail 153 years later

November 22, 2016

Confederate Memorial Day exercises at the Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington County, Virginia.

The ideology has been used to whitewash slavery’s role in the Civil War for generations

Updated: November 8, 2016 | Originally Published: October 20, 2016

Ask Smithsonian

When Was the First Map Produced and More Questions From Our Readers

You asked, we answered

November 2016

Re-enactor John Holman displays a newly discovered letter alongside period objects including a hardtack-crate desk.

Newly Discovered Letters Bring New Insight Into the Life of a Civil War Soldier

A mysterious package holds long-lost correspondence from a young Union infantryman

November 2016

Remembering the dead as the country struggles to make peace

October 17, 2016

A set of Civil War-era cannonballs were uncovered on a South Carolina beach after Hurricane Matthew.

The destructive storm dug up some old history

October 11, 2016

As Colombia faces an uncertain future, the Nobel Committee recognizes its president who has worked to broker peace

October 7, 2016

Why Do We Still Have Morse Code and More Questions From Our Readers

You asked, we answer

October 2016

The Williams Dreamland Theatre, Tulsa, OK, c. 1921

Your Questions About African-American History, Answered

A special edition of Ask Smithsonian on the occasion of the opening of a new Smithsonian museum

September 2016

Once 2,000 square miles in Virginia and North Carolina, the swamp today is perhaps one-tenth that size.

Deep in the Swamps, Archaeologists Are Finding How Fugitive Slaves Kept Their Freedom

The Great Dismal Swamp was once a thriving refuge for runaways

September 2016

From Slavery to Mass Incarceration will be a museum dedicated to the history of racial injustice in America, and will be located just steps from a site where slaves were auctioned off.

Cool Finds

Inside the Upcoming Memorial and Museum Dedicated to Lynching Victims

Spanning slavery to segregation to mass incarceration

August 24, 2016

Vanderbilt University's newly renamed "Memorial Hall."

Vanderbilt University’s decision to rename a building to “Memorial Hall” is just one of many ongoing efforts

August 19, 2016

Children salute the American flag in 1915.

Cool Finds

The Rules About How to Address the U.S. Flag Came About Because No One Wanted to Look Like a Nazi

During the National Anthem, Americans are asked to put their right hands over their hearts. But why?

August 12, 2016

How the American Civil War Built Egypt’s Vaunted Cotton Industry and Changed the Country Forever

The battle between the U.S. and the Confederacy affected global trade in astonishing ways

August 1, 2016

Cool Finds

How Sojourner Truth Used Photography to Help End Slavery

The groundbreaking orator embraced newfangled technology to make her message heard

July 28, 2016

W.E.B. Du Bois at the 1900 Paris Exposition.

Cool Finds

The Revolutionary Infographics of W.E.B. Du Bois And Booker T. Washington

Data visualizations shed light on the living conditions of black people decades after the end of slavery

July 14, 2016

USMT workers set up telegraph lines during the Civil War.

Cool Finds

You Can Help Decode Thousands of Top Secret Civil War Telegrams

Volunteers will transcribe and tease out the messages of of nearly 16,000 communiques

June 28, 2016

A map shows the distribution of the slave population in the Southern states of the United States, based on the 1860 census.

History of Now

The Surprising History of the Infographic

Early iterations saved soldiers’ lives, debunked myths about slavery and helped Americans settle the frontier

July 2016