Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Civil War

Comrades now, veterans in gray and blue shake hands at the 1913 Gettysburg reunion, much of the old animosity healed after a half century of peace.

The Last Civil War Veterans Who Lived to Be Over 100… Or Did They?

As America prepared to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Civil War, two centenarians told their tales — only one was telling the truth

None

Why the Smithsonian Just Can’t Quit Studying the Civil War

150 years later, the war is still in focus

American South

A Cutting-Edge Second Look at the Battle of Gettysburg

New technology has given us the chance to re-examine how the Civil War battle was won and lost

Print. Battle of Gettysburg. AF*65353M.

The Civil War

Gettysburg Artifacts From the Smithsonian Collections

150 years after the battle, the Battle of Gettysburg still looms large over the American imagination

The "rectal acorn"

The Civil War

Seven Obscure Facts You Didn’t Know About the Civil War

Amid the vast literature of the Civil War, it’s easy to lose sight of some of the stranger facts, coincidences and quirks of character

In a video clip from the 1930s, old Confederate soldiers step up to a microphone and let loose with the howling yelp that was once known as the fearsome "Rebel yell."

The Civil War

Civil War Veterans Come Alive in Audio and Video Recordings

Deep in the collections of the Library of Congress are ghostly images and voices of Union and Confederate soldiers

None

A Reenactment of Civil War Era Reconnaissance Ballooning

See history retold at the Air and Space Museum this weekend and meet Abraham Lincoln and the balloonist Thaddeus Lowe

"We expect a fight every moment," a Confederate private reported from Virginia, where New York's 8th militia, pictured, camped.

June 1861: Anticipating the Onslaught of the Civil War

The “Races at Philippi” and Virginia is split in two and more from what happened in the Civil War in June 1861

A new Folkways album is one of many offerings for the war sesquicentennial.

Civil Discourse

Rose O'Neal Greenhow, Confederate spy

The Civil War

Women Spies of the Civil War

Hundreds of women served as spies during the Civil War. Here’s a look at six who risked their lives in daring and unexpected ways

None

Ask Smithsonian 2017

Who Had the Best Civil War Facial Hair?

Browse these portraits of officers with great facial hair courtesy of the Library of Congress and then vote for your favorite

To mark the 50th anniversary of the Civil War a group of men reenacted "Pickett's Charge" at Gettysburg.

The Civil War

How We’ve Commemorated the Civil War

Take a look back at how Americans have remembered the civil war during significant anniversaries of the past

One of the best-documented female soldiers is Sarah Edmonds. She was a Union soldier and worked during the Civil War as a nurse.

Women Who Shaped History

The Women Who Fought in the Civil War

Hundreds of women concealed their identities so they could battle alongside their Union and Confederate counterparts

After Union troops refused to evacuate Fort Sumter, today a National Monument, Confederates opened fire.

The Civil War

Fort Sumter: The Civil War Begins

Nearly a century of discord between North and South finally exploded in April 1861 with the bombardment of Fort Sumter

Lincoln's Top Hat

The Civil War

Civil War Artifacts in the Smithsonian

The museum collections house many items from the Civil War, including photographs, uniforms and personal diaries

Lincoln’s Whistle-Stop Trip to Washington

On the way to his inauguration, President-elect Lincoln met many of his supporters and narrowly avoided an assassination attempt

Starting in 1864, Arlington National Cemetery was transformed into a military cemetery.

How Arlington National Cemetery Came to Be

The fight over Robert E. Lee’s beloved home—seized by the U.S. government during the Civil War—went on for decades

Antietam remains the bloodiest day in American history—23,000 men died or were wounded on that battlefield.

The Civil War

Civil War Geology

What underlies the Civil War’s 25 bloodiest battles? Two geologists investigate why certain terrain proved so hazardous

The Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C.

The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln’s Contested Legacy

Great Emancipator or unreconstructed racist? Each generation evokes a different Lincoln. But who was our sixteenth president?

James McPherson is a professor emeritus of American history at Princeton University and author of Commander in Chief, which appears in the January 2009 issue of Smithsonian magazine.

James M. McPherson on “Lincoln as Commander in Chief”

Page 20 of 21