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150 Years of Misunderstanding the Civil War

As the 150th of the Battle of Gettysburg approaches, it's time to question the popular account of a war that tore apart the nation.
Gen. Lew Wallace, circa 1861.

The Incredible Life of Lew Wallace, Civil War General and Author of Ben-Hur

The incredible story of how a disgraced Civil War general became one of the best-selling novelists in American history.

War and Prosthetics: How Veterans Fought for the Perfect Artificial Limb

The needs and entrepreneurship of wounded soldiers have driven many of the most significant advances in prosthetic technology.

Lincoln and Marx

The transatlantic convergence of two revolutionaries.
Exhibit

Civil War Memory

Historical understandings and myths about the Civil War's causes, meanings, and legacies still shape American culture and national discourse about the country's future.

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How Suffering Shaped Emancipation

Jim Downs discusses the plight of freed slaves during the Civil War and Reconstruction.

A Topic Best Avoided

After the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln faced the issue of sorting out a nation divided over the issue of freed slaves. But what were his views on it?
Confederate soldier with wife and baby.
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Fighting for Home

How the idea of “home” motivated Confederate soldiers, and strengthened their resolve to fight.

How Poverty Was, and Was Not, Pictured Before the Civil War

Images were important in defining the Republic between the Revolution and the Civil War and they distinctively both did and did not show Americans in need.

Making Sense of Robert E. Lee

“It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.”— Robert E. Lee, at Fredericksburg
Circus Sideshow, by Georges Seurat, 1887–88.

Unforgettable

W.E.B. Du Bois on the beauty of sorrow songs.
Political cartoon of Freedman's Bureau agent separating angry whites from defensive freedmen.

The Freedmen's Bureau

“No sooner had Northern armies touched Southern soil than this old question, newly guised, sprang from the earth: What shall be done with slaves?”

The Johnson Party

An 1866 essay presents Andrew Johnson as "the virtual leader of the Southern reactionary party."
Diagram of a cotton gin

How Eli Whitney Single-handedly Started the Civil War . . . and Why That’s Not True

The real Whitney story is less grand than the legend, but more interesting and, ultimately, more edifying.
Illustration of Karl Marx in front of map of the United States.

The Triumphs and Travails of American Marxism

Karl Marx never visited the United States, but he and his ideas left an imprint nonetheless.
A screenshot of Aveline, the Black protagonist of Assasin's Creed: Liberation.

The Canceled Civil War Assassin's Creed Game Was a Powder Keg Waiting to Explode

Ubisoft was reportedly working on a game set after the Civil War era, but canceled it due to politics and protagonist backlash.
Collage illustration of a founder, Declaration of Independence, and the body of an enslaved person whose arms are in chains.

Whose Independence?

The question of what Jefferson meant by “all men” has defined American law and politics for too long.
Black and white icons of people gathered into the shape of the US.

Are You a ‘Heritage American’?

Why some on the right want to know if your ancestors were here during the Civil War.
Ruins of Mrs. Henry’s House, Battlefield of Bull Run.
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Reactionary Revolutionaries

In the mid-19th century, governments on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border set out to recast North America’s political landscape.
Robert Barnwell Rhett; Richmond burning in April 1865.

Beware Today’s ‘Fire-Eaters’

There are echoes in our political rhetoric of the men who helped talk the United States into civil war.
Four men model two-button suits of 1963 Paris.

The Economic, Political, and Cultural History of Menswear

Where Western men’s clothing traditions came from, how they have evolved, and how they're being continually reinterpreted.
Collage of photos of Lionel Trilling.

Lionel Trilling and the Limits of Crisis-Thought

Lionel Trilling defends humanism amid crisis culture, warning that obsessing over evil can erode the self and our capacity for moral and creative agency.
Minerva Parker Nichols; the New Century Club building she designed in Philadelphia.
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(Re)discovering Minerva Parker Nichols, Architect

The first American woman to establish an independent architectural practice, Minerva Parker Nichols built an unprecedented career in Philadelphia.
Charles Sumner

The Senator Will Not Yield

Charles Sumner's example reminds us that "with enough courage and drive, can alter the trajectory of American racial history."
A white hand gives a key to another white hand, bypassing a Black hand.

What We Miss When We Talk About the Racial Wealth Gap

Six decades of civil-rights efforts haven’t budged the racial wealth gap, and the usual prescriptions—including reparations—offer no lasting solutions.
Mary Virginia Montgomery

The Montgomerys of Mississippi: How a Once Enslaved Family Bought Jefferson Davis’ Plantation House

In 1872, former slave Mary Virginia Montgomery, now a cotton plantation owner, records her life’s changes after moving from slavery to self-sufficiency.
JD Vance

J.D. Vance's Anti-Declaration

Truths self-evident no more.
Statue of Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln Wasn't Born an Abolitionist, He Became One

We live in polarized times when freedom is threatened but this Juneteenth we should remind ourselves that we have overcome far worse.
Civil War soldiers on the cover of James Marten's book "The Sixth Wisconsin"

Ancestry.com and the Long Civil War

The sad remnants of a soldier’s life revealed through probate and Ancestry offer a moving glimpse into the afterlife of Civil War service.
John Trumbull’s painting of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, 1819.

Who Invented the “Founding Fathers?”

The making of a myth.
Indigenous girl among a line of U.S. peace commissioners.

American History Needs More Names

Identifying Sophie Mousseau from a Civil War-Era photo helps us understand our complex past.

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