Battling Ballots: Before the War
Step into George Caleb Bingham’s 1852 celebration of American democracy, The County Election. In the boisterous and crowded scene, we see the …
Category: Document of the Month
December 2017 Artifact of the Month | Christmas Letter
By Robert Hancock Director of Collections & Senior Curator Three days before Christmas in 1863, Nathaniel J. Cundiff, a soldier in the …
December 2017 Document of the Month | Church Synod Pamphlet
By John Coski Historian Perhaps the most underrated valuable materials in any library collection are pamphlets. The Museum’s large pamphlet collection includes …
November 2017 Document of the Month | Scrapbook clippings of Maury Monument
By John Coski Historian Eighty-eight years ago this month, on the 11th anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I, …
October 2017 Document of the Month | Douglass on Lincoln
By John Coski Historian On the 11th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination at Ford’s Theatre, African-American abolitionist Frederick Douglass delivered the …
September 2017 Document of the Month | Official Records Collector
By John Coski Historian On July 1, 1878, the United States War Department hired Marcus J. Wright (1831-1922) a former Confederate brigadier …
August 2017 Documents of the Month | 1865 Parole Passes
By John Coski Historian Most Civil War students are familiar with the parole passes issued to the soldiers of General R. …
July 2017 Document of the Month | Letter of John Fite
By John Coski Historian The recipient of the Museum’s 2015-2016 Founders Award, which recognizes excellence in the editing of primary source documents, …
June 2017 Documents of the Month | Camp Sketches
By John Coski Historian The most popular subjects of sketches by Civil War soldiers were their camps – no doubt a …
May 2017 Documents of the Month | Photos from WWI Era
By John Coski Historian Prompted by Germany’s declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare, the United States entered “the Great War” on the side …
April 2017 Document of the Month | R.R. Howison Manuscript
By John Coski Historian How long should historians wait to start writing histories of war? Several Virginians began writing histories of the …