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The July 4, 1863 issue of Harper's Weekly featured three illustrations of Gordon, an escaped Mississippi plantation slave who sought refuge with the Union army. Harper’s staff based their illustration upon a photograph taken in Baton Rouge in April…

The artist responsible for this cartoon is unknown, but the sketch reflects the widely held belief that President of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, was wearing women’s clothing when apprehended by Union troops. General Robert E. Lee, the commander…

Conservatives used violence, fraud, and racism in the late 1860s to overthrow Reconstruction in North Carolina and minimize Republican political power, especially among black voters. Conservatives, later called Democrats, dominated state and federal…

Reverend A. T. Holmes of Hayneville, Georgia, wrote the following essay in response to a contest offered by the Alabama Baptist State Convention in 1849 on “the Duties of Christian Masters to Their Servants.” Holmes won $200 for this winning entry,…

Before the war, Abraham Lincoln expressed antislavery sympathies and recorded his hostility to slavery's further expansion, but he opposed abolishing the institution altogether. He continued this stance once elected president. However, as the war…

Photography captured the horrors of war as never before. SomeCivil War photographers arranged the actors in their frames to capture the best picture, even repositioning bodies of dead soldiers for battlefield photos.