Browse Items (153 total)

Following the end of the Civil War and adoption of the 13th Amendment, white southerners were dismayed by the prospect of living and working on equal terms with newly freed men and women they viewed as inferior. In an attempt to maintain the economic…

This was a cartoon created by Richmond Whig and featured in the publication Harper's Weekly, which would go on to use the image on multiple occasions, the first one in 1868 and then once again in the year 1872. The cartoon itself showed an African…

Despite its unlikely origins, the folk song known as “Dixie” remains among the most iconic musical representations of the American South. Written by a Northerner of Irish ancestry as a satirical depiction of the Old South, the song premiered as part…

12 Years a Slave (2013) tells the story of Solomon Northup, a free black man of New York, and his abduction and sale into slavery in 1841. After his return from slavery, Northup told his story to David Wilson, a white lawyer from New York. Published…

Gone With the Wind (1939) follows the life of Scarlett O’Hara, a young woman living on Tara Plantation in Georgia during the Civil War and Reconstruction. The film depicts its main character as a young, vivacious woman who frantically tries to…

David S. Reynolds teaches history at the City University of New York. His publications range from biographies of Walt Whitman and John Brown to cultural histories of Civil War America. Walt Whitman’s America won the Bancroft Prize and John Brown,…

Abraham Lincoln was president of the United States during the Civil War. Lincoln (2012) focuses on the last months of the president’s life, the period from January to April of 1865. As the war neared the end of its fourth year, Lincoln struggled to…

Rio Grande (1950), a western starring John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara, is an action-packed adventure set against the background of a dramatic landscape. Set on the western frontier during the summer of 1879, the film follows the life of Lieutenant…

William D. Washington’s renowned painting, The Burial of Latané (1864), poignantly captured a Confederate memory of the Civil War. The painting depicts the funeral of Confederate Captain William Latané who led Confederate forces to a victory at…