HISTORY DISPATCH

A Bit of War History: The Veteran (Painting)

A Civil War soldier (who is also seen in the paintings The Contraband and The Recruit), is now represented as a wounded veteran.

Our Banner in the Sky (Painting)

Painted in 1861 by Frederic Edwin Church, Our Banner in the Sky was an artistic response to the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, which sparked the Civil War.

Our Flag (Painting)

The 31-star flag of the Union flutters amidst the smoke of battle during the Civil War

Home Sweet Home (Painting)

Two Civil War Union soldiers listen as the regimental band plays "Home, Sweet Home".

Rainy Day in Camp (Painting)

Winslow Homer's Civil War painting depicts the miserable conditions in Yorktown for a group of Union soldiers.

Prisoners from the Front (Painting)

Represents an actual scene from the war in which Union BrigGen Francis Channing Barlow captured several Confederate soldiers & officers on June 21, 1864 in the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House.

In Front of Yorktown (Painting)

Winslow Homer's Civil War painting depicts five soldiers on picket duty at night.

The Veteran in a New Field (Painting)

A former Union Soldier harvests wheat in a field with a scythe. Some of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War were fought in wheat fields, and fields of grain became associated with fallen soldiers.

Holding the Line at All Hazards (Painting)

Holding the Line at All Hazards, painted by William Gilbert Gaul in 1882, depicts the courage of the Southern soldier during a brutal battle in the American Civil War.

Dipper Missing - Civil War Trompe L'oeil (Painting)

By the 1880s, nostalgia and patriotism for the Civil War was growing, and memorial still-lifes became popular artworks among war veterans and their families.

Aurora Borealis

During the Civil War, the auroras - usually visible only in the north - were widely interpreted as signs of God's displeasure with the Confederacy & the moral stakes attached to a Union victory. 

Lincoln Memorial Statue (Photography)

The statue of President Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall in Washington D.C. is captured at night.