A Call to Arms! – President Lincoln’s Call for 75,000 Volunteers On April 15, 1861, President Lincoln issued the following proclamation: BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: A PROCLAMATION WHEREAS the laws of the United States have been, for some time...
On April 14, 1865, at the climax of a performance of Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., well-known stage actor John Wilkes Booth entered Abraham Lincoln’s private balcony and shot the president in the back of the head. After struggling...
Samuel J. Seymour was present at Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865, the night that President Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. Samuel J. Seymour was born on March 28th, 1860, in Maryland, United States. He was five years old when his father took him...
Walt Whitman wrote a stirring poem titled “Pensive On Her Dead Grazing” within days of the surrender at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865, when Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia. “Pensive on her dead gazing I...
So this came across my Facebook feed recently. It is a photo of a Civil war amputee carrying basket from 1861. According to the card on the image, the historical origin of the phrase ‘basket case’ came from Civil war veterans with amputated legs...
Emily Todd was Mary Todd Lincoln’s half-sister. In 1856 she married Benjamin Helm, later to become a Confederate general. After Helm’s death in 1863 Emily Helm passed through Union Lines to visit her sister in the White House. This caused great...
