The Civil War from Gettysburg to Appomattox

May 2, 2013

Abe Lincoln here. Although it has been 100, two score, and eight years since I was shot to death while attending a play with my Mary, Major Rathbone and his fianc?e, Miss Harris, I decided to stop by the Lanham Gallery on the fourth floor of the History Center to see the exhibition commemorating the sesquicentennial of our Civil War. The people there have put up the second part of the exhibition, covering essentially the second half of this bloody conflict. Its title is The Civil War from Gettysburg to Appomattox and it includes items depicting the war from the beginning of 1863 through Gen. Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865. I was killed less than one week after that.

The exhibition includes representations of events, places and people of particular interest to Hoosiers, including myself, as it was in Indiana where I spent my formative years. These include Confederate Brig. Gen. John Hunt Morgan’s raid into Indiana; a panoramic photograph of an 11th Indiana Battery encampment at Chattanooga, Tenn.; photographs of Camp Morton in Indianapolis, which held Confederate prisoners of war; a diary entry from a Miami County soldier in the 26th Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiment; and an emancipation record of a former slave who became a member of the Weaver Settlement in Grant County.

There are also prints illustrating battles at Vicksburg and Gettysburg; 1864 election-year political cartoons; a couple of illustrations by Thomas Nast in Harper’s Weekly; maps; letters; lithographs of my generals and admirals and of my little speech at the dedication of the cemetery at Gettysburg, Penn. (which I am surprised to find has been remembered all these years); and depictions of the fall of Richmond, Va., and Gen. Lee’s surrender to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. There are some likenesses of me hanging on the walls of this gallery, but it was a strange experience to encounter a life-size statue of myself.

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Suzanne Hahn is director of reference services for the IHS Collections and Library. She loves helping people find the information they seek and is perhaps the only librarian ever to get shushed for laughing too loud in a library.

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