Material Detail

Civil War Washington examines the U.S. national capital from multiple perspectives as a case study of social, political, cultural, and medical/scientific transitions provoked or accelerated by the Civil War. The project draws on the methods of many fields—literary studies, history, geography, computer-aided mapping—to create a digital resource that chronicles the war's impact on the city. Troops, fugitive slaves, bureaucrats, prostitutes, actors, authors, doctors, and laborers were among those drawn to the capital by a sense of duty, desperation, or adventure. Drawing on material ranging from census records to literary texts and from forgotten individuals to the famous (such as Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman) the site examines how Washington changed from a sleepy southern town to the symbolic center of the Union and nation. In other words, it would help teachers introduce students to the concept of change over time as well as providing specific information about one city between 1860 and 1865.

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