What else could LBJ have accomplished if not for the Vietnam War? Perhaps the same could be said for Lincoln...or maybe Lincoln became great because of the war. I will leave that for others to debate.

We are now on a new round of "150th" anniversaries--the period of Reconstruction after the Civil War. At a National Archives program earlier this week, the presenters focused on on "The 13th Amendment at 150."

Last Saturday, I spoke about Julia Wilbur and Civil War Alexandria in the Special Collections Branch of the Alexandria Library.

To kick off the D.C. Historical Studies conference, historian Eric Foner spoke to a very full auditorium at the National Archives last night on "Reconstruction and the Fragility of Democracy."

Two staff members from the Library of Virginia came up to Alexandria yesterday to explain some of the resources in the collection in Richmond or online.

A fun thing in combing Julia Wilbur's diaries is coming across headline events and people of the day--once huge, now forgotten.

The Alexandria Archaeological Commission awarded me its Outstanding Researcher Award at a ceremony at City Hall last week.

September has been my month to travel for some "early years" Julia Wilbur research. Now I have to sort through and do something with all that I learned. 

Before crowdsourcing and kickstarters, before bake sales, before raffles came the fund-raising bazaars and fairs of the 1900s.

African American women made up about 10% of the Union hospital nurse workforce.

Summer wanderings took me to a place I have wanted to see for a long time--Frederick Douglass' home in Southeast Washington, DC. He lived there from 1877 to his death in 1895.

I am back from giving a presentation at the annual conference of the Society for Women and the Civil War--a great meeting and weekend. My own presentation on Julia Wilbur was well received.

On July 7, 1865, four people were hanged at what is now Fort McNair in Southwest Washington, DC: George Atzerodt, David Herold, Lewis Powell, and Mary Surratt. Here's what Julia Wilbur had to say:

Until the late 1800s, Americans (that is, those who even had the right to vote) did not cast secret ballots.