Independence Day celebrations return to a nation undivided. For white Southerners, many impoverished in the wake of their Confederacy’s defeat, the day is the darkest July 4th ever as free blacks and U.S. soldiers parade through Southern cities and the Emancipation Proclamation is read alongside the Declaration of Independence. Evidencing little to no regard for…
Today in the nation’s capital of Washington, D.C. the Grand Review of the Armies takes place. Beginning at 9:00 a.m. sharp on a bright and sunny day, some 80,000 soldiers from the Union Army of the Potomac parade through the streets to the cheers of politicians, officials and citizens, including president Andrew Johnson, standing alongside…
Three days after the assassination that stunned a war-torn nation, the body of Abraham Lincoln is placed on public display at the White House. Fittingly, the president who maintained an open door to American citizens is now lying in an open casket. Through Lincoln’s presidential door routinely walked poor and rich, whites and free blacks.…