• Introduction
• The Rise of Lincoln
• The Civil War
• Lincoln's Contemporaries
• Visit the Exhibition
• Audio Tour

The Civil War

When Lincoln left Springfield, Illinois, for Washington D.C., and his inauguration as president, he was under no illusions about the task that faced him and his administration. In his farewell address to his hometown, he said, he left here with "a task before me greater than that which rested upon George Washington." The new president's hopes of a peaceful reconciliation of the crisis were dashed by the outbreak of war in April 1861. Initially both sides were confident that each would achieve a short, sharp, and painless victory over the other. Both sides were wrong. The Civil War, the first industrial war, ground on for four years. As Lincoln managed the war, he changed the terms on which the war was fought, transforming it into a war that insisted that the Union could only be restored through "a new birth of freedom" for all Americans.

	Lincoln's First Inaugural, Washington, D.C., March 4, 1861 Unidentified artist Salted-paper print		Abraham Lincoln, 1861 Alexander Gardner Albumen silver print		Abraham Lincoln and George McClellan, 1862 (printed c. 1890) Alexander Gardner Albumen silver print
	Abraham Lincoln, 1863 Thomas Le Mere at the Mathew Brady Studio Albumen silver print		Abraham Lincoln, 1863 "Passage Through Baltimore" Adalbert John Volck Etching		Abraham Lincoln, November 8, 1863 Alexander Gardner Albumen silver print
	Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, c. 1864 Pierre Morand Ink and opaque white gouache on paper		Abraham Lincoln, 1864 Anthony Berger at the Mathew Brady Studio Albumen silver print		Abraham Lincoln, 1864 Anthony Berger at the Mathew Brady Studio Modern albumen print from 1864 wet-plate collodion negative
	Abraham Lincoln, 1864 Mathew Brady Studio Albumen silver print		Abraham Lincoln, 1864 Mathew Brady Albumen silver print		Abraham Lincoln, 1865 Anthony Berger Albumen silver print
	Abraham Lincoln, 1865 Lewis E. Walker Albumen silver print				Abraham Lincoln, 1860 Leonard Volk Plaster life mask, 1917 cast after 1860 original
	Abraham Lincoln, 1865 Clark Mills Plaster, c. 1917 cast after 1865 original		Abraham Lincoln, 1865 Henry F. Warren Albumen silver print		Abraham Lincoln, 1865 Alexander Gardner Albumen silver print
	Abraham Lincoln, 1865 Alexander Gardner Albumen silver print		Lincoln's Second Inaugural, March 4, 1865 Unidentified artist		Proclamation of Emancipation William Roberts, after Mathew Brady Wood engraving with one tint, 1864
	First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation Alexander Hay Ritchie, after Francis Bicknell Carpenter Stipple engraving, 1866		Abraham and Tad Lincoln, February 5, 1865 Alexander Gardner Albumen silver print		Richmond, Virginia, April 1865 Lambert Hollis Ink wash over graphite

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