Cheers rang out in the streets of Washington on July 16, 1861 as Gen. Irvin McDowell’s Federal army, 35,000 strong, marched out to begin the long-awaited campaign to capture Richmond and end the war. It was an army of green recruits, few of whom had the faintest idea of the magnitude of the task facing them.

McDowell’s lumbering columns were headed for the vital railroad junction at Manassas. Here the Orange and Alexandria Railroad met the Manassas Gap Railroad, which led west to the Shenandoah Valley. If McDowell could seize this junction, he would stand astride the best overland approach to the Confederate capital.

On July 18, McDowell’s army reached Centreville. Five miles ahead a small meandering stream named Bull Run crossed the route of the Union advance. Guarding the fords from Union Mills to the Stone Bridge were 22,000 Southern troops under the command of Gen. Pierre G.T. Beauregard. McDowell first attempted to move toward the Confederate right flank, but his troops were checked at Blackburn’s Ford. He then spent the next two days scouting the Southern left flank. In the meantime, Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston's army, stationed in the Shenandoah Valley with 10,000 Confederate troops, were ordered to support Beauregard. Johnston gave an opposing Union army the slip and, employing the Manassas Gap Railroad, started his brigades toward Manassas Junction, with most arriving July 20 and 21.

At the start of the Fredericksburg Campaign, the Union Army of the Potomac managed to steal a march on the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. But owing to the failure of the Federals' pontoon bridge equipment to arrive at the crossing of the Rappahannock River as scheduled, the Southerners were able to block the road to Richmond. The Union commander, General Burnside, decided to launch a frontal assault against the Confederate position at Fredericksburg, resulting in one of the Union Army's most lopsided tactical defeats of the Civil War.

n late June 1863, more than two years into the American Civil War, Union and Confederate military forces converged on the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. After a series of military successes, Confederate Commander Robert E. Lee led his Army of Northern Virginia into Union territory in his second invasion of the North. He hoped that a Confederate victory in Pennsylvania would convince Northern politicians to abandon the war. The Union Army of the Potomac, led initially by General Joseph Hooker and then General George Meade, crossed the Potomac River to pursue Lee’s forces.

Note: The following text is a transcription of the enrolled original of the Joint Resolution of Congress proposing the Bill of Rights, which is on permanent display in the Rotunda at the National Archives Museum. The spelling and punctuation reflects the original.

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project (FWP) of the Works Progress Administration, later renamed Work Projects Administration (WPA). At the conclusion of the Slave Narrative project, a set of edited transcripts was assembled and microfilmed in 1941 as the seventeen-volume Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves. In 2000-2001, with major support from the Citigroup Foundation, the Library digitized the narratives from the microfilm edition and scanned from the originals 500 photographs, including more than 200 that had never been microfilmed or made publicly available. This online collection is a joint presentation of the Manuscript and Prints and Photographs divisions of the Library of Congress.

Covers from ancient America before 1492 to Modern America in the 21st Century. Courseware includes resources copyrighted and openly licensed by third parties under a Creative Commons license. Click "Licenses and Attributions" at the bottom of each page for copyright information and license specific to the material on that page.

Brings together materials from three premier collections: the Library of Congress Geography and Map Division, the Virginia Historical Society, and the Library of Virginia. Among the reconnaissance, sketch, and theater-of-war maps are the detailed battle maps made by Major Jedediah Hotchkiss for Generals Lee and Jackson, General Sherman's Southern military campaigns, and maps taken from diaries, scrapbooks, and manuscripts all available for the first time in one place.

Archives Specialist Rebecca Sharp will discuss The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, 1861–1865. This published source contains information about Civil War medical and surgical procedures as well as case studies.

Between 1861 and 1865, the Union and Confederate navies fought for control over inland and coastal waterways. Through four years of war, the United States Navy rose to the challenge of blockading more than 3,500 miles of coastline, coordinating amphibious attacks, and bombarding coastal fortifications held by the Confederate armed forces. The ingenuity and self-sacrifice of those who served U.S. Navy throughout the Civil War ultimately ensured victory for the Union.

Eastern National is celebrating the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War with electronic editions of eParks' National Park Civil War Series of books. Read them online or own your own paper edition by visiting our Civil War Series store.

In the overland campaign of 1864, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant with the Army of the Potomac battled General Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia for six weeks across central Virginia. At the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, North Anna and Totopotomoy Creek, Lee repeatedly stalled, but failed to stop, Grant's southward progress toward Richmond. The next logical military objective for Grant was the crossroads styled by locals Old Cold Harbor.

The Compromise of 1850 was a series of acts that dealt with issues related to slavery and territorial expansion. This guide contains Library of Congress digital materials, external websites, and a print bibliography.

The authority to amend the Constitution of the United States is derived from Article V of the Constitution. After Congress proposes an amendment, the Archivist of the United States, who heads the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), is charged with responsibility for administering the ratification process under the provisions of 1 U.S.C. 106b. The Archivist has delegated many of the ministerial duties associated with this function to the Director of the Federal Register. Neither Article V of the Constitution nor section 106b describe the ratification process in detail. The Archivist and the Director of the Federal Register follow procedures and customs established by the Secretary of State, who performed these duties until 1950, and the Administrator of General Services, who served in this capacity until NARA assumed responsibility as an independent agency in 1985.

By the mid-1780s it had become apparent to men like James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and others that the United States could not survive and prosper under the Articles of Confederation. Although the Articles said that the United States was to be a permanent union, it was not a nation so much as a federation of sovereign nations. There was no executive authority, no national judicial system, and no mechanism to collect revenue for the collective use of the states. What the Articles did create was a "firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defence," but the mechanisms to provide for that, and defense were clumsy and awkward at best. Although many of the other provisions within the Articles were preserved in the Constitution, as independent nations, each having one vote in the Confederation Congress, it would have been virtually impossible to conduct business in the national interest. Meetings were held for the purpose of calling for amendments to the Articles of Confederation, but a convention was called for that purpose, Madison, Hamilton, and others quickly decided to scrap the articles and create an entirely new document. The result was the United States Constitution.

This collection uses primary sources to explore the creation of the US Constitution. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.

Imagination and vision played critical roles in the creative act of forming a self-governing United States of America. The collections of the Library of Congress are unquestionably the worlds best source for documenting that process. This exhibition offers a remarkable opportunity to learn in a fresh new way how the founding documents that emerged from this period were forged out of insight, invention, and creativity, as well as collaboration and much compromise.

Note: The following text is a transcription of the Stone Engraving of the parchment Declaration of Independence (the document on display in the Rotunda at the National Archives Museum.) The spelling and punctuation reflects the original.

Amongst the novel objects that attracted my attention during my stay in the United States, nothing struck me more forcibly than the general equality of conditions. I readily discovered the prodigious influence which this primary fact exercises on the whole course of society, by giving a certain direction to public opinion, and a certain tenor to the laws; by imparting new maxims to the governing powers, and peculiar habits to the governed. I speedily perceived that the influence of this fact extends far beyond the political character and the laws of the country, and that it has no less empire over civil society than over the Government; it creates opinions, engenders sentiments, suggests the ordinary practices of life, and modifies whatever it does not produce. The more I advanced in the study of American society, the more I perceived that the equality of conditions is the fundamental fact from which all others seem to be derived, and the central point at which all my observations constantly terminated.

The Americans live in a democratic state of society, which has naturally suggested to them certain laws and a certain political character. This same state of society has, moreover, engendered amongst them a multitude of feelings and opinions which were unknown amongst the elder aristocratic communities of Europe: it has destroyed or modified all the relations which before existed, and established others of a novel kind. The—aspect of civil society has been no less affected by these changes than that of the political world. The former subject has been treated of in the work on the Democracy of America, which I published five years ago; to examine the latter is the object of the present book; but these two parts complete each other, and form one and the same work.