[ June 1, 2010 to June 30, 2010. ] In commemoration of the approaching 150th anniversary of the Civil War, James A. Garfield NHS will host this special traveling exhibit from the Gilder Lehrman Institute for American History showing various depictions of Abraham Lincoln from political cartoons of the day. WARNING: some of these cartoons use racial terms that some may find offensive. However, [...]

[ May 2, 2010; 11:00 am to 1:00 pm. ] The Republican Party was nearly three decades old by the time it elected James A. Garfield president in 1880. What led to the creation of the party in 1854, and how did it rise from a small Midwestern coalition to a powerful national party controlling Congress and the presidency just six years later? Learn more [...]

In 1864, during the American Civil War, Ohioan Benjamin Franklin Wade, a United States Senator, and Henry Winter Davis, a United States Representative from Maryland, introduced the Wade-Davis Bill. This legislation sought to create a policy for how seceded states would rejoin the United States following the war’s conclusion. It required fifty percent of white [...]

Senators Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and Jim Webb (D-VA) have introduced the Civil War Sesquicentennial Commission Act of 2009 (S.1838) to establish a Commission to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War from 2011-2015. The legislation authorizes $3.5 million in funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to award grants for activities relating [...]

On March 3, 1863 Congress passed the Conscription Act of 1863. The Conscription Act required states to draft men to serve in the American Civil War if individual states did not meet their enlistment quotas through volunteers. The federal government oversaw the draft and created provost marshals to enforce it. All white men between the [...]