The nearly year-long Siege of Boston began on April 19, 1775, just after the battles at Lexington and Concord. Colonial militiamen surrounded Boston to prevent the British army’s movement, and conflicts ensued for eleven months until the British evacuation in March 1776.
The Office of War Mobilization was created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to coordinate supplies during World War II.
The United States Committee on Public Information, also known as the Creel Committee, was an agency headed by progressive journalist George Creel during World War I. The committee directed the government’s propaganda effort, encouraging public support for the war through pro-war films and publications and the recruitment of volunteer patriotic speakers.
Powhatan (unknown–1618), or Wahunsonakok, was a chief of the Powhatan people in what is now Virginia. Powhatan ruled over several Algonquian tribes during the English settlement of Jamestown. He negotiated and sometimes clashed with Jamestown colonists and John Smith. Though Powhatan at first cooperated with English colonists, he later cut off trade and became hostile to them. His daughter, Pocahontas, was captured by an English expedition in 1613, however, and Powhatan approved her...
Mary Edwards Walker (1832–1919) was a female Civil War physician who received the Medal of Honor for her service. Walker received her medical degree from Syracuse Medical College in 1855. At the start of the Civil War, she offered to work as a surgeon for the Army. The Army initially refused her services, but she was able to practice after she agreed to work unpaid. Walker tended to Union wounded on site and at a hospital in Washington, DC. She earned the respect and admiration of her male colleagues and eventually received a paid contract...
This online exhibition is adapted from an exhibition of original Civil War soldiers’ letters currently on display at the new Museum and Visitor Center at Gettysburg National Military Park, which opened in April 2008. The letters are drawn from the Gilder Lehrman Collection (on deposit at the New-York Historical Society), which contains...
The following documents demonstrate the tremendous concern of the Association of Manhattan Project Scientists toward nuclear power in peacetime. On the right is one of many drafts that shaped a collective statement from the scientists released just after the war. These drafts were edited by Dr. Francis Bonner and Dr. Irving Kaplan, lead...