Congress and the Civil War

A new exhibition of Civil War-related documents and artifacts is on display in the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center’s Exhibition Hall. Click here for more information.

Visitors of any age will appreciate the historic significance of these documents and artifacts. Mathew Brady’s photographs, the first images to document an American war, will be on display. On loan from the Library of Congress, Brady’s photographs were, for most people, the first time they witnessed the carnage of war. The New York Times wrote that Brady had brought “home to us the terrible reality and earnestness of war.” Congress acquired the collection to preserve the visual history for future generations.

Also on loan from the Library of Congress, are pages that detail the personal stories of former slaves. These autobiographical accounts were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration. They were 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.

Visitors will learn about critical moments in the Civil War such as the battle between the Monitor and the Merrimac as depicted in a hand-colored lithograph on loan from the Library of Congress. In 1861, Congress encouraged development of the ironclad warship. Some people say that the Battle of Hampton Roads, often referred to as the Battle of the Monitor and Merrimack, was the most important naval battle of the Civil War -- it was the first meeting in combat of ironclad warships. It was a critical component of the effort of the Confederacy to break the Union blockade, which had cut off Virginia’s largest cities, Norfolk and Richmond, from international trade.