Rain fell along Virginia’s Rapidan River in December 1863 as the 5th New York Cavalry set about building its winter quarters at Germanna Ford. The thickly wooded hill of Devil’s…
Once upon a time in 1957, a BBC news crew decided to broadcast an April Fool’s Day joke. Producers allowed a cameraman a shoestring budget of £100 and the freedom…
“The First World War saw the first widespread use of propaganda to stir patriotic fervour,” note Gill Saunders and Margaret Timmers in The Poster: A Visual History. “The need to…
Although only minor National Park Service signage alerts you to the boundaries of the vast Gettysburg battlefield at its outer edges bleeding into neighboring counties, it’s almost impossible not to…
When 21-year-old Arthur McKinstry left Chautauqua County, N.Y., in early June 1861 to join the Excelsior Brigade being raised by then-Colonel Daniel Sickles, he was better prepared to write than…
The word “propaganda” evokes many images, few of them positive. We often think of propaganda as sinister attempts to brainwash a population into embracing authoritarian political systems, with posters typically…
A gloomy and tragic scene—one with which the inhabitants of the oft-contested city of Winchester, Va., were unfortunately all too familiar—unfolded throughout the night of September 19, 1864, as thousands…
A massive amount of correspondence passed between Union armies and the home front. Chaplain Richard Eddy of the 60th New York Infantry, who also served as the regimental postmaster, noted…
As Germany crumbled in fire and rubble in the final months of World War II, Adolf Hitler issued orders for four famous Germans to be held hostage—not living Germans, but…
When the Second World War in Europe ended in May 1945, the United States military had custody of a staggering number of enemy prisoners of war: 4.3 million total worldwide,…
