150 years ago -- The Battle of Bentonville, March 19-21, 1865

Visit the Civil War Trust's Bentonville page for maps, articles, photo galleries, and interviews about  North Carolina's largest and most important battlefield. 

Mark Bradley, right, author of Last Stand in the Carolinas, conducted a two-day battlefield tour for The CompuServe Civil War Forum in April of 2012.

Remembering the senseless slaughter of the War Between the Butterflies

Lincoln comments on his 2nd inaugural speech

from Lincoln Day by Day, Lincoln writing to Thurlow Weed:

Lincoln taking the oath, March 4, 1865, Harper's Weekly

"Thank you for yours on my little notification speech, and on the recent Inaugeral [sic] Address. I expect the latter to wear as well as -- perhaps better than -- any thing I have produced; but I believe it is not immediately popular. Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them."  

More on the 2nd inaugural at the Library of Congress. 

The Racing Presidents visit the National Archives

Abraham Lincoln contemplates a facsimile copy of the Emancipation Proclamation

You can see the full gallery of photos of the Racing Presidents -- a popular feature at Washington Nationals games -- visiting the National Archives by clicking here. 

Battle of Monroe's Crossroads -- 150 years ago

Today marks the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Monroe's Crossroads, which intrepid members of the CompuServe Civil War Forum visited three years ago. The battlefield remains well preserved, due to the fact that it is situated deep inside the grounds of Fort Bragg, and in a restricted area subject to overshot from live fire ranges. Visitors must be escorted, and photos may not be published without permission.

I posted this brief blog entry with photos of our visit back in 2012. 
Here's a good summary of the battle from the North Carolina History Project. 
More text, and maps. 

BONUS LINKS: I just noticed that Eric Wittenberg has posted a three-part essay on events,  culminating at Monroe's Crossroads, for the Emerging Civil War blog:
Part One,   Part Two,   Part Three.

Author and historian Mark Bradley. 

Lincoln's 2nd Inaugural Address -- March 4, 1865

One of three photos of the event by Alexander Gardner

"In a print made about 1920 from an original photograph by Alexander Gardner, President Lincoln is seen reading his inaugural address before the crowd on the east portico of the Capitol. This is one of three photographs taken March 4, 1865, by Alexander Gardner. Above Lincoln, to the right and behind an iron railing, stands John Wilkes Booth, though he cannot be seen clearly in this photograph. In only one of the photographs, that in the Meserve Collection in the National Portrait Gallery, is Booth visible. He has a mustache and is wearing a top hat. Five of the other conspirators in Lincoln's assassination stand just below the president. Looking at a detail of the figures behind the railing in the photograph presented here reveals a man with a mustache holding a top hat in his hand who could well be John Wilkes Booth.

For a discussion of the three photographs and the identity of Booth and the conspirators, see Dorothy Meserve Kunhardt and Philip B. Kunhardt Jr., Twenty Days (San Bernardino, California: Borgo Press, 1985), pp. [30]-37."

SOURCE

1.) Harold Holzer, Lincoln in the Times pp. 221-2. [this passage thanks to Vermont Humanities, Civil War Book of Days. 

Brooks Simpson at Crossroads collected together some Library of Congress images of the speech itself, to commemorate a masterpiece of presidential oratory.