"Civil War Treasures from the New-York Historical Society" is the latest addition to the Library's American Memory Web site at memory.loc.gov. The online presentation contains materials drawn from 12 collections housed at the New-York Historical Society. The "Civil War Treasures" online collection is a cooperative project of the Library of Congress and the New-York Historical Society.
Founded in 1804, the New-York Historical Society houses one of the oldest research libraries and museums in the United States. Collections documenting the Civil War are a particular strength of the society.
Pictorial items in the digitized Civil War collection include 731 stereographs, more than 70 photographs from an album, 178 sketches from three different collections, 304 posters, 29 etchings of caricatures and nearly 500 envelopes with printed or embossed decoration related to Civil War events and personalities. Items from manuscript collections include the first and only issue of The Prison Times handwritten by Confederate prisoners held at Fort Delaware; 32 letters by Sarah Blunt, a nurse in military hospitals at Point Lookout, Md., and Harper's Ferry, W.Va.; and three letters by Walt Whitman. The letters complement the Library's Walt Whitman "Poet at Work" online collection.
The digitization of "Civil War Treasures from the New-York Historical Society" was made possible through the generous support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
The Mellon Foundation also supported the digitization of another American Memory Collection, the papers of author, educator and political philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906-1975). A preview of the collection debuted online in March 2001. Parts of the collection and the finding aid are now available for public access on the Library's Web site. The entire digitized collection is available to researchers in reading rooms at the Library of Congress, the new School University in New York City and the Hannah Arendt Center at the University of Oldenburg, Germany.
