Overview The 1940s witnessed the worst military conflict in world history. Out of more than 70 million combatants from 70 different countries, the editors at Digital History estimate about 17 million dead, including about 400,000 American military personnel out of…
Category: Military
1910s
The first decades of the twentieth century witnessed many sometimes-wrenching changes, and perhaps no decade was more profoundly revolutionary for the United States and the world than the 1910s. During this decade, American women finally gained the right to vote and…
1860s
Overview When Booker T. Washington recalled the outbreak of the Civil War, he claimed that “every slave on our plantation felt and knew that, though other issues were discussed, the primal one was that of slavery.” Washington’s memory of life as young slave…
ESSAY –Election Day 1944
In Fall 2010, Dickinson College student Ben Lyman explored the challenges of soldier voting during the 1944 presidential election. The GI and the Ballot: Election Day 1944
IMAGE –Revere’s Boston Massacre Engraving
This famous engraving by Paul Revere depicting the riot in Boston on March 5, 1770, which resulted in the deaths of five colonists (including Crispus Attucks), what the patriot artisan calls here, “The Bloody Massacre perpetrated in King Street, Boston…
COLLECTION –Their Own Words
The Dickinson Library has digitized over 34,000 pages of text (both published and unpublished) that were written by Dickinsonians from the 18th,19th, and 20th centuries. The wide-ranging collection covers numerous topics, but the collection is especially strong for the following figures:…
VIDEO –Interview on Sherman’s March
In this 2008 interview conducted at Dickinson College, historian Mark Neely was asked whether Sherman’s March to the Sea in 1864 and across the Carolinas in 1865 were examples of total war. He denied that they were and tried to…
VIDEO –Confederate Family
The National Civil War Museum in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania holds a series of remarkable wartime letters from a Texas farmer who served in the Confederate army. William Elisha Stoker described life in the army and openly expressed his concerns about the…
VIDEO –Civil War Documentaries
In 2011, Dickinson students and staff at the House Divided Project produced two documentary short films to help commemorate the upcoming 150th anniversary of the American Civil War. “From Carlisle to Andersonville” by John Osborne and Don Sailer offered the…
VIDEO –Panels on Presidents at War
A wide range of experts participated in a series of panels in summer 2014 for on the challenges facing American presidents at war. The first panel at the New America Foundation in Washington DC focused on the constitutionality of…