Buffalo Soldiers West
African-American soldiers on the western frontier are the focus of an exhibit at the Nebraska History Museum in Lincoln. Buffalo Soldiers West, on loan from the Colorado ...
Civil War
What We Found
The Army’s Achilles’ Heel in the Civil War Plains Campaigns of 1864-65
On August 18, 1864, after hastily re-mustering at Omaha from their veteran furloughs, the men of the First Nebraska Volunteer Cavalry left for Fort Kearny. Instead of ...
Summer along the Trail
Cavalrymen escorting the overland stagecoach, a duty that Scherneckau often described. From Frank A. Root and William E. Connelley, The Overland Stage to California ...
Nebraska and the Civil War: Why the Story Matters
Nebraska has a rich Civil War legacy, according to James E. Potter, senior research historian at the Nebraska State Historical Society. Potter and Edith Robbins edited ...
Miles, Mules, and Men: The Forgotten Front of the Civil War
Note: the word Indian is used instead of Native American as it was the norm at the time.
Imagine your car. Now consider the amount of gas that it requires to keep it ...
Seeing Lincoln: Nebraska Civil War Veterans Remember
This colorful GAR badge is from Hastings, Nebraska. NSHS 13000-3348 (at left).
Abraham Lincoln’s birthday in 1925 was celebrated by the History Club of Kearney State ...
The First Nebraska Regiment’s Baptism of Fire, 1862
Counterattack of Gen. Lew Wallace’s division at the Battle of Fort Donelson, Tennessee, February 15, 1862. From Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, March 15, 1862 ...
The Death of Col. William McCord, First Nebraska Volunteer Infantry
April 6-7 (2012) marks the 150th anniversary of the 1862 Battle of Shiloh (aka Pittsburg Landing) in Tennessee, one of two major Civil War battles in which the First ...
Should Casler’s Grave Be Decorated?
By 1929 the ranks of Civil War veterans were thinning. Each year Nebraska cemeteries saw more old soldiers’ graves bedecked with flowers on Decoration Day, as Memorial ...
The Fort McPherson National Cemetery
Photographer Solomon D. Butcher’s view of Memorial Day at Fort McPherson National Cemetery in 1911. NSHS RG2608-2926-b (right).
The approach of Memorial Day calls to ...
Nebraska Cowboys of the Open Range
The American cowboy has come to symbolize bravery, justice, and the nostalgic freedom of the Wild West. But real cowboys didn’t spend all their time fighting bandits and ...
The Changing Image of George Armstrong Custer
Lt. Col. George Custer was once considered “the model of a Christian warrior.” In the 1870s, poets called him heroic, splendid and glorious. One magazine editor called ...
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