Civil War Washington Collaboration

FAIN: RZ-51183-10

University of Nebraska, Lincoln (Lincoln, NE 68503-2427)
Kenneth J. Winkle (Project Director: November 2009 to May 2016)

Development of Civil War Washington, an online set of databases and other scholarly tools, and preparation for print publication of a collection of essays. (36 months)

An interdisciplinary team of scholars at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln seeks support from the National Endowment for the Humanities to significantly advance our collaborative work analyzing the transformation of Washington, D.C., during the Civil War. As the strategic and symbolic seat of the Union war effort, the city became the hub of the wartime antislavery movement and the locus of presidential and executive initiatives to promote emancipation and civil rights for African Americans. It was the destination for tens of thousands of fugitive slaves and the site of a half dozen of the most watched contraband camps and freedom villages in the nation. We argue that the wartime role of the nation's capital in attracting antislavery leaders and fugitive slaves, stimulating emancipation and equal rights, and experimenting in post-emancipation social systems has been overlooked, underestimated, and understudied.