Civil War 150 Photography Exhibit Available for Preview March 24-28 before Statewide Tours

March 23, 2011 - PRLog -- The “Freedom, Sacrifice, Memory:  Civil War Sesquicentennial Exhibit” will be open for preview March 24-28 at the State Library of North Carolina at 109 E. Jones Street, Raleigh, N.C. 27601, before it launches on statewide tours.  

Soldiers in combat, women helping the war effort at home, African Americans seeking freedom, all have a place in that story and this exhibit.  Re-enactment battle scenes and a letter from a soldier dying on the battlefield are also there.  The traveling exhibit starts April 1 in West Jefferson and in Fayetteville, on western and eastern routes.  The exhibition returns to Raleigh in June 2013.

The American Civil War is called a brother’s war, and nowhere was that more true than in North Carolina. It claimed more lives than any military engagement undertaken by this country. North Carolina lost at least 35,000 soldiers, more than any other Southern state, and great hardships were suffered by those both at war and left at home.

In observance of the sesquicentennial of the Civil War (1861-1865), the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources (www.ncculture.com) has organized the "Freedom, Sacrifice, Memory: Civil War Sesquicentennial Photography Exhibit" to travel the state from April 1, 2011, through June 2013 as part of its commemoration (www.nccivilwar150.com).

Visitors will see well-known Confederate generals, women who served as Confederate spies, re-enactment images of soldiers and battles, and more. The battlefield, homefront, African Americans and women all are reflected in the exhibit.  A notebook accompanying the exhibit will offer sketches of the generals, of African Americans fleeing bondage, a woman whose home became a hospital, and other glimpses of lives from that turbulent time.

The tour will visit 49 public libraries and three history museums. It was organized through the State Library of North Carolina (http://statelibrary.ncdcr.gov/index.html), a division of the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources.  

Images were gathered from divisions within Cultural Resources, including four document images and 10 pictures from the State Archives (www.archives.ncdcr.gov), five images from the N.C. Museum of History (www.nchistorymuseum.com) and five images from Civil War-related State Historic Sites (www.nchistoricsites.org).

For more information on the exhibit and the venue tours, go to www.nccivilwar150.com or news.ncdcr.gov/2011/03/14/civil-war-150-photo-exhibit-freedom-sacrifice-memory/.

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The N.C. Department of Cultural Resources is the state agency with the mission to enrich lives and communities, and the vision to harness the state’s cultural resources to build North Carolina’s social, cultural and economic future. www.ncculture.com