Harrisburg Civil War Museum

Friday, Nov. 4th-We spent the afternoon today at the Civil War Museum in preparation for going to Gettysburg in a couple days.  What made this museum interesting was how itersonalized the war into true stories about diffent individuals on both sides.  In each room as the museum progressed in time, there would be a movie updating the lives of these people.  It really helped put it into perspective and what some of the overriding issues were at the time.  Some of the stories:
l.  A slave ran away from his young family to the North to work and try and buy his families freedom.  However, after years and years, he couldn't buy their freedom.  He joined the Union Army and fought making less money than he had been.  After the war, he reunited with him family but he had missed all of his boys' growing up years.
2.  A southern farmer who had a small farm and just two slaves.  He treated them like family and he himself didn't like the huge, money hungry plantations.  One of his sons joined the Confederacy and was killed.
3.  One young man from KY was one of three boys.  One of his brothers fought for the North, the other the south.  He didn't want any part of it so he fled to the west in search of gold.  His concience got the best of him and he came back.  One brother died in battle, the other in a prisoner of war camp.  He was shunned by his town and his brothers' families as being a coward.  He felt he had no home.
4.   A woman in the south who turned her home into a hospital.  Her countenance changed greatly from the beginning to end when she saw so many young men die, and her own son was killed and her other son who was also in the army talked to her as if she were a child.

At the end of the museum, they had Abraham Lincoln (actor behind a prerecorded screen) where the children could select numerous questions from his childhood-presidency and he would answer them.  Could interview Mary Todd Lincoln and some others as well.

We hadn't realized that Grant made Lee and the Confederates do a formal  surrendering ceremony.  Also that Mary Todd Lincoln had brothers fighting in the South.  Also learned that the Quakers were the first denomination to directly oppose slavery.  In 1780, Pa abolished slavery through legislation.