As COVID-19 deaths spiked in 2020, Suzanne Firstenberg’s public art installation "In America: How could this happen…"
Museum Artifacts

Grade Range:
5-12
Resource Type(s):
Artifacts, Primary Sources
Date Posted:
12/28/2010
Cap worn by Landsman Nathan Ives of the USS Kearsarge.
The CSS Alabama was a 1,050-ton screw steam sloop of war. Built in Liverpool, England, it took to sea as a merchant ship, but on August 24, 1862, it rendezvoused with a supply ship and was outfitted for war. For th

Grade Range:
5-12
Resource Type(s):
Artifacts, Primary Sources
Date Posted:
9/1/2010
This crumpled piece of exterior sheathing was recovered from the debris pile of the World Trade Center after the building collapsed following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Grade Range:
5-12
Resource Type(s):
Artifacts, Primary Sources
Date Posted:
12/17/2010
In 1855 Secretary of War Jefferson Davis was instrumental in the creation of two regiments of cavalry. It was recommended that the cavalry have a distinctive hat; it is sometimes called the Jeff Davis hat. It also was referred to as the Hardee hat, after William Joseph Hardee, an officer of the 2

Grade Range:
5-12
Resource Type(s):
Artifacts, Primary Sources
Date Posted:
12/28/2010
The LeMat revolver was a favorite of famous high-ranking Confederate officers, such as J. E. B. Stuart.

Grade Range:
5-12
Resource Type(s):
Artifacts, Primary Sources
Date Posted:
12/30/2010
Union belt buckle found on the battlefield at Winchester, Virginia.

Grade Range:
5-12
Resource Type(s):
Artifacts, Primary Sources
Date Posted:
12/23/2010
On April 21, 1861, Virginians claimed an abandoned navy yard at Norfolk, Virginia. There they found the sunken hull of the burned USS Merrimack. The Merrimack was raised and on June 23, 1861 the Honorable S. R. Mallory, Confederate secretary of the navy, ordered it to be converted to an ironclad.

Grade Range:
5-12
Resource Type(s):
Artifacts, Primary Sources
Date Posted:
12/17/2010
Captain George B. McClellan toured Europe with a military commission looking at new military tactics. He returned and developed a new modified cavalry saddle. In 1859, the U.S. War Department adopted the McClellan saddle. They remained the standard issue throughout the history of the horse cavalr

Grade Range:
5-12
Resource Type(s):
Artifacts, Primary Sources
Date Posted:
12/15/2010
Continental army uniform coat worn by Colonel Peter Gansevoort Jr. of the 3rd Regiment of the New York Continental Line. He wore this coat during his command of Fort Stanwix, New York, in 1777.

Grade Range:
5-12
Resource Type(s):
Artifacts, Primary Sources
Date Posted:
11/30/2010
This artifact is one of three known surviving components of a suite of four, and possibly five, colors carried by the Second Regiment of Continental Light Dragoons during the Revolutionary War. Although no definitive order has survived specifying the number of colors to be carried by a regiment o

Grade Range:
5-12
Resource Type(s):
Artifacts, Primary Sources
Date Posted:
12/28/2010
Model 1842 Harpers Ferry percussion musket had a smoothbore barrel. After the adoption of the .58-caliber minie bullet in 1855, musket barrels were rifled.