From a soldier's diary (with the pencil still attached) to John Brown's pike, from the Emancipation Proclamation to a Confederate Palmetto flag—and the leaves from Abraham Lincoln's bier—this is a unique and surprisingly intimate look at the Civil War through 50 artifacts in the collection of the New-York Historical Society, illustrated in color photos and reproductions. Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer sheds new light on the United States at that time and on the war itself by examining such items as a daguerreotype of an elderly, dignified ex-slave, whose unblinking stare still mesmerizes; a soldier's footlocker still packed with its contents; and Grant's handwritten terms of surrender at Appomattox.