Civil War Exhibit Opens the Ingram Library

Civil War artifacts and materials are currently on display at the University of West Georgia’s Ingram Library. The exhibit runs through March 2012.

The display features artifacts from the Antonio J. Waring, Jr. Archaeological Laboratory, including salvage from the sunken warship, CSS Nashville. Also on display are items from the library’s special collections. The Fannie Hargrave collection features letters and daguerreotypes of a Carroll County bride whose husband, a Confederate officer, was killed in a raid in Cedartown. In another letter, a Coweta County soldier tells a Villa Rica woman, a mother of seven children, how her Confederate soldier husband died of dysentery and measles in Mississippi.

The public is invited to an opening reception on Friday, Dec. 9, at 6 p.m. The Cowtown String Band will explore the influence of the Civil War on America’s musical heritage.

The exhibit is held in conjunction with the five-part reading and discussion series “Let’s Talk About It: Making Sense of the American Civil War,” which begins on Sunday, Jan. 15, with subsequent discussions on alternate Sunday afternoons through March 11. Keith Bohanan, UWG associate professor of history, will lead the discussions.

Participants will read; “March,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Geraldine Brooks; the anthology “America’s War”; and James M. McPherson’s “Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam.”

The exhibit and participation in the book discussion is open to the community. The first participants to register will receive free copies of the books.

To register go to: https://apps.westga.edu/limesurvey/index.php?sid=19159&lang=en.

The discussion series is made possible with a $3,000 grant from the American Library Association and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Penelope Melson Society, the library’s friends organization, provided local support for the series.

The Ingram Library is one of 65 libraries nationwide and one of four in Georgia who received grants to host the series, which will encourage participants to consider the legacy of the Civil War and emancipation.

For more information go: http://uwglibrary.wordpress.com/