Garry Adelman – Lessons in History
Lessons in History with Garry Adelman Saturday, August 22, 2026 | 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. The National Civil War Museum is pleased to welcome renowned Civil War historian, author, and speaker Garry Adelman as part of our popular Lessons in History lecture series. The Civil War in Detail Join the American Battlefield Trust and the Center for Civil War Photography's Garry Adelman for an exploration of the largely unseen buried deep within Civil War photographs. Most of the roughly 10,000 documentary Civil War photographs were recorded on large glass plates and most of these glass plates have survived the ravages of time, These glass plates negatives are at least 30x larger than 35mm negatives and unlike today’s digital cameras, the hi-resolution digital scans of these plates do not substantially pixelate upon zooming in. The details that emerge are as broad and varied as the war itself. From pickle jar labels to battlefield features, pets, games, engineering, technology, celebrity lookalikes, all come into sharper relief. Most moving are the details that reveal humanity among Civil War-era people--young, old, black, white, male female, which can have the unexpected effect of fostering sympathy for, and less judgment of, the people of the […]
