Currier and Ives; Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

Next week, the black and gold theater glasses Lincoln is believed to have used the night before his death are going back on the auction block, where experts think they could fetch as much as $700,000.

The glasses are part of a June 17 Sotheby’s auction in New York that will include pricey Civil War items such as a handwritten letter from Robert E. Lee discussing his resignation from the U.S. Army and a flag from the famous Confederate warship CSS Alabama.

As we commence our sesquicentennial retrospection on the Civil War, it is worth remembering that much of the enthusiasm for the anniversary derives from Burns’ film, which first aired on public television just over 20 years ago. Over the course of nine parts and 11 hours, Burns’ camera peers into thousands of ghostly faces and pans across faded images of body-strewn battlefields guided by David McCullough’s stately baritone and Foote’s oracular drawl. All the while, the unmistakable, melancholy strains of the series’ theme, “Ashokan Farewell” ring out—at times, it seems, from the nation’s collective heartstrings. Running on consecutive nights at the height of network television’s new season in the fall of 1990 (when network television’s new season still mattered), the series became an unlikely hit. Some 40 million people chose to forego Cheers, Roseanne, The Wonder Years, and America’s Funniest Home Videos for a PBS documentary featuring nothing more than old photographs, footage of empty battle fields, and talking heads they likely had never heard of.

This Slate piece is somewhat uncharitable but it does serve to remind us to think critically about the war and how we perceive it.  Burns’s film succeeds more often than not and despite its flaws the documentary holds up quite well two decades on.  Moreover, much of the interest in the Civil War since the early 1990s is attributable to Burns and his work.  Not such a bad thing.

The other day I finally made it to the “Honoring Their Sacrifice” exhibit at Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery.

One of the most distinctive items was this Confederate field piece.  It is easily recognizable as such because of the short barrel.  Because raw materials were at a premium in the South during the war the Confederate States of America scrimped by making field pieces with shorter tubes.

There was also this Union piece.  Charles Wainwright, an artillerist in the Army of the Potomac, is interred at Green-Wood.  Wainwright was a favorite of General Henry Jackson Hunt, the dean of Civil War artillery, and served the Union cause throughout the conflict.  He was also the author of A Diary of Battle: The Personal Journals of Colonel Charles S. Wainwright, 1861–1865, one of the best personal accounts of the war.

Trivia question:  What is the only regiment to have three monuments at Gettysburg?

Answer:  The 14^th Brooklyn.

Their regimental commander, Colonel Fowler, too is buried in Green-Wood.

Here is yours truly in front of the 14^th monument at the railroad cut in Gettysburg.

These headstones will eventually be placed on the grounds, just like the thousands already laid during the cemetery’s ongoing project.

Those of the Prentiss brothers are just two of them.

Clifton Kennedy Prentiss, USA

William S. Prentiss, CSA

The soldiers and sailors monument has also been restored and is another “must see.”

If you intend to go, you had better act fast.  The exhibit ends this Sunday, June 12^th.

On my list of destinations for Summer 2011 is the African Burial Ground in Lower Manhattan.