Did you know that the Union prisoners of the Civil War played baseball?
Early in the war, prisoners formed competing teams, sometimes including the guards. A photo of inmates at Salisbury, N.C. depicts the game in Smithsonian Civil War: Inside the National Collection, a new book at the South Carolina State Library featuring more than 500 items from thirteen Smithsonian museums and archives. The book makes that traumatic era come alive in a way that words cannot convey. The Smithsonian museum, the "Castle" in Washington, D.C., was in existence and used as a national research center at the height of the Civil War, and has had much of the collection since the days and years just following the war. Items that have never been included in Smithsonian exhibit books include an early portrait of John Brown, weapons that Brown and his men carried, making the mythic past more real. Stop by and browse through this and other new books at the South Carolina State Library.
