Type: Exhibition caption

Detail: Writing to his father from Harper's Ferry, Washington complains: "This General [John Reese Kenly] has very queer ideas about bridges, considering that they are merely avenues by which the Rebels might get after him and are, therefore, very dangerous structures."

Type: Exhibition case

Name: Washington Roebling's Civil War

Detail: Washington Roebling of Trenton, son of engineer John A. Roebling and future builder of the Brooklyn Bridge, enlisted as a private in Company A of the New Jersey State Militia in April 1861, resigning a few months later to enlist in the Sixth New York Independent Battery. He was later promoted to the rank of sergeant, and then to second lieutenant in January 1862. During the war, he built suspension bridges, made maps, and did reconnaissance from a hot-air balloon. He saw action at the battles of Second Bull Run, Antietam, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg, where he helped to secure Little Round Top, as well as the Battle of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House, and the Crater. In 1865, he was commissioned Colonel, U.S. Volunteers, by brevet for "gallant and meritorious services during the war."