Type: Exhibition caption

Detail: Washington Roebling's mood approached despair during the seemingly endless siege of Petersburg. As he wrote to his wife Emily: "People talk about getting used to fighting and to battles, but I don't see it in that light, and the more experience I have the worse it gets....They must put fresh steam on the man factories up North; the demand down here for killing purposes is far ahead of the supply; thank God however for this consolation that when the last man is killed the war will be over."

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."