America’s Must-See Civil War Sites

America’s Must-See Civil War Sites: Washington, D.C.

 

One hundred fifty years ago, the United States was plunging inexorably into the Civil War, in which more than 600,000 Americans died — almost as many as all other U.S. wars combined. The war’s sesquicentennial is drawing travelers to numerous sites around the country that commemorate the conflict; what follows are a baker’s dozen of the best. There is no more meaningful place to start — or finish — measuring the weight of America’s worst war than the beautiful monument to Abraham Lincoln that anchors one end of the National Mall in Washington, D.C. And to consider Lincoln’s charge at Gettysburg, which still rings today: “…To be dedicated to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus nobly advanced.”