Welcome to Things Worth Remembering, in which writers recall wisdom from the past that we should commit to heart. In today’s edition, Dominic Green tells the story of a mural that was painted in the U.S. Capitol during the American Civil War—and of the poem it was based on.
It was the first major clash of the American Civil War. In the rolling hills of northern Virginia, some 60,000 soldiers gathered to fight the First Battle of Bull Run. Nearly 5,000 of them would become casualties. Up and down the country, a divided society realized that a long and bloody conflict lay ahead.
The month was July, the year 1861. Thirty miles to the east, in Washington, D.C., a middle-aged German artist climbed a ladder in the Capitol Building—and started painting a mural.