notice A appeared in a 1909
“A People’s Contest: Struggles for Nation and Freedom in Civil War America,” the Museum’s flagship exhibit at its Tredegar Iron Works site, features more than 500 artifacts, most from its own rich collections. Exhibit labels and even supplemental digital media don’t allow sufficient space to relate all the stories the artifacts tell or to explore the historically significant themes that the artifacts and their histories illuminate. This is the first in a series of articles offering deeper histories of selected artifacts on display in “A People’s Contest.”
issue of the Union veteran’s newspaper, The National Tribune: “Comrade C.K. Leach, Cambridge, Vt., has a Confederate canteen on which is the name of C. Palfrey, C.S.A. on one side; on the other side a Confederate flag. He will be pleased to hear from Palfrey or his relatives.” Amazingly, Charles Palfrey of New Orleans knew the answer. It was his.
This connection, made 44 years after the close of the war, capped a remarkable career for this canteen that not only witnessed so much, but also whose owners themselves witnessed so many momentous events in the Civil War era. We don’t know exactly how Palfrey acquired the canteen (finding or capturing and using enemy equipage was a common occurrence during the American Civil
"my rebel canteen" THE STORY OF AN OBJECT AND THE MEN WHO USED IT B Y C H R I S TO P H E R G R A H A M
T H E A M E R I C A N C I V I L WA R M U S E U M
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