Civil War

It seems like a new biography of President Abraham Lincoln comes out every few years, trying to discern new perspectives of his time and character. Lincoln himself didn't write much about his life, so what he did put down on paper has an outsized importance.

Happy birthday Abraham Lincoln. He’s 216. The McLean County Museum of History is hallmarking Lincoln’s Feb. 12 birthday with the start of a coloring contest to celebrate Lincoln and work on a mural showing a famous speech he made in Bloomington.

Christmas in America wasn't always the huge festive cultural movement we know today. The Puritans made the celebration of Christmas illegal. They thought such demonstrations were sacrilegious.

The county board rejected the proposal as inappropriate for the rules of the area. Separately, the board also approved a pay rise for public health nurses and zoning for Rivian's expansion plan.

Alpheus Pike campaigned in the eastern theater of the war and, after two years and nine months of service, was captured in May 1864 at a battle near Drewry’s Bluff in the Bermuda Hundred campaign and was sent to a notorious Confederate prison camp.

Simon Malone fled his native Mississippi and settled in Normal during the Civil War, and later fought for the Union Army that helped him flee as a fugitive slave.

Most people in Bloomington-Normal know David Davis as the campaign manager for Abe Lincoln. Most know him as the guy who had a big mansion built on the…

Andrew Jackson Smith was born a slave in Kentucky in 1842, the probable son of a slave holder. He escaped to the Union Army, became the servant of an…