Archives: Exhibitions

Fete Lafayette: A French Hero’s Tour of the American Republic

On the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of the American Revolution, the marquis de Lafayette embarked on a tour of the United States, returning for a final time to the country he helped establish and whose republican form of government he saw as a model for the rest of the world. In August 1824, Lafayette […]

Affairs of State: 118 Years of Diplomacy and Entertaining at Anderson House

Diplomacy and entertaining have always gone hand in hand in the nation’s capital. Anderson House, the headquarters of the Society of the Cincinnati, has played a historic role in that story during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries—but one that has largely gone untold. Since its opening in 1905, the mansion has been the site of […]

Pierre L’Enfant’s Vision for the American Republic

The French artist and engineer Pierre-Charles L’Enfant (1754-1825) made vital contributions to the early formation of the American nation and American identity. As a foreign volunteer during the Revolutionary War and, later, as a citizen of the new nation, L’Enfant created imagery, architecture and city landscapes that memorialized America’s republican principles of liberty and civic […]

Saving Soldiers: Medical Practice in the Revolutionary War

American military doctors who joined the cause for independence faced formidable odds. Of the 1,400 medical practitioners who served in the Continental Army, only about ten percent had formal medical degrees. The majority of the rest had learned their practice through an apprenticeship with an established physician. Most were young men at the beginning of […]

America’s First Veterans

Our commitment to the veterans of our time is a legacy of the American Revolution and our commitment, two hundred years ago, to honor and care for America’s first veterans. Over a quarter of a million American men served in the armed forces that won our independence. Between eighty and ninety thousand of them served […]