INDIANAPOLIS, IN.- A new exhibition that looks at the end of the Civil War and the death of Abraham Lincoln within the context of Victorian America’s approach to human mortality opened at the Indiana State Museum.

More than 100 rarely seen artifacts and documents are being displayed through July 5, 2015, in So Costly a Sacrifice: Lincoln and Loss.

“Coinciding with the sesquicentennial of the end of the Civil War and Lincoln’s assassination, this exhibition examines the shared experiences of the time,” said Dale Ogden, chief curator of cultural history. “History is too often presented as names and dates and places. Lincoln and Loss explores how these monumental historical events affected the lives of real people, from ordinary citizens to the President of the United States, and how they tried to make sense of what was happening around them.”

Featuring objects from the Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection and the Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites core collection, Lincoln and Loss allows visitors to view the things people kept to help them through the process of loss, mourning and memory. Visitors can explore how Hoosiers and the American people experienced mortality, the unprecedented carnage of the Civil War and the most famous funeral of the century.

The 3,500-square-foot exhibition includes a Confederate artillery shell that hit Colonel Eli Lilly’s troops near Chattanooga, artifacts related to death and Victorian mourning and the last portrait of Lincoln painted from life.

Key Facts

• 2015 marks the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War, as well as the end on the Lincoln administration, which culminated with the President’s assassination.

• In the mid-19th century, death was a common and familiar aspect of human existence, as had always been the case. During the Civil War era, nearly 3 in 10 children did not live past the age of 5, and the death of parents, siblings, spouses, children and other close relatives and friends was a normal experience.

• Once a child – particularly a male child – reached adolescence, however, there was a reasonable expectation that the individual would lead a relatively long life. For a person to reach their 50s, 60s, 70s, and even older was not rare; although childbearing remained a very dangerous proposition for women well into the 20th century.

• The Civil War changed this equation in a profound way. Suddenly, otherwise healthy young men were dying by the tens-of-thousands. More Americans were killed in one day at Antietam than had been killed in all of the country’s previous wars combined, and more than twice that number died in the 3-day battle at Gettysburg.

• At least 620,000 people died in the Civil War, approximately 2% of the 1860 population; the equivalent of 7,000,000 deaths in 2014, and more than the nation's loss in all its other wars, from the Revolution through Vietnam combined.

• As would be expected, such carnage had a powerful impact on the American psyche. Notions as fundamental as the meaning of life and the nature of God were up for debate among the country’s general population, in many cases for the first time.

• Just as the conflagration began to ebb, the president was murdered. The man who had led the nation through its most wrenching crisis became one of its final martyrs. Again, a great national reflection on the whys and what-ifs of the struggle ensued. The need to understand what had been gained and what had been lost was overwhelming.

• The trauma of Lincoln’s murder (he was the 1st US president to be assassinated and most Americans had believed that such atrocities were reserved for savages and a depraved Europe) was met with commemorations that took on religious, even messianic, qualities. Honest Abe morphed from Father Abraham, to The Savior of the Nation, to The Martyr President.

• The end of the Civil War and the death of Abraham Lincoln is being examined within the context of Victorian America’s approach to human mortality. Among the aspects of this collective experience to be considered are the kinds of keepsakes and icons that people collect to help them through the process of loss, mourning, and memory.

• Over 100 artifacts from the Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection and the Indiana State Museum’s core collection of cultural artifacts are being displayed in this exhibition. Visitors are encouraged to explore the ways in which Hoosiers and all Americans dealt with basic human attitudes during a time of monumental historic events. Perhaps, in the process, they may gain some insight into how we deal with loss, mourning and memory today.