New York supplied more men, money and material in the Civil War than any other state North or South, but New Yorkers responded to the Civil War in diverse and often contradictory ways. On Sunday, July 10 at 2:00 p.m. at the Cayuga Museum, Robert W. Arnold will present an illustrated lecture on New York during the Civil War.

Concentrating mainly on the home front, Arnold’s presentation will examine a sample of New Yorkers’ responses to the war and some individuals who exemplify them, all in the political, social and military contexts of that turbulent era. Arnold explores the social costs of the war as they played out in the farms and cities of the Empire State, in families, workplaces and neighborhoods.

Arnold is a career public historian, now retired from the New York State Archives. This Speakers in the Humanities event, which is free and open to the public, is made possible through the support of the New York Council for the Humanities, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The lecture is part of the Cayuga Museum’s commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War. The Cost of Freedom: Cayuga County in the Civil War is the lead exhibit at the Cayuga Museum through Labor Day weekend.

On Sunday, August 21, at 2:00 the Museum will host a lecture by Dr. Laura Free of Hobart College entitled Bullets, Belles and Bloated Bodies.

On Sunday, August 28 at 2:00, the Museum will host a guided conversation titled The Gettysburg Address Challenges America.

On Thursday, September 1, the Museum’s History Book Club will discuss Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz.