The tasteflessness of using such an admittedly exciting video is highlighted in the use of a notorious excerpt of African-American troops played, almost everyone knows, by whites in blackface attacking an isolated cabin full of valiant Southern men and terrified women. Other images are less disturbing, but remain problematic. First Bull Run battlefield. Photograph taken in 1862. The Library of Congress.
F rom the standpoint of the user rather than the historian there are also problems.
The window displaying videos and other graphics is too small, taking up less than one-fourth of the screen. Links tend to be redundant. It also seems as though the creators tired of their project. After including a number of links for the first three years in the chronology section, they include only two in 1865, including one on General George A. Custer unrelated to the final months of the war. Yet the material is not integrated particularly well.