You are standing in front of a graphic panel titled “Civil War: The Confederacy.” To your left is a doorway leading to sections three and six of the exhibition (Who Lived in This House? and SERC’s Story). To your right is a large doorway leading to section five of the exhibition: From Emancipation to Jim Crow.

The panel in front of you includes text and four images.

A quote at the top of the panel reads:

“Contee, shot through both legs, raised himself from the ground and said ‘Colonel, I have a Sergeant and two men and the enemy is retreating.’”
—Confederate officer Richard Snowden Andrews

The main text reads:

CIVIL WAR:
The Confederacy

Joining the Confederacy
Although Maryland was a slaveholding state, it did not secede from the Union. While more than 60,000 Marylanders fought for the Union, approximately 25,000 joined the Confederacy. Among them were John Poole Sellman and brothers Charles and Richard Contee.

One section of secondary text reads:

Wounded in Battle
Lieutenant Charles Contee, who lived on the neighboring Java plantation, served in the Maryland Line of the Confederate Army. He was wounded in both legs while trying to hold a bridge during the Second Battle of Winchester in June 1863.

A black-and-white photo shows a portrait of John Poole Sellman wearing his Confederate uniform.

Another photo shows the State of Maryland Monument at Gettysburg National Military Park, which serves as a reminder that the Civil War pitted “brother against brother and friend against friend.”

Another section of secondary text reads:

Contraband
In 1861, the federal government declared escaped slaves to be “contraband of war” if their labor had been used to help the Confederacy in any way. By 1863, approximately 10,000 former slaves had escaped to Washington, D.C., primarily from Maryland and Virginia. Many worked as laborers for the Union cause.
An accompanying black-and-white photo shows a portrait of Confederate Sergeant A. M. Chandler of Mississippi with his slave Silas. Confederate soldiers sometimes brought their slaves with them to war. Some slaves fled across the Union lines to freedom.

A background image at the bottom of the panel shows a color print of Confederate commander Robert E. Lee with Confederate generals.