most celebrated is the one to Douglass in Rochester, where he resided and published his newspaper, the North Star.
The final scenes of "An Irrepressible Conflict" poignantly reflect achievements and challenges in advancing the civil-rights cause beyond the war. In Buffalo in 1905, W.E.B. Du Bois founded the Niagara Movement, laying the groundwork for the NAACP's birth in Manhattan only a few years later. A photograph captioned "a flag announcing a lynching was flown from the widows of the NAACP headquarters on 5th Avenue in New York City, 1936" is juxtaposed with a 1920s Klan robe and hood from Greene County, N.Y.
The exhibition reveals New York not only as indispensable to the Union (and to its ultimate victory) but also as essential to the continued pursuit of justice among the formerly enslaved and their descendants. It admirably realizes its objective: To establish New York's significance in the Civil War and its lasting battle for freedom.
Mr. Heffner is a writer in New York.