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One hundred and fifty years ago today, President Abraham Lincoln signed into law a Congressional act establishing a Department of Agriculture. Lincoln had told Congress an agricultural bureau would suffice but enthusiastic lawmakers wanted a department instead.

Five days later, Lincoln would sign the Homestead Act that provided 160 acres of public land to any American who was the head of a family and was over 21 years old.

(Associated Press)

Three of the more than 1,300 memorials at Gettysburg National Military Park will be given a thorough cleaning and polishing during June, according to the National Park Service.

The work will necessitate closing the upper observation decks and first floor of the battlefield’s much-visited State of Pennsylvania Monument between about June 8 and June 28. The other, smaller monuments — the New York State Monument in the Soldiers’ National Cemetery and the State of Vermont Monument on Hancock Avenue — are scheduled for work between June 4 and June 6.

The Civil War Trust , state of Virginia and the Northern Regional Park Authority have joined forces to protect the five-acre Fort Defiance section of the Middleburg Battlefield. The project was announced Wednesday at a joint press conference in Middleburg.

Map of Battle of Middlefield (Courtesy Civil War Trust)

Located on busy Rt. 50, an important transportation road both during the Civil War and now, the five-acre property includes an antebellum manor-house-turned-tavern, blacksmith house and shop. It played a key role in the successful efforts by the Confederates to keep Union forces from interfering with the Army of Northern Virginia as it moved through the Blue Ridge Mountains heading for Maryland in 1863.

The sprawling Cedar Creek Battlefield in Middletown, Va. now has its very own app, thanks to the Civil War Trust . This is the sixth free battlefield app for the Trust and maybe the most necessary one because the Battle of Cedar Creek , on Oct, 19, 1864, played out over eight square miles and across modern day I-81. There were also two distinct parts of the battle: a Confederate victory in the morning and a Union victory in the afternoon.

The app takes on all these challenges with multiple features including video segments from well-versed historians, period and modern pictures and a detailed topographical map. A GPS navigation guide resolves the multiple sites problem and makes finding them easy by numbering each place, some several miles apart.

The app  is available for iPhone and Android users.

Included on the tour are two parcels the Trust expects to purchase very soon, which will then be passed on to the National Park Service. When that happens, the park service will begin to construct parking areas and pathways. One is the 8th Vermont Regiment monument .and the other is the place where Major General Philip H. Sheridan was able to rally his retreating soldiers and then begin a counterattack to successfully reclaim the lost land.

Other sites are owned by one of five partner organizations that make up the country’s first public-private national park, the Cedar Creek and Belle Grove National Historical Park. The partners — the Trust, the park service, the Cedar Creek Battlefield Foundation , the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation — cooperated on the project so all the land preserved by the individual partners is included in the app, creating a unified interpretation of the area.

The Trust expects to continue creating apps; the next two planned are for Petersburg and Second Manassas.

On April 24, the United States Postal Service will issue two new Forever stamps for the second year of its ongoing commemoration of the Civil War. The 1862 battles of New Orleans (April 24-25) and Antietam (Sept. 17) are featured for this year. The series will continue through 2015.

The Battle of New Orleans stamp is a reproduction of an 1862 colored lithograph by Currier & Ives titled, “The Splendid Naval Triumph on the Mississippi, April 24, 1862,” depicting dark ships, great puffs of white smoke from their canons and bright red sheets of fire as some are hit.

In contrast, the stamp for the Battle of Antietam, also known as the Battle of Sharpsburg, is a reproduction of an 1887 watercolor by Thure de Thilstrup that is done in earth tones with layers of white smoke blanketing most of the scene. There is little color save for the muted green grass in the foreground and an American flag seen off in the distance. It is from a series of prints commissioned by Boston publisher Louis Pang & Co. in the 1880s to commemorate the war.

The stamps will be available in sheets of 12.