Public Domain

[Flanyboy]

I was considering making a view videos on youtube about various lesser well known civil war events, one such example is the Battle of Mill Springs and I was looking through the Library of Congress (excellent resource by the way). Now I know anything in the U.S. before roughly 1914 would be in the Public Domain and all the images I have found so far are that old, but it doesn't explicitly state on the Library of Congress that it is in the Public Domain. Does anyone know how exactly that works? If its made by the government usually its in the public domain to begin with anyway but if the date of its creation is over 140 years old does the site need to say its in the public domain or is it already? Anyway my commentary would probably be protected under Fair Use laws anyway but I was still curious.

I'm posting this here because the Library of Congress' home page seems to only advise you to contact them regarding copy writes when your asking for reproductions rather than just using the digital image already on their site.

[Little Powell]

You should be fine. Anything that old.. Even if someone did come after you about it, worse they would do is tell you to remove the video, but I seriously doubt that would ever happen.