History Commons^™

Democracy's Shield: Voices Of Wwii, Michael J. Birkner, Grace E. Gallagher, Rachel I. Main

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

Based on a body of 700 oral history interviews archived at Gettysburg College, Democracy's Shield relates the American military experience through the voices of those who served – from early awareness of the conflict in Europe and East Asia to the dropping of the atomic bomb, victory, occupation and homecoming.

The text is illustrated with images of artifacts from the library's Special Collections.

Table of Contents

Foreword
Introduction
Portents of War
Pearl Harbor
Draft Status and Volunteering
Exams, Induction, Training
Heading to the Front
Attitudes about the Enemy
Race, Gender and the War Effort
GI Joe
Aboard Ship
Up in …

The Worlds Of James Buchanan And Thaddeus Stevens: Place, Personality And Politics In Civil War America, Michael J. Birkner, Randall M. Miller, John W. Quist

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens examines the political interests, relationships, and practices of two of the era’s most prominent politicians as well as the political worlds they inhabited and informed. Building upon previous scholarship on James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens, the contributors track their personal connections across lines of gender and geography and underline the importance of elementary facts of political association—such as with whom one ate and conversed on a regular basis, the complex social milieu of Washington, and the role of rumor—in determining relationships and political allegiances. The essays in this volume collectively invite further …

The War For The Common Soldier: How Men Thought, Fought, And Survived In Civil War Armies, Peter S. Carmichael

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

How did Civil War soldiers endure the brutal and unpredictable existence of army life during the conflict? This question is at the heart of Peter S. Carmichael's sweeping new study of men at war. Based on close examination of the letters and records left behind by individual soldiers from both the North and the South, Carmichael explores the totality of the Civil War experience--the marching, the fighting, the boredom, the idealism, the exhaustion, the punishments, and the frustrations of being away from families who often faced their own dire circumstances. Carmichael focuses not on what soldiers thought but rather how …

Reconstruction: A Concise History, Allen C. Guelzo

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

The era known as Reconstruction is one of the unhappiest times in American history. It succeeded in reuniting the nation politically after the Civil War but in little else. Conflict shifted from the battlefield to the Capitol as Congress warred with President Andrew Johnson over just what to do with the South. Johnson's plan of Presidential Reconstruction, which was sympathetic to the former Confederacy and allowed repressive measures such as the "black codes," would ultimately lead to his impeachment and the institution of Radical Reconstruction. While Reconstruction saw the ratification of the 14th and 15th Amendments, expanding the rights and …

Common Cause: An Oral History Of The World War Ii Home Front, Devin Mckinney, Michael J. Birkner

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

In excerpts drawn from Musselman Library's Oral History Archive, the World War II years are recalled by dozens of the men and women—adults, teenagers, children—who endured them on the home front. The home front experience was by turns exhilarating, fearsome, depressing, and banal. Some civilians had it relatively easy, while others had it hard. Righteous confidence was offset by looming uncertainty, patriotism was often buttressed by bigotry, and the joys of victory and reunion were shadowed by irreplaceable losses. In this volume, the speech of ordinary citizens in extraordinary times is augmented by abundant illustration, much of it in …

Encounters With Eisenhower: Personal Reminiscences Collected To Mark The 125th Anniversary Of The Birth Of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Michael J. Birkner, Devin Mckinney

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

The general who orchestrated the greatest amphibian invasion in history, and led Allied forces in the great crusade to crush Adolf Hitler’s armies, subsequently became a popular two-term president of the United States. In the annals of American success stories, it’s hard to beat the life that Dwight D. Eisenhower made.

Yet this heroic figure was also a “natural man,” as one of the contributors to this volume of personal reminiscences suggests. Lady Dill was referring to Eisenhower’s humanity and lack of pretense. Unlike other leading figures of his day—including a certain five-star general who orchestrated the American island-hopping campaign …

Outbreak In Washington, Dc: The 1857 Mystery Of The National Hotel Disease, Kerry S. Walters

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

The National was once the grandest hotel in the capital. In 1857, it twice hosted President-elect James Buchanan and his advisors, and on both occasions, most of the party was quickly stricken by an acute illness. Over the course of several months, hundreds fell ill, and over thirty died from what became known as the National Hotel disease. Buchanan barely recovered enough to give his inauguration speech. Rumors ran rampant across the city and the nation. Some claimed that the illness was born of a sewage “effluvia,” while others darkly speculated about an assassination attempt by either abolitionists or southern …

George M. Leader, 1918-2013, Michael J. Birkner, Charles H. Glatfelter

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

George M. Leader (1918-2013), a native of York, Pennsylvania, rose from the anonymous status of chicken farmer's son and Gettysburg College undergraduate to become, first a State Senator, and then the 36th governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. A steadfast liberal in a traditionally conservative state, Leader spent his brief time in the governor's office (1955-1959) fighting uphill battles and blazing courageous trails. He overhauled the state's corrupt patronage system; streamlined and humanized its mental health apparatus; and, when a black family moved into the white enclave of Levittown, took a brave stand in favor of integration.

After politics, Leader …

Gettysburg: The Last Invasion, Allen C. Guelzo

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

From the acclaimed Civil War historian, a brilliant new history—the most intimate and richly readable account we have had—of the climactic three-day battle of Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863), which draws the reader into the heat, smoke, and grime of Gettysburg alongside the ordinary soldier, and depicts the combination of personalities and circumstances that produced the greatest battle of the Civil War, and one of the greatest in human history.

Of the half-dozen full-length histories of the battle of Gettysburg written over the last century, none dives down so closely to the experience of the individual soldier, or looks so closely …

Lincoln Speeches, Allen C. Guelzo, Richard Beeman

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

As president, Abraham Lincoln endowed the American language with a vigor and moral energy that have all but disappeared from today’s public rhetoric. His words are testaments of our history, windows into his enigmatic personality, and resonant examples of the writer’s art. Renowned Lincoln and Civil War scholar Allen C. Guelzo brings together this volume of Lincoln Speeches that span the classic and obscure, the lyrical and historical, the inspirational and intellectual. The book contains everything from classic speeches that any citizen would recognize—the first debate with Stephen Douglas, the “House Divided” Speech, the Gettysburg Address, the Second Inaugural Address—to …

Fateful Lightning: A New History Of The Civil War And Reconstruction, Allen C. Guelzo

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

The Civil War is the greatest trauma ever experienced by the American nation, a four-year paroxysm of violence that left in its wake more than 600,000 dead, more than 2 million refugees, and the destruction (in modern dollars) of more than $700 billion in property. The war also sparked some of the most heroic moments in American history and enshrined a galaxy of American heroes. Above all, it permanently ended the practice of slavery and proved, in an age of resurgent monarchies, that a liberal democracy could survive the most frightful of challenges.

In Fateful Lightning, two-time Lincoln Prize-winning …

Lincoln: A Very Short Introduction, Allen C. Guelzo

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

Beneath the surface of the apparently untutored and deceptively frank Abraham Lincoln ran private tunnels of self-taught study, a restless philosophical curiosity, and a profound grasp of the fundamentals of democracy. Now, in Lincoln: A Very Short Introduction, the award-winning Lincoln authority Allen C. Guelzo offers a penetrating look into the mind of one of our greatest presidents.

If Lincoln was famous for reading aloud from joke books, Guelzo shows that he also plunged deeply into the mainstream of nineteenth-century liberal democratic thought. Guelzo takes us on a wide-ranging exploration of problems that confronted Lincoln and liberal democracy--equality, opportunity, …

To Waken Fond Memory: Moments In The History Of Gettysburg College, Anna Jane Moyer

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

Between 1975 and 1989 Anna Jane Moyer produced a series of essays for the Gettysburg College alumni magazine capturing “moments” on campus and in the town of Gettysburg since 1832. Treating people, places, and notable events over the course of the College’s first 150 years, Moyer’s sketches reached an appreciative audience at the time. But with the Gettysburg College 175th anniversary approaching, it seemed appropriate to make her writing more readily available to alumni, friends of the College, students, and scholars.

The sketches now republished in To Waken Fond Memory remind readers that the culture of a liberal arts college …

The Lincoln Enigma: The Changing Faces Of An American Icon, Gabor Boritt

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

Nearly a century and a half after his death, Abraham Lincoln remains an intrinsic part of the American consciousness, yet his intentions as president and his personal character continue to stir debate.

Now, in The Lincoln Enigma, Gabor Boritt invites renowned Lincoln scholars, and rising new voices, to take a look at much-debated aspects of Lincoln's life, including his possible gay relationships, his plan to send blacks back to Africa, and his high-handed treatment of the Constitution. Boritt explores Lincoln's proposals that looked to a lily-white America. Jean Baker marvels at Lincoln's loves and marriage. David Herbert Donald highlights …

The Presidency Of Charles E. Glassick, 1977-1989: An Appraisal, Michael J. Birkner

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

On August 1, 1977 Charles Glassick assumed his duties as president of Gettysburg College. With the 25th anniversary of that event approaching, it seemed appropriate to take stock of Glassick's accomplishments. This was an eventful presidency for Gettysburg, as the college began to identify itself less as a worthy, but modest, Lutheran institution of higher learning than as a national liberal arts college. The process of embracing a new identity was not always smooth, but under Glassick's leadership the college prospered. Gettysburg in 1989 remained committed as always to the liberal arts mission it had long espoused, but it did …

A Salutary Influence: Gettysburg College, 1832-1985, Charles H. Glatfelter

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

Written by Professor and Alumnus Dr. Charles H. Glatfelter '46, A Salutary Influence was published in 1987 in commemoration of Gettysburg College’s 150th anniversary. The two-volume set includes a detailed index at the end of the second volume.

Yonder Beautiful And Stately College Edifice : A History Of Pennsylvania Hall (Old Dorm), Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, Charles H. Glatfelter, Michael J. Birkner

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

On January 21, 1834 Thaddeus Stevens, a freshman member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives from Adams County, rose in that body to speak in favor of a bill appropriating a sum of money to the new college at Gettysburg in whose fortunes he had become deeply interested. After answering the arguments of his colleague from Adams County, who had just spoken against the bill, Stevens undertook to explain in a few words the predicament in which the fledgling college found itself: It has been chartered two years ; and organized about eighteen months. It has now ninety-eight students, without …