History Commons^™

Senior Reflection: Our Time As Fellows, Anika N. Jensen

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

As Jeff, Jen, and I move ever closer to commencement, we want to take a moment to reflect on our time as Civil War Institute fellows. We have been part of this fellows program for three years and spent countless hours researching topics we are passionate about, engaging with the Civil War community, and creating an active academic atmosphere for our fellow budding historians. Our time at Gettysburg may be coming to an end, but the experiences we have had here will continue to shape our futures. Here is what the CWI fellowship means to us. [excerpt]

A Divided Generation: How Anti-Vietnam War Student Activists Overcame Internal And External Divisions To End The War In Vietnam, Jeffrey L. Lauck

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

Far too often, student protest movements and organizations of the 1960s and 1970s are treated as monolithic in their ideologies, goals, and membership. This paper dives into the many divides within groups like Students for a Democratic Society and Young Americans for Freedom during their heyday in the Vietnam War Era. Based on original primary source research on the “Radical Pamphlets Collection” in Musselman Library Special Collections, Gettysburg College, this study shows how these various student activist groups both overcame these differences and were torn apart by them. The paper concludes with a discussion about what made the Vietnam War …

The Castle Of Intelligence: Camp Ritchie Maryland And The Military Intelligence Training Center During The Second World War., Kevin M. Aughinbaugh

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

Abstract: During the Second World War, Camp Ritchie, Maryland played an important role in the training of intelligence soldiers. This camp was one of the many that taught men the various ways to gather intelligence on a battlefield. From aerial photography to prisoner interrogations, soldiers learned the skills required to gather information, make sense of it, and propose plans based on what they knew about enemy troop positions and movements. These skills would be put to the test once the men graduated their six months of intensive training, and were sent abroad to assist in the war effort. Despite Camp …

Between The World And Them, Jeffrey L. Lauck

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

The first time I learned the story of the Bryan family and their Gettysburg farm was when I read Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me. For Coates, there was something poetic about the fact that the climax of the Civil War’s bloodiest and most well-known battle—a moment forever enshrined in Confederate memory thanks to the likes of William Faulknerand Ted Turner—occurred on land owned by a free black man and his family. Pickett’s Charge—the greatest symbol of Confederate martial honor in the Civil War canon—had been repulsed on property that represented so much of what its participants fought …

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 …

Ms-224: Myers-Liebegott Papers, Amy E. Lucadamo

All Finding Aids

The Myers-Liebegott Papers is a small collection, but it contains some powerful photographs and documents. The information about the Gettysburg College trip to Harlem, contained in Series 3 is particularly interesting for capturing images and information of Harlem during the late 1960s and as documentation of the social activism of the Office of the Chaplain. Copies of Forty Acres and a Mule, published by students on the Educational Program of the New York Urban League are presumably connected to this trip.

Another interesting item in this collection is a 1948 letter written by a German woman, appealing to Charles …

Perspectives On Our Past: The Killed At Gettysburg Stories Of Franz Benda And Augustus Van Horne Ellis, Ryan Bilger

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

Once again, I have spent the semester working on the Civil War Institute’s Killed at Gettysburg project. This project continues to be one with which I feel a strong connection, as I have always taken an interest in the stories of Gettysburg’s fallen. As such, I am glad to have had the opportunity to work on it again.

As before, I have focused on two soldiers in my research this spring, one an enlisted soldier in the ranks and one a regimental commander. The latter, Colonel Augustus van Horne Ellis of the 124th New York Volunteer Infantry, has a life-sized …

A Radical Idea: Charles Ellet’S Rams, Savannah Labbe

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

The political cartoon above shows an engineer named Charles Ellet attempting to get a meeting with General George McClellan. Ellet contacted many government officials and important men to try to get his ideas recognized and implemented. Ellet was born in Pennsylvania in 1810 and was inspired to become an engineer when he watched the opening of the Erie Canal. At age 20, he went to Paris to learn his craft, attending lectures for civil engineers and examining bridges, railroads, and other structures. He returned to the United States afterwards and in 1835 went to work as an assistant engineer for …

Before The Post: The Women Journalists Of The Waterford News, Anika N. Jensen

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

Long before Katharine Graham and Arianna Huffington established themselves in the traditionally male-dominated world of journalism, three women living through the uncertainty of the Civil War years broke into the field by controversial means: subversion. Lida Dutton (19), Lizzie Dutton (24), and Sarah Steer (26) were staunch Unionists of comfortable wealth living in Loudoun County, Virginia, a pocket of Unionist sentiment and abolitionist Quaker faith, in 1864 when they established the Waterford News, a pro-Union newspaper written, edited, and distributed in Confederate territory. The Waterford News provided an illustration of daily life in a southern town while simultaneously boosting morale …

James Bedell: The Inhumanity Of War, Jonathan Tracey

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

This semester, I am continuing to work on the Killed at Gettysburg digital history project. This time, I selected James T. Bedell, Private in Company F of the 7th Michigan Cavalry. I was introduced to his story while transcribing Henry Janes’ Case Book for Gettysburg National Military Park as a part of my work study program. Henry Janes was the doctor in charge of Camp Letterman, and after the war he compiled the bed cards of many soldiers treated at the hospital, creating his Case Book. Bedell’s record on a page entitled “Skull, Fractures of, with Injury of the Brain” …

The Virginia Monument’S Meaning In Memory, Jonathan Tracey

Student Publications

In the early 1900s, many people began to advocate for Confederate monuments on the battlefield at Gettysburg. However, different motivations were present. Many Northerners saw Confederate monuments as a way to further unity, while Southerners instead used the monuments to preserve a separate identity. The Virginia Memorial is a clear case of this.

God And Mr. Lincoln, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

On the day in April 1837 that Abraham Lincoln rode into Springfield, Illinois, to set himself up professionally as a lawyer, the American republic was awash in religion. Lincoln, however, was neither swimming nor even bobbing in its current. “This thing of living in Springfield is rather a dull business after all, at least it is so to me,” the uprooted state legislator and commercially bankrupt Lincoln wrote to Mary Owens on May 7th. “I am quite as lonesome here as [I] ever was anywhere in my life,” and in particular, “I’ve never been to church yet, nor probably shall …

A Whole Lot Of Blame To Go Around: The Confederate Collapse At Five Forks, Peter S. Carmichael

History Faculty Publications

While Confederate major general George E. Pickett was finishing his plate of fried fish at a shad bake, Union major general Philip H. Sheridan was devouring Pickett's command at Five Forks. The sounds of the Federal assault were supposedly silenced by abnormal atmospheric conditions called an acoustic shadow. Pickett and his luncheon companions -- Maj. Gen. Thomas Rosser and Maj. Gen. Fitzhugh Lee -- heard nothing over the sounds of conviviality, but the sudden appearance of the courier alerted the dining party to an alarming reality. This solider claimed that he was nearly shot out of his saddle by Federal …

Ms-221: Cpt. Robert L. Morris ’66 Papers, Jeffrey L. Lauck

All Finding Aids

The collection includes photographs, newspaper clippings, and other documents related to the life of Robert L. Morris ’66. Series 1 includes a scrapbook containing newspaper clippings and photographs from throughout Morris’s life, beginning with his childhood. Series 2 includes items from his life before joining the U.S. Air Force, specifically items related to his time as a student at Gettysburg College. Series 3 features photographs, awards, and other documents from his service in the U.S. Air Force through his death in 1972. Potential research interests lie in Gettysburg College’s Vietnam War connections, the personal history of Cpt. Robert L. Morris, …

Ms-222: Lt. John M. Colestock ’65 Papers, Jeffrey L. Lauck

All Finding Aids

The collection includes photographs, newspaper clippings, and other documents related to the life of John M. Colestock ’65. Series 1 contains items from Colestock’s life before joining the U.S. Navy, while Series 2 includes all items from his service with the Navy until his death in 1969. Potential research interests lie in Gettysburg College’s Vietnam War connections, the personal history of Lt. John M. Colestock, and photographs from the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War.

Special Collections and College Archives Finding Aids are discovery tools used to describe and provide access to our holdings. Finding aids include historical and biographical …

Competing Memory Camp Colt’S Place In Gettysburg History, Anika N. Jensen

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

I recently came face-to-face with the issue of relevance in my research on Camp Colt for a public history class, and in studying the tankers’ noble intentions—preserving democracy, stemming German militarization, progressing American innovation—on an equally noble battlefield, I came to an troubling impasse: should America’s first tank school, which operated on the same ground where men fell in droves during Pickett’s Charge roughly fifty years prior, be recognized to the same degree as the Battle of Gettysburg? Is there a way to justify discussing Eisenhower’s command over the fledgling tank corps, which never saw combat, in the same light …

Raising Questions: Gettysburg Rising’S Confederate Flag Forum, Olivia Ortman

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

On March 3, Gettysburg Rising–a group that encourages civic engagement by sharing information–hosted a forum on the Confederate flag. It drew a modest, yet eager crowd. The goal of the event was to create an opportunity for people to come together and share their thoughts and feelings about the flag. After Professor David Hadley delivered a brief history of the flag, the attendees took the mic. [excerpt]

Inspirations Of War: Innovations In Prosthetics After The Civil War, Savannah A. Labbe

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

In early 1861, a Confederate soldier named James Edward Hanger waited on the ground to die. Minutes before, his left leg had been shot off above the knee while he was sitting with his comrades in the loft of a barn in Philipi, Virginia. As soon as the cannonball burst through the barn, the rest of the men fled, leaving Hanger behind. He was found by enemy troops and brought to a doctor, who amputated his leg. Hanger became the first person to have a limb amputated during the Civil War. When one thinks of Civil War injuries, amputations often …

Lee And His Lieutenants: An Interview With Keith Bohannon, Ashley Whitehead Luskey

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

Over the course of this year, we’ll be interviewing some of the speakers from the upcoming 2018 CWI conference about their talks. Today we are speaking with Dr. Keith Bohannon, Professor of History at the University of West Georgia, where he teaches courses on the Civil War and Reconstruction, the Old South, and Georgia history. He is the co-editor, with Randall Allen, of Campaigning with Old Stonewall in Virginia: The Letters of Ujanirtus Allen, Company F, 21^st Regiment, Georgia Volunteer Infantry (LSU Press, 1998), and is the author of numerous essays, book reviews, and scholarly journal articles. Prior to …

Separate But Equal? Gettysburg’S Lincoln Cemetery, Savannah A. Labbe

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

The most well-known cemetery in Gettysburg is, of course, the Soldiers’ National Cemetery. Another cemetery in Gettysburg that receives less attention is the Lincoln Cemetery, currently located on Lincoln Lane. This small cemetery is home to around thirty Civil War veterans. Why were these men not buried in the Soldiers’ National Cemetery, a cemetery created for all veterans of the Civil War? The answer: they were African-American. While they were allowed to fight for their freedom, even in death, these men were still not equal to the white soldiers they fought beside. [excerpt]

Reviving The Past: The Battle Flag In The Confederate Memorial Period, Olivia Ortman

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

In the years immediately following the Civil War, the Confederate battle flag mostly disappeared from public view. In their diaries, Southerners wrote about hiding flags and other Confederate symbols for fear of Union retaliation. In most cases, Southerners intuitively understood that these symbols were now taboo, but occasionally, they stated that Union troops explicitly forbade displays of the battle flag. Some Southerners did still flaunt the flag as a means of defiance against Union troops, as mentioned in my last post, but most people quietly tucked it away. A mere five years after the war ended, though, the flag …

Ms-220: Homer W. Schweppe Papers, Abigail E. Metheny

All Finding Aids

This collection is made up of a vast variety of materials pertaining to Homer William Schweppe’s experiences during World War II. Schweppe compiled various items during his initial military service in the United States, such as his Seattle Port Officer I.D. badge and his uniform patches. There are also items from his time at Camp Ritchie, including his glossary of “Nazi Deutsch” terms and a book on the Order of Battle of the German Army, to which he contributed. Schweppe also included items he collected while overseas, such as a German Map of the D-Day Invasion area, a welcome pamphlet …

The Long Legacy Of White Citizen Police: A Recap Of The 12th Annual Gondwe Lecture, Jeffrey L. Lauck

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

Last week, the Gettysburg College Africana Studies and Economics Departments sponsored the 12th annual Derrick K. Gondwe Memorial Lectureon Social and Economic Justice. This year’s lecture featured Dr. Edward E. Baptist, a Durham, North Carolina native currently teaching in the History Department at Cornell University. His lecture, “White Predators: Hunting African Americans For Profit, From the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act to Lee’s 1863 Invasion of Pennsylvania,” painted the picture of a centuries-long instinct among white Americans to police black Americans. [excerpt]

Under The Enemy Flag: Prisoner Of War Experiences: An Interview With Angela Zombek And Michael Gray, Ashley Whitehead Luskey

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

Over the course of this year, we’ll be interviewing some of the speakers from the upcoming 2018 CWI conference about their talks. Today we are speaking with Angie Zombek, Assistant Professor of History at St. Petersburg College. Dr. Zombek is the author of numerous articles and essays, including “Paternalism and Imprisonment at Castle Thunder: Reinforcing Gender Norms in the Confederate Capital,” which appeared in the scholarly journal, Civil War History in September of 2017; “Citizenship – Compulsory or Convenient: Federal Officials, Confederate Prisoners, and the Oath of Allegiance,” in Paul J. Quigley’s edited volume, The American Civil War and the …

“The Vegetables Really Get More Tender Care”: An Introduction To Death And Dying In The Civil War, Zachary A. Wesley

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

The Victorian world was one of ceremony and order, even in death. Deathways–the practices of a society regarding death and dying–in 19thcentury America focused on elaborate rituals that earned the country the grisly distinction of possessing a “culture of death.” The American Civil War presented a four-year window in which many of these traditions were radically challenged in both the North and the South, as loved ones died anonymous deaths far from the embrace of kin. Nevertheless, the warring populations attempted to maintain important traditions even as the horrors of war surrounded them, thus allowing the deathways of the antebellum …

Spreading The Flames: The United States, Cuba, And The Fear Of Africanization, Savannah A. Labbe

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

In the years leading up to the Civil War, the fight over slavery played out in many different arenas, notably in Kansas and Nebraska. While Bleeding Kansas was arguably the most well-known and violent clash over slavery before the Civil War, there were others as well. One flash point over the question of slavery resulted from political unrest in Cuba. In the 1850s, Spain owned Cuba, an economically prosperous island with an economy based on African slave labor. However, Spain was under pressure from Great Britain to end slavery in Cuba, and because Spain was in enormous debt and was …

“Be Carefully Taught”: African Americans In Adams County In The 20th Century, Jennifer A. Simone

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

Every year over a million visitors flood Adams County, Pennsylvania to tour the famous, or rather infamous, site of the Battle of Gettysburg. While most visitors primarily come to Gettysburg to learn about the battle, many leave with understandings of the unending impact of the Civil War on race relations. However, for a town that sparks such a progressive mentality in some, Adams County, and specifically Gettysburg, is often criticized for being ‘frozen in time,’ unwilling to keep up with progressive race relations after the battle ended. A panel entitled “Black Experiences in Adams County in the 19th & 20th …

“Give Them Liberty Or Give Me Death”: The Unionist Espionage Of Elizabeth Van Lew: An Interview With Elizabeth Varon, Ashley Whitehead Luskey

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

Over the course of this year, we’ll be interviewing some of the speakers from the upcoming 2018 CWI conference about their talks. Today we are speaking with Elizabeth Varon, Associate Director of the John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History and Langbourne M. Williams Professor of American History at the University of Virginia. A specialist in the Civil War era and 19^th-century South, Varon is the author of We Mean to be Counted: White Women and Politics in Antebellum Virginia (UNC Press, 1998); Southern Lady, Yankee Spy: The True Story of Elizabeth Van Lew, A Union …

“We The Undersigned…Bind Ourselves Mutually”: Civil War Draft Resistance In Eastern Pennsylvania, Ryan D. Bilger

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

On August 6th, 1863, a group of sixteen men gathered at the East Penn Railroad depot in Millerstown, Pennsylvania, now known as Macungie, a small farming community located about seven miles southwest of Allentown. The young men met that day to create a contract with one another in anticipation of the army conscription draft, scheduled to take place in a week’s time with men between ages twenty and thirty-five eligible for selection. They created the “Millerstown Club,” agreeing “that each member of the club has to pay the sum of fifty dollars on or before the day previous to the …

The History Of Reconstruction’S Third Phase, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

There is no Society for Historians of Reconstruction. That should tell you something. There are also no Reconstruction re-enactments, and no museums teeming with artifacts of Reconstruction. Because what, after all, would there be for us to re-enact? The Memphis race massacre of May 1-3, 1866? And what artifacts would we be proud to display? Original Ku Klux Klan outfits (much more garish than the bland white-sheet versions of the 1920s)? Serial-number-identified police revolvers from the New Orleans’ Mechanics Institute killings of July 30, 1866? Looked at coldly, the dozen years that we conventionally designate as “Reconstruction” constitute the bleakest …