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Gettysburg College

2019

Public History

Series

CWI Summer Conference

Articles 1 - 8 of 8

Full-Text Articles in History

Private Confederacies: A Review, Olivia Ortman, Cameron T. Sauers May 2019

Private Confederacies: A Review, Olivia Ortman, Cameron T. Sauers

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

For generations, notable scholars such as Gerald Linderman, Reid Mitchell and Joseph Glatthaar, have tried to understand the experience of common Civil War soldiers. With Private Confederacies, James J. Broomall makes a penetrating dive into the emotional world of elite male slaveholders, focusing on how the Civil War, emancipation, and Reconstruction affected their personal lives, emotional expressions, and gender identities. He argues that white Southern men struggled to process their wartime experiences due to societal expectations of male self-restraint. To overcome such expectations regarding their self-expression they created soldier communities that they could rely upon for emotional support and …


Review: Looming Civil War, Olivia Ortman Apr 2019

Review: Looming Civil War, Olivia Ortman

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

In Looming Civil War, Phillips writes about the future, specifically, the one predicted by nineteenth-century Americans in the years preceding the Civil War. Challenging dominant narratives of the war, Phillips argues that nineteenth-century individuals were fully aware of a looming civil war and that many believed it would be a long, bloody, and disastrous conflict, not just a short excursion. As individuals looked to the uncertain future, they all made predictions unique to their race, religion, gender, and location. Some white southern elites saw the looming war as an Armageddon that would destroy civilized society, while abolitionists and slaves …


Politics And Crisis In The 1850s: An Interview With Rachel Shelden, Ashley Whitehead Luskey Apr 2019

Politics And Crisis In The 1850s: An Interview With Rachel Shelden, Ashley Whitehead Luskey

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

Today we are speaking with Rachel Shelden, Associate Professor of History at the University of Oklahoma. She is the author of Washington Brotherhood: Politics, Social Life, and the Coming of the Civil War (University of North Carolina Press, 2013), which received honorable mention for the Wiley-Silver Prize for the best first book on the Civil War and was a selection of the History book club. She is also the co-editor, with Gary W. Gallagher, of A Political Nation: New Directions in Mid-Nineteenth-Century American Political History (University of Virginia Press, 2012). Dr. Shelden serves as the book review editor for the …


Violence And Restraint: An Interview With Aaron Sheehan-Dean, Civil War Institute Mar 2019

Violence And Restraint: An Interview With Aaron Sheehan-Dean, Civil War Institute

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

Today we are speaking with Aaron Sheehan-Dean, Fred C. Frey Professor of Southern Studies at Louisiana State University and the Chair of LSU’s History Department. He teaches courses on nineteenth-century U.S. history, the Civil War and Reconstruction, and southern History. He is the author of Why Confederates Fought: Family and Nation in Civil War Virginia (UNC Press, 2007), Concise Historical Atlas of the U.S. Civil War (Oxford University Press, 2008), and is the editor of several other volumes. His most recent book, The Calculus of Violence: How Americans Fought the Civil War, was released by Harvard University Press in Fall, …


Getting In Touch With The Civil War: An Interview With Jason Phillips, Ashley Whitehead Luskey Mar 2019

Getting In Touch With The Civil War: An Interview With Jason Phillips, Ashley Whitehead Luskey

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

Today we are speaking with Jason Phillips, Eberly Family Professor of Civil War Studies at West Virginia University. He is the author of Looming Civil War: How Nineteenth-Century Americans Imagined the Future (Oxford University Press, 2018), Diehard Rebels: The Confederate Culture of Invincibility (University of Georgia Press, 2007), and the editor of Storytelling, History, and the Postmodern South (Louisiana State University Press, 2013). His current research explores the material culture of Civil War America. [excerpt]


Review: Calculus Of Violence, Cameron T. Sauers Feb 2019

Review: Calculus Of Violence, Cameron T. Sauers

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

It seems counterintuitive to imagine the bloodiest conflict in American history being worse, but Sheehan-Dean argues that the death toll could have been dramatically higher without both sides’ emphasis on restraint, as dictated by the laws of war. Most of the book is spent examining “how people on both sides justified the lethal violence of conflict and when, how, and why they balanced cruelty and destruction.” Despite the rules of war, however, Civil War participants, like all humans, were contradictory. Sometimes they acted instinctively and spontaneously, while at other times, their actions were the result of deeply seated ideology. The …


Digital-Lee Archived: An Interview With Colin Woodward, Ashley Whitehead Luskey Feb 2019

Digital-Lee Archived: An Interview With Colin Woodward, Ashley Whitehead Luskey

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

Today we are speaking with Colin Woodward, historian and editor of the Lee Family Digital Archive at Stratford Hall. He holds a Ph.D. in History and is the author of Marching Masters: Slavery, Race, and the Confederate Army During the Civil War, which was published by the University of Virginia Press in 2014. He also maintains an active history and pop culture podcast entitled “Amerikan Rambler,” which is available at www.amerikanrambler.libsyn.com and on iTunes. Dr. Woodward is presently working a book called Country Boy: The Roots of Johnny Cash. [excerpt]


Interview With Erica Uszak: Scholarship Recipient For 2018 Cwi Summer Conference, Civil War Institute Jan 2019

Interview With Erica Uszak: Scholarship Recipient For 2018 Cwi Summer Conference, Civil War Institute

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

Recently, the CWI reached out to Erica Uszak ’22 to reflect on her experience at the 2018 CWI Summer Conference. Uszak, currently a freshman at Gettysburg College studying History and the Civil War, was one of ten high school students to receive a scholarship to attend the conference. Any high school student with an interest in history is eligible to apply for the High School Scholarship. [excerpt]