History Commons^™

“A Debt Of Honor”: The Hegemonic Benevolence Of Richmond’S Female Elites At The “Last Confederate Christmas” Of 1864, Ashley M. Whitehead

The Gettysburg College Journal of the Civil War Era

In poignant remembrance of the last Christmas in the Confederate White House, Varina Davis, First Lady of the Confederacy, reflected upon that special event in an extended article for the New York Sunday World, some thirty-two years after the Confederacy’s final Christmas. Davis recounted the event fondly and praised the transformation of her female peers into perfect models of Confederate endurance under the extreme duress of civil war. In re-creating the dramaturgy of the three-part event, which was organized and hosted in large part by the Confederacy’s First Lady, Davis opened a critical window into southern sensibilities and the cultural …

The Visual Documentation Of Antietam: Peaceful Settings, Morbid Curiosity, And A Profitable Business, Kristilyn Baldwin

The Gettysburg College Journal of the Civil War Era

On September 17, 1862, Confederate General Robert E. Lee led the Army of Northern Virginia into Sharpsburg, Maryland to confront Federal General George McClellan and the Army of the Potomac. The battle that followed became the single bloodiest day in American history. There were approximately 25,000 American casualties and battlefields were left in desolation, strewn with corpses needing burial. The Battle of Antietam, or Sharpsburg, is a well-documented and important battle of the Civil War. Endless research has been done regarding its impact on the war, military strategies, and politics. However, there is a unique aspect of Antietam which merits …

“The Fall Of A Sparrow”: The (Un)Timely Death Of Elmer Ellsworth And The Coming Of The Civil War, Adam Stauffer

The Gettysburg College Journal of the Civil War Era

On the morning of May 24, 1861, a group of Union cadets marched into the city of Alexandria, Virginia. The cohort looked peculiar in their flamboyant Zouave uniforms with bright blue shirts and flashy red sashes. They were led by a dashing young colonel named Elmer Ephraim Ellsworth and charged with occupying the city. Noticing a Confederate flag flying high on the roof of a hotel called the Marshall House, Ellsworth and a few of his men entered the building, determined to bring it down. The trip up the stairs was easygoing and the flag was quickly retrieved without incident. …

Gettysburg College Journal Of The Civil War 2010

The Gettysburg College Journal of the Civil War Era

The entire issue downloadable as a PDF.

Gettysburg College Journal Of The Civil War 2011

The Gettysburg College Journal of the Civil War Era

Complete issue downloadable as a PDF.

Letter From The Editor, Evan C. Rothera

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

No abstract provided.

Into The Murky World Of Class Consciousness, Peter S. Carmichael

Civil War Institute Faculty Publications

In a 1975 article on the place of yeomen farmers in a slave society, Eugene D. Genovese identified a critical question concerning the nature of the Old South. The issue, he wrote, is to explain “the degree of class collaboration and social unity” that existed among all whites, which to Genovese appeared “all the more impressive in the face of so many internal strains.” Although some critics mistakenly charged that Genovese argued for non-slaveholder passivity in the face of planter hegemony, he was, in actuality, acknowledging that class relations were permeated with tension and discord, causing bitter resentments that occasionally …

The Unsung Vigilance: A History Of Sentinel, Austin W. Clark

Hidden in Plain Sight Projects

At risk of over using a popular cliché, there are objects everywhere on the Gettysburg College campus that are “hidden in plain sight.” For some objects, it is easy to stay hidden in this manner. Though we as college students and faculty pass them each day, they are simple plaques embedded in the cement paths we walk on, or the porticos of the academic buildings we enter without even thinking. Yet for other objects, it remains a perpetual mystery as to how even the infamously dense mind of the modern young adult could fail to, at least notice. The sculpture …

Ivy And The Class Of 1933, Elizabeth M. Ungemach

Hidden in Plain Sight Projects

Plaques are curious items. According to MSN Encarta, a plaque is “a small flat piece of metal, stone, or other hard material that has an inscription or decoration on it and is fixed to a wall or other surface, often to commemorate somebody or something.” They can be found in a variety of places, celebrate a number of events, and vary in complexity from a single sentence to lengthy paragraphs. Many go unnoticed, but if one looks hard enough, they appear fairly frequently. This oddity is especially true at Gettysburg, where plaques on campus celebrate events and people on buildings, …

Preserving The Memory: An Examination Of The Masters Fountain Plaque, Donated By J. William Warehime, Victoria A. Shepard

Hidden in Plain Sight Projects

It is crucial not to underestimate your surroundings, for every place embraces a story. My story unfolds two years ago during a perfect day in late summer of 2007, a day to witness the beauty of Gettysburg College at its prime. Merely a skittish freshman, I remember walking hurriedly to my first Astronomy class in Masters Hall while simultaneously attempting to soak in the pristine condition of the surrounding brick buildings and picturesque landscape. I could not help but feel intimidated by the upperclassmen, already accustomed to the Gettysburg lifestyle. Quickening my pace, I finally reached Masters Hall and paused …

Discovering History: The History Of The Ice House Complex, Elizabeth D. Amrhein

Hidden in Plain Sight Projects

A gift to Gettysburg College in 1990 from George W. Olinger and Mae E. Olinger, life long residents of Gettysburg, zestful supporters of local history, common sense preservationists and quiet humanitarians. Their gift of these historic buildings and land underscores the Olingers' lasting love for the town of Gettysburg and the College.

Between 1786 and 1990, this area housed a Presbyterian Church and a cemetery, a livery, shirt factory, carriage making complex, blacksmith shop, a wood-works plant, a cutlery, a bottlery, two brewing companies, an ice cream factory, an ice and cold storage facility, a roofing business, personal residences and …

Failure And Success: Paul R. Sieber, Nelson F. Fisher, And The Fifty-Year Struggle For The Gettysburg College Health Center, Dallas A. Grubbs

Hidden in Plain Sight Projects

In the winter of 1954, four men and one woman set out to accomplish a goal that Gettysburg College had been pursuing for more than forty years. All five of them were trustees of the college, and together they formed a special committee within the Board of Trustees. They were the Infirmary Committee, a small body composed of Paul R. Sieber, Nelson F. Fisher, Mrs. Charles W. Baker, John H. Beerits, and Arthur Hendley. In 1954, following one of the most violent outbreaks of influenza ever to strike the college campus, Chairman Hiram H. Keller authorized Paul Sieber, a prominent …

"The Most Awful Problem That Any Nation Ever Undertook To Solve": Reconstruction As A Crisis In Citizenship, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

Reconstruction is the step-child of the Civil War, the black hole of American history. It lacks the conflict and the personalities that make the Civil War so colorful; it also lacks the climactic feuds and battles, and dissipates into a confusing and wearisome tale of lost opportunities, squalid victories, and embarrassing defeats whose ultimate endpoint is the great American disgrace - Jim Crow. It lives with the short end of the historical stick for accomplishing too much, then accomplishing too little, with the result that almost the worst thing that can be said about someone in American history is that …

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, …

Adams County History 2009

Adams County History

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Heart Language: Elsie Singmaster And Her Pennsylvania German Writings, Anna Jane Moyer

Adams County History

Heart Language: Elsie Singmaster and Her Pennsylvania German Writings

By Susan Colestock Hill. Foreword by Charles H. Glatfelter. Pennsylvania German History and Culture Series. The Pennsylvania German Society. The Pennsylvania State University Press. 2009.

A new century with all its energy and expectations had slipped into place and challenged Americans with fresh promises. The year was 1900. Elsie Singmaster had spent two years at Cornell University immersed in writing classes, and she would return home to Gettysburg eager to write. Her professors had been encouraging. She would always remember one of them who commented on her work for the day …

Letter From The Editor, Brian Matthew Jordan

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

No abstract provided.

Pushkin And Gannibal: Ethnic Identity In Imperial Russia, Miriam Grinberg

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

Since his untimely death in 1837, the nineteenth-century romantic writer Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin has been renowned the world over not only for his literary achievements, but also for being a paradigm of "Russianness." However, Pushkin himself was by no means a "pure" Russian. Like many of the inhabitants of the Russian empire during his time, he was borne of a veritable hodgepodge of ethnicities. The most surprising of these is his African ancestry; his great-grandfather, Abram Petrovich Gannibal, was an African slave brought to Russia in the early eighteenth century. Remarkably, this same slave became the godson and close confidante …

Sweet Tooth For Empire: Sugar And The British Atlantic World, Colin Walfield

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

With increasing productivity and rising standards of living, a new spirit of consumerism reached Britain. After its entry into the Atlantic World economy, though Scotland never fully benefited until the 1707 Act of Union, all classes eventually gained access to a wide variety and exotic assortment of consumer products. Among them, sugar, valued for its sweetness since the Middle Ages, maintained a special position, dominating all exports from British America. Embraced by the British populace, sugar provided an impetus for colonization and required imported African labor. Sugar and a newfound consumerism at home drove the British Atlantic World.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, The National Security Council, And Dien Bien Phu, David Putnam Hadley

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

“Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” Dwight D. Eisenhower’s remarks at a conference on National Defense in 1957 reflected the philosophy behind his national security system: his dedication to preparation and proper planning. One of Eisenhower’s most regularly used, structured tools for proper planning was the National Security Council (NSC). The Council was an organization comprised of high-ranking members of government, chaired by the president, which was designed to provide the president with the information and coordination needed to shape intelligent policy. The Council itself was not created by Eisenhower, but was part of the National Security Act of …

Life On The South Side Of Chambersburg Street, 1910, Rachel A. Santose, Sierra Green

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

The people of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania heralded in the year of 1911 and reflected on their accomplishments throughout the past year. With "pealing bells, tooting whistles and noisy revolvers...in a more vigorous way than has been witnessed here for many years," this New Year’s Eve celebration recognized the past year as it welcomed the new year to come. The entire town took part and its faculties were utilized in the festivities of the night, including "the Court House bell and those of the St. James and College Lutheran churches...engines added their quota of noise and all over town men brought into …

Gettysburg Historical Journal 2009

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

No abstract provided.

Invariance: A Tale Of Intellectual Migration, Steven Gimbel

Philosophy Faculty Publications

The plotline of the standard story told about the development of intellectual history at the end of the 19th/turn of the 20th century follows the move from absolutism to perspectivalism. The narrative takes us, on the one hand, from the scientism of late Enlightenment writers like Voltaire, Mill, D’Alebert, and Comte and the historical determinism of Hegel, all of which were based upon a universal picture of rationality, to, on the other hand, the relativistic physics of Einstein, the perspectival art of Picasso, and the individualism of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard leading to the phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger to and …

From "No Country" To "Our Country!" Living Out Manumission And The Boundaries Of Rights And Citizenship, 1773-1855, Scott Hancock

Africana Studies Faculty Publications

During the Revolutionary War and the first decades of the early U.S. Republic, as free people of color sought to define their place in the new nation, they expressed little connection to an American nationality. But antebellum black leaders later articulated a powerful vision of Africans and Americans. As slaves and free blacks had done during the Revolutionary era, they based this African American identity in part upon a biblical view of human rights and a natural rights philosophy, but they also buttressed black identity formation by making a rights discourse the fulcrum of their argument for full inclusion in …

Adams County Votes For President, 1804-2008, Charles H. Glatfelter

Adams County History

Adult male Europeans who were living in what is now Adams County, Pennsylvania, when York County was formed in 1749 could not vote to choose either their king or their governor. Thanks to the royal grant of 1682, their governor in 1749 took the form of two Penn proprietors, named Thomas and Richard. Thanks to the political principles of the first proprietor, William Penn, adult male Adams countians could participate in electing some of the officers responsible for the orderly operation of government in the province. They could vote for two representatives in the provincial legislative assembly, three York County …

I Am A Shirt, Gregory Williams

Student Publications

In order to understand the technological developments and achievements of the Islamic world, it is important to highlight the different processes, practices, and techniques used in creating objects, whether artistic or otherwise. This paper follows a plausible journey for a single shirt, from its initial creation as a piece of cloth to the epigraphic designs that gave it its deeply religious and mystical power to whoever wore it in Mughal India.

'Since This Is A Horrible Thing To Think About': European Perceptions Of Native American Cannibalism, Evan C. Rothera

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

Contemporary Italian playwright Dario Fo wrote a satirical play entitled Johan Padan and the Discovery of the Americas which purported to be the account of one Johan Padan, a contemporary of Columbus, who journeyed to the New World, was shipwrecked, and rescued by some friendly Indians. At one point, Padan and a group of his fellows discussed the hospitality of the Indians, who were quite generous. One of them expressed the fear that the Indians simply care for them so that they will make a splendid feast. Another man remarked, quite scathingly, “This is the third voyage I’ve made to …

Female Captivity Narratives In Colonial America, Kathryn O'Hara

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

The female captivity narrative provides a complex view of colonial American history by recounting the experiences of women captured from their colonial homes by Native Americans. Male editors, often family friends or town ministers, generally compiled the experiences of female captives, and separating the voice of the female captive from influence of the male editor presents a challenge. Puritan captivity narratives in particular demonstrate conflict between attempts by Puritan ministers to impose a unified religious message in the sagas and the captives’ individual experiences, which often contradicted Puritan doctrine. During the early colonial era, ministers’ attempts to promote the Puritan …

Front Matter

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

No abstract provided.

Interview With James Leary, October 18, 2008, James Leary, Sierra R. Green

Oral Histories

James Leary was interviewed on October 18, 2008, by Sierra Green about his experiences during World War II.

Course Information:

• Course Title: HIST 300: Historical Method
• Academic Term: Fall 2008
• Course Instructor: Dr. Michael J. Birkner '72

Collection Note: This oral history was selected from the Oral History Collection maintained by Special Collections & College Archives. Transcripts are available for browsing in the Special Collections Reading Room, 4^th floor, Musselman Library. GettDigital contains the complete listing of oral histories done from 1978 to the present. To view this list and to access selected digital versions please visit -- https://gettysburg.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16274coll2/search