History Commons^™

“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 …

Debacle At Petersburg: The Battle Of The Crater: An Interview With A. Wilson Greene, 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 A. Wilson Greene. Mr. Greene recently retired from a 44-year career in public history. He spent sixteen years in the National Park Service, served as the first director of the Association for the Preservation of Civil War Sites (now the Civil War Trust), and was the founding director of Pamplin Historical Park & the National Museum of the Civil War Soldier, where he worked for 22 years. Greene holds a Masters degree in …

Too Little Too Late? The Introduction Of The Spencer Rifle, Savannah A. Labbe

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

The photo above does not seem like much, but the story behind it is incredible. On August 17, 1863, a man named Christopher Miner Spencer entered the White House, gun in hand. He was let in past the sentries and ushered in to meet with President Abraham Lincoln. Spencer was at the White House to show the president his invention, the repeating rifle. He had been trying to get it adopted by the United States Army with little success, so he decided to go to the man with the most power. Spencer showed Lincoln his gun, and the president was …

Lee And Grant: Images Of Fatherhood In Victorian America, Abigail Cocco

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

Before they were great Civil War generals, Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant were fathers. Lee had seven children, three sons and four daughters. Grant was the father of three boys and a single girl. Though they are intended to paint overwhelmingly positive portraits of the two men, their children’s words give us a sense of these two generals as fathers and the ways in which they reflected standard trends in fathering during the Victorian Era. [excerpt]

Meade At Gettysburg: An Interview With Kent Masterson Brown, 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 Kent Masterson Brown. Mr. Brown is a Lexington, Kentucky-based historian and attorney who haspracticed law for forty-three years. He was the creator and first editor of the national magazine, The Civil War, and is author of many books, including Cushing of Gettysburg: The Story of a Union Artillery Commander (University Press of Kentucky, 1998); The Civil War in Kentucky: Battle for the Bluegrass State (Savas Publishing Company, 2000); Retreat from Gettysburg: Lee, Logistics …

Is Trump The De-Regulator-In-Chief?, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

Abe Lincoln was a regulation cutter. Who would’ve known that?”

That line in a speech on December 8 by President Trump sent a number of pundits flocking to their history textbooks for fact-checking, especially after he followed it with the claim that, based on the numbers, he had actually exceeded Lincoln’s first-year total. “That’s pretty good for 10 months.”

What the pundits found was largely what they looked for. Blue State Daily’s Matthew Slivan smirked that “Trump likes to conjure comparisons to Abraham Lincoln,” but “the truth is what you’d expect: Trump is a blowhard.” Another reporter rang up …

Front Matter

Adams County History

No abstract provided.

The World War One Gold Star Soldiers From Adams County, Valerie J. Young

Adams County History

Adams County had 1,074 men and 12 women in the military in World War I, 53 of whom died while in service, becoming Gold Star soldiers. During this war, the practice of displaying a flag with a blue star was begun to signify that a family member was fighting in the war; when a soldier died, the blue star was changed to a gold star. The term “Gold Star” soldier came to represent a member of the service who died during a time of conflict, and is still in use today.

Adams County’s Gold Star soldiers were described in a …

Adams County History 2018

Adams County History

No abstract provided.

Coronal Plane: Cristin Millett, Grace Linden, Shannon Egan

Schmucker Art Catalogs

Coronal Plane is the culmination of Millett’s research on the anatomical theater at the University of Padua built in 1594, the oldest surviving anatomy theater in the world. The installation allows viewers to walk into and through a space that evokes physical, emotional, and psychological reactions similar to those experienced in the historic anatomy theater in Padua by audiences of the past. Illustrations depicted on red “windows” in Millett’s work are appropriated from De Formato Foetu, a text written by Girolamo Fabrizi d’Acquapendente (Hieronymus Fabricius), the Chair of Anatomy at the University of Padua. It was under his leadership that …

Letter From The Editors, Brandon R. Katzung Hokanson, Brianna O'Boyle

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

The Gettysburg Historical Journal embodies the History Department's dedication to diverse learning and excellence in academics. Each year, the Journal publishes the top student work in a range of topics across the spectrum of academic disciplines with different methodological approaches to the study of history. In the words of Marc Bloch, author of The Historian's Craft, "history is neither watchmaking nor cabinet construction. It is an endeavor toward better understanding." In the spirit of this maxim, our authors strive to elucidate the many facets of human societies and cultures. Whether this research is focused on politics, religion, economics, environmental history, …

Featured Piece, Abou B. Bamba, Bill D. Bowman, David P. Hadley, Magdalena Sánchez

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

This year the General Editors continued the tradition started last year by creating a feature piece to show our appreciation for the History Department. We selected four professors from the faculty to answer a question about history: what figure/event/idea inspires your interest in history? Reading their responses helped give us insight into the thoughts of these brilliant minds and further help us understand their passion for the subject we all share a common love and interest in. We hope that you enjoy reading their responses as much as we did.

The four members of the faculty we spoke with are …

Front Matter

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

No abstract provided.

Gettysburg Historical Journal 2018

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

No abstract provided.

In A Gilded Cage, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

The Oxford history of the United States may be the most prestigious series of American history survey volumes in print. Originally launched under the aegis of C. Vann Woodward and Richard Hofstadter, it embraces at least three Pulitzer Prize-winners—James M. McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (1988), David M. Kennedy’s Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 (1999), and Daniel Walker Howe’s What Hath God Wrought? The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (2007)—plus two other Pulitzer nominations and a Bancroft Prize in 1997 for James Patterson’s Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974.

There …

Reconstruction As A Pure Bourgeois Revolution, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

The years between 1865 and 1877, which form the period in American history known as Reconstruction, compose a sort of coda to the traumatic opera of the American Civil War of 1861–65. Reconstruction embraces the twelve years of active effort to rebuild the American Union, though in some sense (because Reconstruction had no official starting or ending date) aspects of it spluttered on well into the 1890s. I use the word spluttered deliberately, because Reconstruction is also the ugly duckling of American history in the eyes of many American historians, and something the public considers vaguely awful if it thinks …

Ancient China And Its Eurasian Neighbors: Artifacts, Identity, And Death In The Frontier, 3000-700 Bce, Katheryn M. Linduff, Yan Sun, Wei Cao, Yuanqing Liu

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

This volume examines the role of objects in the region north of early dynastic state centers, at the intersection of Ancient China and Eurasia, a large area that stretches from Xinjiang to the China Sea, from c.3000 BCE to the mid-eighth century BCE. This area was a frontier, an ambiguous space that lay at the margins of direct political control by the metropolitan states, where local and colonial ideas and practices were reconstructed transculturally. These identities were often merged and displayed in material culture. Types of objects, styles, and iconography were often hybrids or new to the region, as were …

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 …

Gettysburg College Journal Of The Civil War Era 2018

The Gettysburg College Journal of the Civil War Era

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

The Gettysburg College Journal of the Civil War Era

No abstract provided.

Letter From The Editors

The Gettysburg College Journal of the Civil War Era

No abstract provided.

Robert E. Lee And Slavery, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

Robert E. Lee was the most successful Confederate military leader during the American Civil War (1861–1865). This also made him, by virtue of the Confederacy's defense of chattel slavery, the most successful defender of the enslavement of African Americans. Yet his own personal record on both slavery and race is mottled with contradictions and ambivalence, all which were in plain view during his long career. Born into two of Virginia's most prominent families, Lee spent his early years surrounded by enslaved African Americans, although that changed once he joined the Army. His wife, Mary Randolph Custis Lee, freed her own …

Inside The Civil War Defenses Of Washington: An Interview With Steve T. Phan, 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 Steve T. Phan, a Park Ranger and historian at the Civil War Defenses of Washington. Prior to his arrival at CWDW, Steve worked as an intern and park guide at Richmond National Battlefield Park, Hopewell Culture National Historical Park, and Rock Creek Park. A military history scholar of the Civil War era, Steve’s research focuses on military occupation, operational command, fortifications, and the Western Theater during the Civil War. He is the …

The Poor Man’S Fight: Mercenary Soldiers In The Civil War: An Interview With William Marvel, 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 William Marvel, an independent scholar of mid-19th-century American History. Marvel is the author of eighteen books, including most recently, Lincoln’s Mercenaries: Economic Motivation among Union Soldiers, which is due for release by LSU Press in the early fall of 2018. Some of Marvel’s additional publications include: Lincoln’s Autocrat: The Life of Edwin Stanton (UNC Press, 2015), A Place Called Appomattox (UNC Press, 2000), and Andersonville: The Last Depot (UNC Press, 1994), for which …

You’Ve Got Mail: Throwback To The American Revolutionary War, Abigail K. Major

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

A collection of approximately 150 Civil War era envelopes, mainly produced by Philadelphia publisher James Magee as well as the King & Baird printers, with patriotic Unionist themes is located in Gettysburg College’s Special Collections & College Archives. Of particular interest are the “throwbacks” and references to the American Revolution. The “Glorious Old Hall of Independence,” a depiction of Bunker Hill, and Mount Vernon are only a few illustrations from the collection that demonstrate this American Revolution era theme. [excerpt]

The Howell Brothers: A Costly Sacrifice On The Altar Of Freedom, Jonathan Tracey

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

This semester, I have been working on the Killed at Gettysburg digital history project, which aims to tell the story of soldiers who died at Gettysburg while also tracking their movements on a map so that they can be followed. I was given Hannibal Howell of Company C of the 76th New York Infantry, and his story proved to be a lot more than I expected. [excerpt]

The Things We Remember: Interpreting The Virginia Memorial, Olivia Ortman

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

When I was in high school, I read The Things They Carried for my English class. It is a fiction book about the Vietnam War written by a Vietnam veteran. The author, Tim O’Brien, had the life experiences to write an autobiography based on true events, but he chose fiction as his vehicle. He explains this choice in one of the chapters in his book. O’Brien stated that, in an ironic way, fiction allowed him to share more truth than reality. His made-up stories allowed him to create the feelings and meanings of the war that his real experiences couldn’t …