History Commons^™

Should We Banish Robert E. Lee & His Confederate Friends? Let's Talk., Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

After 152 years, Robert E. Lee is back in the headlines. But not in any way he could have imagined.

The “Unite the Right” forces descended on Charlottesville, Va., to protest calls for the removal of an equestrian statue of Lee that has been sitting in a city park since 1924. The larger question, however, was about whether the famous Confederate general was also a symbol of white supremacy.

The same issues were in play in May when a statue of Lee was removed from Lee Circle in New Orleans. There are also more than two dozen streets and schools …

Making The Most Of Interpretative Tours At Fredericksburg And Spotslyvania National Military Park, Julia K. Deros

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

Freeman Tilden argues that the purpose of good interpretation is to inspire people to want to discover and learn for themselves in order to gain an understanding and appreciation for what they see. After having experienced the challenges of interpreting the battlefields at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, I agree that provocation is important to good interpretation.

Lincoln's Words At Gettysburg Resonate After Charlottesville, Christopher R. Fee

English Faculty Publications

Seven score and fourteen years ago, Abraham Lincoln eloquently reminded us of the idealism of our founding our fathers, who “brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. “

Lincoln also called upon all persons of good conscience, not simply to remember the sacrifice of those who died preserving these ideals on the battlefield at Gettysburg, but also to act upon those ideals, and to rise to the challenge “to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us….” (excerpt)

A Different Sort Of Park: Interpreting Pow Experiences At Andersonville National Historic Site, Andrew Knight

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

Unlike many other historic sites, Andersonville does not fit neatly into any one box. It is not a battlefield, although we still interpret the experience of soldiers and the ideas they fought for. It is not a historic home or building; the only original parts of the site left are earthworks. Andersonville is a Civil War site but tells a story common to every war. Andersonville National Cemetery contains the remains of American soldiers from every American war except for 1812. Unlike any other National Cemetery entrusted to the National Park Service (except for Andrew Johnson National Historic Site) Andersonville …

Interpreting The Life And Times Of Maggie Walker, Lucy A. Marks

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

As a part of my orientation as an intern at Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site, I was told that 90% of visitors who come into the site have a very limited knowledge of who Maggie L. Walker was and what she had accomplished in her 70 years of life. Equipped with that information I felt a heightened sense of responsibility for the overall quality and accuracy of my tour of her home. In my opinion, Mrs. Walker is one of the most extraordinary people in history, a big claim to make, but this claim speaks for itself even in …

Risky Business Provocation And Interpretation, Alexandria J. Andrioli

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

The fourth commandment of Freeman Tilden’s six principles for interpretation is, “The chief aim of Interpretation is not instruction, but provocation.” This statement is both profound and problematic because the very heart of provocation is goading some sort of reaction from someone or something. Provocation usually has a negative connotation associated with it, like to purposely play the devil’s advocate in order to upset someone. Of course, a museum’s goal is never to intentionally upset visitors. However, at the same time, a museum may want to change the way visitors might think about a certain topic in order to view …

Courts And Executives, Jeffrey L. Yates, Scott S. Boddery

Political Science Faculty Publications

William Howard Taft was both our twenty-seventh president and the tenth Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court -- the only person to have ever held both high positions in our country. He once famously commented that "presidents may come and go, but the Supreme Court goes on forever" (Pringle 1998). His remark reminds us that presidents serve only four-year terms (and are now limited to two of them), but justices of the Supreme court are appointed for life and leave a legacy of precedent-setting cases after departing the High Court. Of course, presidents also leave a legacy of important …

Provoking New Questions At Richmond National Battlefield Park, Kaylyn L. Sawyer

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

he first time I ever gave an interpretive tour was two years ago at the Virginia Museum of the Civil War in New Market, Virginia about a farmhouse that was in the midst of the fighting. My supervisor told me to make the house a home. Her advice to make a human connection between visitors and the past has influenced my style of interpretation, and I have carried it through other various internships including my time this summer at Richmond National Battlefield Park. While working in Richmond, I have been challenged, and challenged visitors, to think differently about the conflicts …

What If The South Had Won The Civil War? 4 Sci-Fi Scenarios For Hbo's 'Confederate', Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

“What if” has always been the favorite game of Civil War historians. Now, thanks to David Benioff and D.B. Weiss — the team that created HBO’s insanely popular Game of Thrones — it looks as though we’ll get a chance to see that “what if” on screen. Their new project, Confederate, proposes an alternate America in which the secession of the Southern Confederacy in 1861 actually succeeds. It is a place where slavery is legal and pervasive, and where a new civil war is brewing between the divided sections. (excerpt)

Provocation And Personalization: Sharing The History Of Manassas Battlefield, Jeffrey R. Martin

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

When I first read Freeman Tilden’s “Principles of Interpretation”, I was surprised to find that provocation was considered essential for effective interpretation. I reread it, to make sure I hadn’t read it wrong or misunderstood. Provocation? Why would the National Park Service want to provoke people? As an intern at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park last summer, I learned that Tilden didn’t mean angering visitors; he meant inspiring the public to want to learn more on their own. To paraphrase, Tilden wrote that instruction and information are not the same thing as interpretation. Interpretation is not a fact-based lecture. …

A Not-So-Distant Mirror: Bringing The Revolution To Life Through Interpretation, Jonathan G. Danchik

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

I have not been able to escape Freeman Tilden’s grasp over the course of my three summers with the National Park Service. His writings and ideas seem to be everywhere, not out of pure coincidence, but because of the fact that nobody has eloquently and concisely gotten at the heart of what historical interpretation is quite like he has. In Interpreting Our Heritage, a book so ubiquitous that it might as well be hailed as the interpreter’s holy scripture, Tilden asserts that “the chief aim of interpretation is not instruction, but provocation.” This isn’t meaningless fluff; rather, it’s an important …

Historical Society Has Tools To Dig Deep, John M. Rudy

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

"On last Wednesday night, Lincoln's Birthday," the Star and Sentinel reported in 1908, "a colored lodge of Elks was instituted in Xavier Hall this place with 45 members." The Improved Benevolent Protective Order of Elks of the World was originally formed as an African-American fraternal organization in the 1890s after a white elks lodge in Philadelphia denied local black men membership. By 1908, the organization was quickly working its way through Pennsylvania. And now Gettysburg had "Colored Elks," working as a social safety net for the black community of the Third Ward. They provided aid to the sick and the …

Un Nouveau Miracle Économique Ivoirien?, Vincent Hiribarren, Abou B. Bamba

History Faculty Publications

Questions à Abou Bamba, associate professor d’Histoire et d’Etudes Africaines à Gettysburg College (Etats-Unis). Il est l’auteur de African Miracle, African Mirage: Transnational Politics and the Paradox of Modernization in Ivory Coast (Ohio University Press, 2016).

How Hard Is It To Drain A Swamp?, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

Some humid, summer evening, go out and listen to the swamp. It chirps, it keens, it hoots, it chitters. It is both quiet and restless, serene and ominous. It is alive, full of bats’ wings, copperheads, and clouds of insects. Imagine how it will respond when it learns you plan to drain it.

That thought has some political parallels as Donald Trump finds himself at odds with the bureaucracy of the federal government in an effort to “drain the swamp” of the so-called Deep State. Thomas Jefferson did a good deal of swamp-draining after his victory over Federalist John Adams …

Lincoln’S Forgotten Middle Years, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

It would be difficult to find two books on Abraham Lincoln published in the same year and yet more unalike in their conclusions than Sidney Blumenthal’s Wrestling with His Angel (the second installment in his multi-volume survey of Lincoln’s “political life”) and Elizabeth Brown Pryor’s Six Encounters with Lincoln. Blumenthal’s narrative of Lincoln’s “wilderness years,” from 1849 to 1856, begins with Lincoln at the lowest pitch of his professional life, returning to Illinois from his solitary term in Congress, an embarrassment to his fellow Whigs, only to rise, phoenix-like, from the firestorm of the controversy over slavery in “Bleeding …

Bringing Stories To Life By Sharing Archival Material, Christina M. Noto

Student Publications

Last summer I researched the experiences of women at Gettysburg College during the pivotal decade 1965-1975 with the support of a college grant, the Koble Fellowship, a ten-week humanities based faculty-mentored research project. I tracked women's experiences at the college during this period and designed a digital scholarship project to share their stories. As a history major and as a feminist, a project about the history of women and their activism on campus nicely complemented by interests. (excerpt)

A Beacon Of Hope: Contraband Camps, Harpers Ferry, And John Brown, Alexandria J. Andrioli

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

Stereoviews were created by using a twin-lens camera that captured the same subject from two slightly different angles. The photographer then placed the two images on a stereoview card that could be inserted into a special viewer that merged the two images together and created a life-like, three-dimensional image. Stereoviews’ low cost meant they were an inexpensive way to insert one’s self into realistic three-dimensional scenes like the pictured contraband camp.

“This Is War”: The Construction Of The Laird Rams, Hannah M. Christensen

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

By the spring of 1863, American ambassador to England Charles Francis Adams had a much bigger problem than the activities of British-built Confederate raiders on his hands: the construction of two 230-foot long ironclad rams in the Laird shipyard at Birkenhead that evidence suggested were destined for the Confederacy. At 230 feet long and 40 feet wide, with 6-7 foot iron spears at the front, rotating turret batteries, full iron plating, and a top speed of 10 knots, these ships were the Americans’ worst nightmare. Lincoln’s cabinet even considered blatantly ignoring Britain’s “neutrality” and sending a U.S. Navy squadron to …

Marching In Step: Usct Veterans And The Grand Army Of The Republic, Ryan Bilger

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

For many United States Colored Troops, remembering the Civil War and their comrades who fell in it became an important part of their post-war life. One of the primary opportunities for public expression of remembrance was Decoration Day, now known as Memorial Day. African Americans played a critical part in the creation of this holiday. On May 1, 1865, the newly-freed black residents of Charleston asserted their place in Civil War memory by leading a parade to a recently constructed cemetery for Union prisoners at the city’s horseracing course. The procession heaped flowers upon the graves of the honored dead, …

A Home For Volunteers: Togus And The National Soldiers’ Homes, Savannah Labbe

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

The current U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs traces its origins to the Civil War. Before the Civil War, there had been some attempts to provide services for veterans but these benefits were solely for career military veterans and not volunteers. Since Civil War veterans were mostly volunteers, this became a problem. The services provided before this had been mostly in the form of homes like the U.S. Naval Asylum in Philadelphia where veterans could receive long-term care. Many felt that homes were the best way to care for soldiers and so, in March of 1865, legislation passed to create a …

Black Servicemen On The Seas: African Americans In The Union Navy, Hannah M. Christensen

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

When the Civil War began, the United States Navy’s Atlantic Squadron, commanded by Commodore Silas H. Stringham, sought to blockade the entire Eastern Seaboard of the Confederacy. It faced two major problems: a shortage of manpower and an abundance of fugitive slaves flocking to the Union fleet. The commander of one vessel, Commander O.S. Glisson, had fifteen refugees on his ship, none of whom he intended to return to their owners. Glisson wrote to Commodore Stringham asking for advice, and Stringham wrote to Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles with an idea. Arguing that “if Negroes are to be used …

Bearing The Battle, Binding The Wounds, Kaylyn L. Sawyer

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

When I arrived at Appomattox Court House National Historical Park for my summer 2016 internship orientation, I introduced myself as being from Yorktown, VA. The ranger quipped “you must have a thing for surrender towns.” I hadn’t really thought about it, but I suppose I do. I’ve lived in and around historic towns my entire life. I was born in Richmond, graduated high school in Yorktown, attended college in Gettysburg, and completed internships in New Market, Appomattox, and in the Hampton Roads area. I never seem to be far from a battlefield or a battle town, physically or emotionally. I …

Decoration Days And Memorial Days, John M. Rudy

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

By the time he came to Adams County in 1909, John Esch had been a Wisconsin representative to the U.S. House of Representatives for two decades. But today was not just any ordinary day in the life of a congressman. Esch came to speak in the Soldiers' National Cemetery; it was Memorial Day. "Except for the difference in the number here," the Gettysburg Times noted after a note on shrinking attendance, "Memorial Day 1909 was little difference from those of former years." (excerpt)

Fredericksburg’S Gray Angel: Truth Or Utility?, Jonathan G. Danchik

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

As with other battles, the Battle of Fredericksburg in 1862 yielded shocking results. Homes were destroyed, thousands died, and military doctrine was challenged and changed. One particular story, however, has emerged from Fredericksburg to represent a different narrative, one of compassion. The actions of a 20-year-old Confederate sergeant named Richard Rowland Kirkland are enshrined in stone at the end of Fredericksburg’s infamous “Sunken Road.”

Brother Against Brother: John Wilkes And Edwin Booth, Laurel J. Wilson

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

When John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Lincoln, he became one of the most infamous figures in American history almost overnight. This rapid fall from grace took quite a toll on his family, especially his brother, Edwin. Edwin Booth was one of the most accomplished and successful actors of the Civil War era. He became famous for his portrayals of Shakespearian roles, especially Hamlet, which became his signature role. The Booths were an illustrious family of actors, though Edwin would become the most critically acclaimed and famous for his acting ability.

Science, Signals, And Service: The Smithsonian Institution’S Role During The Civil War, Danielle E. Jones

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

Today, the Smithsonian is known for its world-famous exhibits, massive collections of American and natural history artifacts, and its contributions to research around the world. But many people don’t know the role the Smithsonian played during the Civil War. The Smithsonian Castle was finished in 1855 and would become the first home of the research center, the library, and the US Museum. The government recognized the importance of the Institution and, after war was declared, the US Secretary of War ordered Joseph Henry, the Smithsonian Secretary, be issued twelve muskets and 240 rounds of ammunition “for the protection of the …

A Gun With A Story: Waller Patton’S Civil War Pistol, Laurel J. Wilson

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

Musselman Library Special Collections is home to a wide variety of artifacts, including a rather impressive number of Civil War era items. One Civil War artifact, the Patton Pistol, stands out from the rest by virtue of the story attached to it. The 1861 Navy Colt revolver originally belonged to Waller Tazewell Patton, who was the great uncle of General George S. Patton Jr. of WWII fame.

Confederate Memory, Olivia Ortman

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

This year as a CWI Fellow, I’ve been doing a lot of research and thinking on Civil War memory, specifically that of Confederate memory. When doing this work, the question at the back of my mind is always: How should monuments, symbols, and other examples of Confederate memory be handled? This is a very difficult question, so up until now, I’ve left it alone, knowing that there would come a time in the future that I would sit down and wrestle with my conflicting opinions on the matter. A couple days ago, the Civil War Era Studies Department here at …

Donald Trump, Andrew Jackson, And The Civil War: A Cwi Fellow’S Response, Ryan Bilger

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

In an interview for Sirius XM Radio released this Monday, May 1, President Donald Trump made some intriguing comments regarding the reasons why the American Civil War took place. He started by describing his beliefs on how 7th President Andrew Jackson would have influenced the events leading up to the Civil War

Lincoln’S First 100 Days, Hannah M. Christensen

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

Imagine trying to avoid a civil war and then having to figure out how to fight one—all in one’s first 100 days in office and all without Congress. That was what Abraham Lincoln’s first 100 days as president essentially looked like. From his first full day in office on March 5th, 1861 to his 100th day in the middle of June, Lincoln barely had time to handle the things presidents normally did, never mind relax.