History Commons^™

Hartford Puritanism: Thomas Hooker, Samuel Stone, And Their Terrifying God, Baird L. Tipson

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

Statues of Thomas Hooker and Samuel Stone grace downtown Hartford, Connecticut, but few residents are aware of the distinctive version of Puritanism that these founding ministers of Hartford's First Church carried into the Connecticut wilderness (or indeed that the city takes its name from Stone's English birthplace). Shaped by interpretations of the writings of Saint Augustine largely developed during the ministers' years at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, Hartford's church order diverged in significant ways from its counterpart in the churches of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Hartford Puritanism argues for a new paradigm of New England Puritanism. Hartford's founding ministers, Baird Tipson …

We Will Now Rejoin Your Civil War (Already In Progress), John M. Rudy

Interpreting the Civil War: Connecting the Civil War to the American Public

I celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day with a mouse and keyboard. I love diving neck deep in historical documentation for no good reason. Falling down the research hole can be so much fun, particularly when it's looking for one elusive piece of evidence. [excerpt]

Fruit Of A Vile Tree: The Eshelman Family's War, John M. Rudy

Interpreting the Civil War: Connecting the Civil War to the American Public

Frederick Eshelman's father wasn't home. He was in Petersburg, the chilly and treacherous trenches stretching to his right and left as far as the imagination might take them. That's where the danger was. That's where war lived. [excerpt]

100 Years Ago Today: Challenging The Christmas Truce, S. Marianne Johnson

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

This holiday season, I made a resolution for myself: DO NOT publicly complain about the rampage of Christmas Truce ridiculousness that is about to hit Great War commemoration efforts. But, resolutions are made for breaking anyways so, when my “100 Years Ago Today” coverage of the Gettysburg Times offered up some challenging material, I couldn’t resist. [excerpt]

Their Chance For Redemption?: The Dauphin County Regiment At Second Fredericksburg, Kevin P. Lavery

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

After a less than respectable showing on the slopes of Marye’s Heights in December 1862, the 127th Pennsylvania Regiment found itself in desperate need of an opportunity to redeem itself on the field of battle. Could a mulligan assault on the same ridge be the key to restoring their honor? Assigned to Hall’s Brigade in Gibbon’s Division for the duration of the Chancellorsville Campaign, they now had a chance to find out. [excerpt]

Democracy And Nobility, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

Americans love revolutions. Our national identity began with a revolution, and a revolutionary war that lasted for eight years; and we cheer on other people’s revolutions, as though we find satisfaction in multiplying our own. “I hold that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing & as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical,” wrote Thomas Jefferson. “No country should be long without one.” An excited James Garfield, in his maiden speech in the House of Representatives in 1864, asked whether his colleagues “forget that the Union had its origin in revolution.” Ralph Waldo …

Carlisle Indian School Students Database, Amelia Trevelyan

Carlisle Indian School Students

This data collection helps to identify students who attended the Carlisle Indian School from 1879 to 1918. Data were collected from periodical publications in the Carlisle Indian Industrial School (CIIS) archive, such as The School News, The Red Man, The Indian Craftsman, and The Morning Star. Many of these publications are now available online in the Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center.

Annotated Bibliography Of Elsie Singmaster’S Gettysburg Writings, Susan Colestock Hill

Adams County History

Our fellow Adams Countian, Elsie Singmaster Lewars (1879-1958), was a well -known author of regional fiction during the first half of the twentieth century. She wrote about the people and places she knew first hand. She spent most of her first twenty years in an ethnic Pennsylvania German community, Macungie, Pennsylvania. Having descended on her father’s side from Pennsylvania Germans who settled in the eastern part of the state beginning in the eighteenth century, she understood “her people” because she lived among them. When she began to write for publication in 1905, her first characters and plots drew upon her …

The Brutal Murder Of George J. Bushman, Conrad B. Richter, Dale J. Molina

Adams County History

In the fall of 1918 there occurred in Adams County a singularly brutal murder that brought the County and the town of Gettysburg to a shocked standstill. The tentacles of this event would reach into four Pennsylvania counties: Adams, Cumberland, Dauphin, and Philadelphia, and eventually the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The investigation of the crime and the trial of the perpetrators involved so many public officials and families, as well as the extended judicial system and geographical locations within and without the County, that we have included a Cast of Characters and Locations to assist the reader in following this convoluted …

The Bicycle Boom And Women's Rights, Jenna E. Fleming

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

The increasing popularity and widespread use of the bicycle in the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries directly contributed to the movement for women’s rights in the following decades. The sense of independence cycling afforded to women, as well as the opportunities for unification in defense of a cause that arose in light of controversies over the pursuit, were important in forming the foundation for later events.

“Of The Ruin And Conquest Of Britain”: The Anglo-Saxon Transformation Of The British Isles, Bryan G. Caswell

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

The history of Britain after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire has traditionally been perceived as one of invasion and domination at the hands of Germanic peoples most commonly known as the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. Though this is the narrative presented by medieval authors, current archaeology suggests that the settlement of Germanic peoples in Britain was peaceful and characterized by cohabitation and acculturation. Further examination and contextualization of the most nearly-contemporary sources reveal discrepancies of chronology and causation which indicate that medieval authors constructed their accounts based not upon an understanding of any Anglo-Saxon invasion but rather upon …

Adams County History 2015

Adams County History

No abstract provided.

Art, Artifact, Archive: African American Experiences In The Nineteenth Century, Shannon Egan, Lauren H. Roedner, Diane Brennan, Maura B. Conley, Abigail B. Conner, Nicole A. Conte, Victoria Perez-Zetune, Savannah Rose, Kaylyn L. Sawyer, Caroline M. Wood, Zoe C. Yeoh

Schmucker Art Catalogs

Angelo Scarlato’s extraordinary and vast collection of art and artifacts related to the Civil War, and specifically to the Battle of Gettysburg, the United States Colored Troops, slavery and the African American struggle for emancipation, citizenship and freedom has proved to be an extraordinary resource for Gettysburg College students. The 2012-14 exhibition in Musselman Library’s Special Collections, curated by Lauren Roedner ’13, entitled Slaves, Soldiers, Citizens: African American Artifacts of the Civil War Era and its corresponding catalogue provided a powerful and comprehensive historical narrative of the period.

This fall, students in my course at Gettysburg College “Art and Public …

Gettysburg Historical Journal 2015

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

No abstract provided.

Learning The Fighting Game: Black Americans And The First World War, S. Marianne Johnson

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

The experience of African American veterans of the First World War is most often cast through the bloody lens of the Red Summer of 1919, when racial violence and lynchings reached record highs across the nation as black veterans returned from the global conflict to find Jim Crow justice firmly entrenched in a white supremacist nation. This narrative casts black veterans in a deeply ironic light, a lost generation even more cruelly mistreated than the larger mythological Lost Generation of the Great War. This narrative, however, badly abuses hindsight and clouds larger issues of black activism and organization during and …

Water, Bison, And Horses: Natural Resources And Their Impacts On Native Raids And Relations In Late, Spanish Colonial New Mexico, Dori L. Gorczyca

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

During the Spanish colonial period in New Mexico’s history, the area became a place where cultural, social, and economic mixing of various Native American groups and Spanish settlers frequently occurred. Certain peoples, such as the Pueblo, lived in an agrarian society and worked in close proximity to the Spanish. Other peoples, such as the Comanche, Apache, and Navajo, developed hostile relationships with these foreigners, and their raids on the Spanish, Pueblo, and each other changed the dynamic of their settlements. Sources from Spanish and Church officials, along with travel logs, discuss the effects of natural resources, such as water and …

"Under The Auspices Of Peace": The Northwest Indian War And Its Impact On The Early American Republic, Melanie L. Fernandes

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

This paper examines the influence of the Northwest Indian War on the development of the early United States republic. In the years between the end of the Revolutionary War in 1783 and the establishment of a new federal government in 1789, the United States frontier was plagued by rivalry between citizens and Native Americans. The United States federal government viewed the success and progress of the nation as contingent upon possession of the Northwest Territory, and as such developed and adjusted their Indian policies to induce the Indians to peacefully accept United States authority in the Northwest Territory. The violence …

Encounters With Eisenhower: Personal Reminiscences Collected To Mark The 125th Anniversary Of The Birth Of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Michael J. Birkner, Devin Mckinney

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

The general who orchestrated the greatest amphibian invasion in history, and led Allied forces in the great crusade to crush Adolf Hitler’s armies, subsequently became a popular two-term president of the United States. In the annals of American success stories, it’s hard to beat the life that Dwight D. Eisenhower made.

Yet this heroic figure was also a “natural man,” as one of the contributors to this volume of personal reminiscences suggests. Lady Dill was referring to Eisenhower’s humanity and lack of pretense. Unlike other leading figures of his day—including a certain five-star general who orchestrated the American island-hopping campaign …

Letter From The Editors, Robert S. Bridges Iii, Melanie L. Fernandes

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 these young scholars’ research is focused on politics, religion, …

Heavy Metal Gettysburg And The Allure Of Emotive History, Kevin P. Lavery

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

In July 1863

A Nation Torn In Tragedy

A Trick Of Fate, Two Great Armies Merge

Gods Of War At Gettysburg

Devastation Lies Ahead

50,000 Bodies Litter The Land

Hell Rages Three Full Days

The Reaper Sows, There’s The Devil To Pay.

Thus begins the first song in Iced Earth’s three-part ballad inspired by the Battle of Gettysburg. [excerpt]

“So Here’S To The Stars And Stripes, Me Boys, And To Ireland’S Lovely Shore”, S. Marianne Johnson

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

The Dropkick Murphys is a popular American Celtic Punk band known for their combinations of punk rock and bagpipes. Their songs are filled with Irish pride and often have something to do with hard partying and whiskey. However, in their 1999 album The Gang’s All Here, the Murphys took on the topic of Irish soldiers in the American Civil War. The song “The Fighting 69th” was first sung by the Irish band The Wolfe Tones on their 1993 album Across the Broad Atlantic. The album features several songs dedicated to Irish immigrants to America and holds a certain fascination for …

A “Friendship . . . Born Amidst The Thunders Of Gettysburg”: The Barlow- Gordon Incident, Brianna E. Kirk

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

July 1, 1863. It is the first day of what will come to be known as the Battle of Gettysburg. Union forces, upon firing the first shot in the early morning hours of that Wednesday, were pushed back from their position near Herr’s Ridge and McPherson’s woods towards Cemetery Hill. Following orders given by Schurz, twenty-nine year old Brigadier General Francis Channing Barlow moved his division to the right of Schimmelfennig’s division and placed them on top of an elevated piece of land known as Blocher’s Knoll. The Eleventh Corps had yet to begin their retreat through Gettysburg, but they …

Point/Counterpoint: Anchoring Historical Memory, Bryan G. Caswell, Heather L. Clancy '15

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

Wednesday, November 19, 2014 saw citizens and students of Gettysburg crowd into the Majestic Theater for the fifty-third annual Robert Fortenbaugh Memorial Lecture. The audience listened attentively as Dr. Nina Silber, a renowned historian of the American Civil War, explored the nuanced application of the memory of Abraham Lincoln during the 1930s and ‘40s, especially as associated with the figure of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. [excerpt]

Remembrance Day…But Remembering What?, S. Marianne Johnson

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

In conversation with other CWI Fellows last week, we began discussing the strangeness of the annual Remembrance Day Parade. Originally conceived as a way to recreate the procession to the cemetery in 1863 to hear the Gettysburg Address at the dedication of the Soldier’s National Cemetery, it seems to have morphed into something different all together. If we are honoring a recommitment to the preservation of Union, why do Confederate reenactors march in the parade? If we are simply celebrating the soldiers of both sides of the Civil War, why does the parade end at the site of the address …

Hidden In Plain Sight: The Coster Avenue Mural, Brianna E. Kirk

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

The Gettysburg Battlefield has over one thousand monuments dedicated to a host of brave men who fought and gave their lives during the three day engagement in July of 1863. Littered alongside well-traveled roads and points of attraction on the battlefield, most do not go unnoticed. There are a few, however, that do. One of them commemorates Captain Heckman’s Battery K of the 1st Ohio Light Artillery, an oft-passed but unnoticed monument on Gettysburg College’s campus and the focus of one of my previous blog posts . Another cluster of monuments in the vicinity of the Gettysburg College campus and …

Gettysburg: A Town Built On Tourism, Kevin P. Lavery

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

In my most recent blog posts, I’ve adopted a rather unforgiving stance on the rampant consumerism that pervades the town of Gettysburg. Essentially, I have argued that the borough’s tacky gift shops sell odious little trinkets to gullible tourists and profiteer from the public’s morbid obsession with war and death. But while I firmly believe that this zealous consumerism is a persistent threat to healthy historical engagement, there is another side to the issue that demands to be recognized: Gettysburg kitsch is part of what has made Gettysburg into a town brimming with opportunities to broaden the public’s historical consciousness. …

Lost: Sesquicentennial Sanity. If Found, Please Contact Borough Of Gettysburg., Kevin P. Lavery

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

If you were in Gettysburg during the summer of 2013, you surely encountered the ubiquitous 150th Gettysburg logo branded on everything from promotional materials to souvenirs. The latter – tacky at best and irreverent at worst – filled the town to the point of excess, making some of us wonder how many people completely missed the point of the sesquicentennial. Anniversaries exert a powerful force on the American historical psyche, but it is dubious whether Gettysburg’s celebration exerted an appropriate one. The sesquicentennial was a wonderful opportunity to refocus on the events of July 1863, but sadly many businesses in …

Gettysburg’S Faustian Bargain, Kevin P. Lavery

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

A question to the reader: have you ever visited Gettysburg? Presumably most of the Gettysburg Compiler’s audience will answer in the affirmative. A follow-up question: have you ever purchased a souvenir from one of the town’s abundant gift shops? Perhaps it was a kepi or a cork gun for your child? Or maybe a bottle of “Rebel Red” wine? Or some tacky trinket or faux antique?

Let’s face it: we live in a consumer society in which there is nothing too sacred to profit from. And, sadly, the Battle of Gettysburg is no exception. [excerpt]

Heroes Of Berlin Wall Struggle, William D. Bowman

History Faculty Publications

When the Berlin Wall fell 25 years ago, on Nov. 9, 1989, symbolically signaling the end of the Cold War, it was no surprise that many credited President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev for bringing it down.

But the true heroes behind the fall of the Berlin Wall are those Eastern Europeans whose protests and political pressure started chipping away at the wall years before. East German citizens from a variety of political backgrounds and occupations risked their freedom in protests against communist policies and one-party rule in what they called the "peaceful revolution." [excerpt]

Valor Finally Honored, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

It has taken one hundred and fifty-one years, but finally, 1st Lt. Alonzo H. Cushing is getting his due - which in this case is the Congressional Medal of Honor.

In a ceremony today at the White House, President Obama will award the Medal of Honor posthumously to Cushing "for conspicuous gallantry... while serving as commanding officer of Battery A, 4th United States Artillery, Artillery Brigade, 2nd Corps, Army of the Potomac during combat operations in the vicinity of Cemetery Ridge, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on July 3, 1863." [excerpt]