Military History Commons^™

Choosing Your Battles: Provoking The Public At Fredericksburg And Spotsylvania National Military Park, Abby M. Currier

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

During training to be an intern at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, our instructors continuously stressed the importance of reading our audience. Whether we were greeting visitors at the front desk or leading walking tours, our job was to always watch the visitors and gauge what they are interested in. For me, this was initially very frustrating. I prefer to deal with concrete things instead of making judgement calls. It all sounded pretty wishy washy and that I would somehow ‘know’ what the visitor wanted just by looking at them. Needless to say, I was not convinced.

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.

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 …

Thunderstruck: Teaching Boy Scouts About History And Cannons, Gary H. Nobbs Jr., Andrew D. Nicholls

The Exposition

No abstract provided.

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 …

Hiroshima On Peace Education And Problems With U.S.-Centric Historical Narratives In A World Without Survivors, Matthew S. Thome

International ResearchScape Journal

As time passes, the number of survivors from major world tragedies like the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki grows fewer and fewer. These survivors are a powerful resource for educating students of all ages about the importance of world peace. Drawing on the writing of Richard Moody and Frans Doppen, as well as Paul Ham, and Herbert Feis respectively, I outline the important role of hibakusha, or a-bomb survivors, in peace education at the secondary and collegiate levels. I explain how personalized survivor testimony provides an alternative and highly effective and necessary counterweight to teaching solely a U.S.-centric historical …

Dynamics Of War: Culture, Society, Environment, And Pedagogy, Breanne Jacobsen

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

War is an ever-present feature of human civilization. Nearly all cultures and societies show accounts of human conflict. This portfolio seeks to provide both a multidimensional analysis of war and a means of instructing students to appreciate its significance as a driving force of history using three different components.

The syllabus project provides a long-term view of how the various wars and conflicts came to be and progressed in Western Civilization in the modern era.

The chapter-length paper shows the ravaging effects that war and conflict can have on a physical landscape and the environment in which the conflict takes …

The Other Side Of The Atomic Air Force: Artifacts Of The Air Force's People Programs, Yancy D. Mailes

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

From its inception recruitment and retention concerned Air Force leaders, more specifically Strategic Air Command (SAC) and Air Defense Command (ADC) leadership in the early years, and it continued as a recurring theme throughout the Air Force's very short lineage. Early Air Force leaders recognized a need for attracting the nation's most desirable and competent, as well as the need to retain those individuals for an extended amount of time. Recruiting methods that only targeted the Airmen quickly changed as Air Force leaders realized that the Air Force recruited Airmen, but retained families. Early airpower leaders, including SAC's longest serving …

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 …

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 …

Bloody Bay: Grassroots Policeways, Community Control, And Power In San Francisco And Its Hinterlands, 1846-1915, Darren A. Raspa

History ETDs

“Bloody Bay: Grassroots Policeways, Community Control, and Power in San Francisco and its Hinterlands, 1846–1915” follows the history of San Francisco’s spectrum of formal and informal policing from the American takeover of California in 1846 during the U.S.–Mexico War to Police Commissioner Jesse B. Cook’s nationwide law enforcement advisory team tour in 1912 and San Francisco’s debut as the Jewel of a new American Pacific world during the Panama Pacific International Exposition in 1915. These six decades functioned as a unique period wherein a culture of popular justice and grassroots community peacekeeping were fostered. This policing environment was forged in …

Gerwig, Frank Todd, 1897-1962 (Sc 3128), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and typescript (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 3128. Letter, 24 February 1918, of Frank T. Gerwig to Hal Kritschgau, Scottdale, Pennsylvania. While training at Fort Thomas, Kentucky, Gerwig writes on YMCA letterhead of military routines, a quarantine due to measles, meeting other soldiers from Pittsburgh, and his eagerness to serve overseas as an ambulance driver.

Messer, George, 1833-1863 (Sc 3129), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and transcription (click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 3129. Letter, 26 March 1863, of George Messer to his wife Lottie in DeWitt County, Illinois. From Camp Joe Kelly (the name changed, as he notes, to Camp Hobson) near Glasgow, Kentucky, he describes camp life, including the clearing of timber and his duty in the cold and rainy weather. He also praises the hospital facilities and describes a joke played on an officer who returned to camp without a pass. Expecting the war to end soon, he also writes of matters relating to home.

Carroll, Hillary Bellerby, 1908-1999 (Mss 615), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 615. World War II letters written by Hillary B. Carroll, while serving in the U.S. Army in The Philippines and Japan, to his wife Katherine “Kate” (Whallen) Carroll, in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Also includes some information and photos related to Carroll’s family.

Vance, Edward Richard, 1833-1902 (Mss 612), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 612. Correspondence, diaries, scrapbooks, photographs and family papers of Richard Vance, a Warren County, Kentucky native and U.S. Army officer. After his Civil War service, Vance spent his career at several posts in the South and on the frontier until his retirement in 1892.

Was There A Regular Provincia Africa In The Second Century?, Daniel J. Gargola

History Faculty Publications

Scholars agree that Africa became a province after the destruction of Carthage in 146, but close examination of the evidence for the practice reveals that it is, at best, limited. Instead, the senate probably began to send magistrates to the region with any regularity at some uncertain point after the conclusion of the war against Jugurtha. This interpretation of the evidence brings Roman practice in Africa more into line with recent models of Roman imperialism in the second century, in which consuls and praetors were dispatched primarily to wage war, exert military pressure, or preserve Rome's position in an unstable …

Hell In The Snow: The U.S. Army In The Colmar Pocket, January 22 - February 9, 1945, Clinton W. Thompson

History Theses

In December of 1944 and January of 1945, as Allied forces fought to slowly regain their footing in the Battle of the Bulge, another fierce engagement raged to the south in Alsace and became known as the Battle of the Colmar Pocket. Although overshadowed by the more famous fight to the north, the Colmar Pocket nevertheless played a pivotal role in the war in Europe. Yet the engagement which made Audie Murphy famous remains at the periphery of our understanding of the intense fighting in the winter of 1944-45. This thesis is about the overlooked story in the Allied struggle …

The Octofoil, July/August/September 2017, Ninth Infantry Division Association

The Octofoil

The Octofoil is the offical publication of the Ninth Infantry Division Association, Inc., an organization formed by the officers and men of the 9th Infantry Division in order to perpetuate the memory of fallen comrades, preserve the esprit de corps of the Division, promote peace and serve as an information bureau about the 9th Infantry Division. The Association is made up of 9th Infantry veterans from WWII and Vietnam, spouses, widows and lineal descendants.

Women War Artists In The Canadian War Museum Collection, 1914-1945: Treasures From The Paper Vault, Stacey Barker

Canadian Military History

While most Canadian war art of the First and Second World War was produced by male artists, a handful of women artists were commissioned to capture their own impressions of these conflicts. This piece highlights eight works by four such artists: Caroline Armington, Alma Duncan, Bobs (Zema) Cogill Haworth, and Pegi Nicol MacLeod. All are works on paper and all are part of the Canadian War Museum’s Beaverbrook Collection of War Art.

Résumé: Bien que la plus grande part de l’art militaire canadien des Première et Seconde Guerres mondiales ait été produite par des hommes, il a été demandé à …

Dropping Question Marks: War Art, Leadership, The Canadian Forces And Afghanistan, Gertrude Kearns

Canadian Military History

As a contemporary war artist, Gertrude Kearns presents interpretive challenges to the commemoration and contextualization of controversial aspects of Canadian military history, both from her personal perspective and in terms of the institutional responsibilities associated with meaningful public presentations of war art. In the context of her decade-long Afghan War senior leadership series, and with reference to earlier Somalian and Balkan works, in this article she discusses the appropriateness of her selected subject matter as well as her own responsibility as a war artist in dealing with everything from disturbing and regular subjects to mission concept. Kearns reviews accountability, her …

Cowing, Rufus Billings, 1840-1920 (Sc 3124), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and typescript (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 3124. Letter, 21 February 1862, of attorney Rufus B. Cowing, New York City, to his mother. He encloses a letter from his brother (not included), who was then serving in the Union Army and would later be killed at the Battle of Chickamauga. Rufus notes his brother’s arrival in Bowling Green, Kentucky after “the enemy had run away.” Believing the war will soon end, he speculates on his brother’s future in business and writes of his own desire to be financially independent.

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.

Sloan On Geopolitics, Geography, And Strategy History In Geopolitics, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Geopolitical literature is experiencing a renaissance and scholars representing classical and critical perspectives in this field bring multifaceted assessments to historical and current international political and security issues. Sloan’s Geopolitics, Geography and Strategic History, which is part of Routledge’s Geopolitical Theory Series, examines connections between geography, strategy, and history and is the subject of this review and analysis. Three thesis questions examined by the author include why the geographical scope of political objectives and following strategies of nation states change, how do these changes occur, and over what time period do these changes occur. Sloan examines why the geopolitical theories …

“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 …

Loving, Hector Voltaire, 1839-1913 (Sc 3123), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and full-text typescript (click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 3123. Letter, 31 July 1862, of Hector V. Loving, Bowling Green, Kentucky, to Harlan P. Lloyd, Angelica, New York. He tells his former schoolmate of his law study and practice since graduation from New York’s Hamilton College, and particularly describes the uproar in his home town of Bowling Green, Kentucky at the outbreak of the Civil War: secessionist “treason,” the Confederate occupation, and the rebuilding of the city afterward. He also refers to their classmate and law student Daniel Webster Wright as a “violent” secessionist.

Review Of The Last Cavalryman: The Life Of General Lucian K. Truscott, Jr. By Harvey Ferguson, Jared Dockery Ph.D.

Faculty Research & Publications

No abstract provided.

Achieving Organizational Flexibility Through Ambidexterity, Patricia M. Shields, Donald S. Travis

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

No abstract provided.