Addressing Gettysburg Matthew Callery

Ryan Keating (California State University—San Bernardino) talks about the Irish in the Civil War

A panel from CWI's 2024 Summer Conference about atrocities in the Civil War. What defined an atrocity? What were the different types of atrocity? Historians Jaime Martinez, Cecily Zander, Ethan Rafuse, Angela Riotto and Aaron Sheehan-Dean explore this difficult topic. 

Sunday, June 9, 2024, 10:45 am. Frances Clarke (The University of Sydney), Rebecca Jo Plant (University of California, San Diego), Jim Broomall (Shepherd University). Moderator: Brian Luskey (West Virginia University) explore the question "Did Civil War Soldiers Hide the Real War?"

Thomas R. Flagel is associate professor of history at Columbia State Community College in Tennessee. The author of several books, Flagel has also worked with multiple historic preservation groups including the Civil War Trust and the National Park Service.
 
Union and Confederate veterans meet at Gettysburg on the 50th anniversary of the battle
This June 29-July 4 reunion drew over 55,000 official attendees plus thousands more who descended upon a town of 4,000 during the scorching summer of 1913, with the promise of little more than a cot and two blankets, military fare, and the presence of countless adversaries from a horrific war. Most were revisiting a time and place in their personal history that involved acute physical and emotional trauma.
Contrary to popular belief, veterans were not motivated to attend by a desire for reconciliation, nor did the Great Reunion produce a general sense of a reunified country. The reconciliation premise, advanced by several major speeches at the anniversary, lived in rhetoric more than fact. Recent scholarship effectively dismantles this "Reconciliation of 1913" mythos, finding instead that sectionalism and lingering hostilities largely prevailed among veterans and civilians.
Flagel examines how individual veterans viewed the reunion, what motivated them to attend, how they acted and reacted once they arrived, and whether these survivors found what they were personally seeking. While politicians and the press characterized the veterans as relics of a national crusade, Flagel focuses on four men who come to the reunion for different and very individual reasons.
Flagel's book adds significantly to Gettysburg literature and to Civil War historiography.
 

Source: Publisher

Cecily N. Zander is a historian of the Civil War era and the American West. At Texas Woman’s University, she offers courses on American history, military history, memory and popular culture. She received her PhD from Penn State in 2021.
Her first book, The Army Under Fire: Antimilitarism in the Civil War Era, will be published by Louisiana State University Press in February 2024. She also serves as chief historian at Emerging Civil War, a popular outlet for accessible writing about the Civil War era.
 
It has been over 150 years since the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862, a disastrous time in Minnesota history. The war had a profound impact in shaping Minnesota as we know it today. This site is a resource for learning about the war, its causes, and its far-reaching consequences.  
Join us on YouTube for an interview with Dr. Zander. Click here

It's CWI Summer Conference time again and we will release random talks from the weekend as we are able. Here is one done by Ronald C White on Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, in support of his new book "On Great Fields: The Life and Unlikely Heroism of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain." This talk was given on Friday, June 7, 2024 at 4:30 p.m.