Posts Tagged ‘Civil War Sesquicentennial’
I attended The Future of Civil War History conference recently at Gettysburg. One outstanding element of the conference involved a series of field experiences, two-hour plus morning tours with various experts covering topics like battlefield rehabilitation or the fighting in downtown Gettysburg, but these filled up incredibly quickly during the pre-registration period. My guess is that the conference organizers could have hosted twice as many of these as they did and they would still have been oversubscribed. Read more.
The month of September was a blur. Here in the north-central part of Maryland, we were consumed by Civil War Sesquicentennial events. There were all manner of activities and commemorations relating to the actions 150 years ago leading up to and resulting from the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest single day in U.S. history. In Frederick, the people felt it very keenly since most of the public buildings, some of the private ones and many of the churches were turned into hospitals and would remain so for months. 150 years later the churches in the city joined together to create a program for the public talking about this fact and sharing their history with people who might not otherwise darken their doors. Read more.
From the Delaware Humanities Forum:
The Delaware Humanities Forum’s Joseph P. DelTufo Annual Lecture will be held Thursday, October 18, at the Delaware Historical Society. Dr. Stephen Hahn, Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania, will present “Why the Civil War Mattered.” Dr. Hahn is a specialist on history of nineteenth-century America, African-American history, the history ofthe American South, and the international history of slavery and emancipation. His publications include The Roots of Southern Populism: Yeoman Farmers and the Transformation of the Georgia Upcountry, 1850-1890, which won both the Allan Nevins Prize and the Frederick Jackson Turner Award, and A Nation Under our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration, which received the Pulitzer Prize in History, the Bancroft Prize in American History, and Merle Curti Prize in Social History, as well as many articles and essays.
The lecture begins at 6:30pm and is free and open to the public, but reservations are required. Reserve your seat today by contacting DHF at (302)657-0650 or info@dhf.org.
From the New York State Museum:
An Irrepressible Conflict: The Empire State in the Civil War opened on September 22, at the New York State Museum to commemorate the sesquicentennial of the Civil War. The 7,000 square-foot exhibition focuses on the integral role New York played in the Civil War by virtue of its position as the wealthiest and most populous state in the Union.
Read more.
(From nps.gov)
To mark the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, the National Park Service free winter lecture series in 2012 will explore events and personalities that figured prominently in 1862, and also return to the popular “Perspectives on the Gettysburg Campaign and Battle.” Programs will explore the great battles and campaigns of 1862, such as Shiloh, Antietam, the Monitor and Merrimac and others, as well as people and events that shaped the war. Speakers will include as a special guest Dr. Allen Guelzo, the Henry R. Luce Professor of the Civil War Era at Gettysburg College, who will speak on the Emancipation Proclamation.
National Park Rangers will offer the programs on weekends beginning Saturday, January 7, and running through Sunday, March 11. They are free of charge and will be held at the Gettysburg National Military Park Museum and Visitor Center, in one of the film theaters through February 26 and in the Ford Motor Company Fund Education Center on March 4, 10, and 11. Programs begin at 1:30 p.m. and last approximately one hour.
For more information and a schedule of programs go to Gettysburg National Military Park’s website at www.nps.gov/gett or call 717/ 334-1124 x 8023.
You can find the full schedule here (PDF).
On April 12, the anniversary of the firing on Fort Sumter came alive with the blasting of email promotions, Twitter messages, and Facebook postings to call our attention to the Sesquicentennial of the Civil War. Although most of the military action of the Civil War took place in the South, there will be no shortage of commemoration throughout the Mid-Atlantic over the next four years. Our region includes major fields of battle in Maryland and Pennsylvania, of course, and urban centers that transported and supplied the Union army. More than past anniversaries of the Civil War, the days ahead will focus attention on the experience of the northern home front and the diversity of the American population in 1861 and 2011.
In the Mid-Atlantic, we also bring to this commemoration our memory of other anniversaries in which our region stood more at the center of the stage — the Bicentennial of the Constitution in 1787 and especially the Bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence in 1976. In the interest of reflective practice, might we look back to the 1976 Bicentennial, especially, as a lesson in the meaning and significance of commemoration? Now thirty-five years in the past, the Bicentennial remains in living memory but has receded far enough into the past to allow for historical perspective on the nation’s celebration of its founding. Among the lasting legacies of the Bicentennial are the challenges of sustaining historic sites created in 1976 as we now confront a period of diminished government funding.
What are the legacies of 1976? What is the potential impact of today’s commemoration of the Civil War? We opened this discussion at the recent Middle Atlantic American Studies Association Conference, “Heritage and the State,” with presentations by Todd Bennett of East Carolina University; Max van Balgooy of the National Trust for Historic Preservation; and Barbara Pollarine of Valley Forge National Historical Park. Please add to their thoughts about the Bicentennial, its lasting legacy, and any connections or contrasts you see with the Sesquicentennial commemoration of the Civil War.
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