Editor’s Notes – The Gettysburg Compiler

CWI Summer Conference Digital Programs

As many of you know, we had to cancel this summer’s Civil War Institute Conference. While unable to gather together in Gettysburg, we have attempted to share insights from many our Conference presenters through a series of Facebook Livestreams. (also available on YouTube) We are excited to share you with a busy slate of digital programming this week – free and accessible to all – in place of our 2020 Summer Conference. (Please Note: All Programming will happen on Facebook Live on “The Tattooed Historian” Facebook Page. Within a few days of each event, they will be made available on the Gettysburg College YouTube.)

June 11th- 7:00PM EST “Using the Civil War to Fight World War Two.” Dr. Nina Silber (Professor at Boston University and President of the Society of Civil War Historians).
- This discussion will draw on Dr. Silber’s book “This War Ain’t Over: Fighting the Civil War in New Deal America.” Dr. Silber will discuss how the Civil War was invoked before and during America’s involvement in the Second World War.
June 13th- 9:00AM EST. “Reflections on the Antietam Campaign.” Scott Hartwig, (Retired Supervisory Historian at Gettysburg National Military Park)
- Scott Hartwig will join us to discuss the Antietam Campaign. Hartwig is the author of the 800 page “To Antietam Creek: The Maryland Campaign from September 3 to September 16.” He is currently working on the next book in the series which will cover the Battle of Antietam and its aftermath.
June 13th- 11:00AM EST “Meade at Gettysburg.” Dr. Jennifer Murray, Oklahoma State University.
- Dr. Murray is currently working on her second book entitled, “Meade at War: George Gordon Meade and the Army of the Potomac.” Dr. Murray will discuss George Meade’s leadership of the Army of the Potomac at Gettysburg and beyond.
June 13th- 3:00PM EST “Walking Pickett’s Charge Livestream Tour” Ranger Chris Gwinn (Chief of Interpretation and Education at Gettysburg NMP), Dr. James Broomall (Director, George Tyler Moore Center for the Study of the Civil War, Shepherd University),
- Ranger Gwinn, Dr. Broomall, and CWI Director Dr. Peter Carmichael will be doing a series of live videos from the fields of Pickett’s Charge, each with their own focus.

Essential Workers: Formerly Enslaved People and Smallpox in the age of COVID-19

Professor Jim Downs will join CWI Director Dr. Peter Carmichael and John Heckman (The Tattooed Historian) for a Facebook Live stream this Wednesday, May 27th at 7:00PM EST. Dr. Downs is the author of Sick From Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering During the Civil War and Reconstruction (Oxford University Press, 2012). His next book, Maladies of Empire: How Slavery, Imperialism, and War Transformed Medicine will be released in January 2021 by Harvard University Press.

Dr. Jim Downs

Dr. Downs will discuss how outbreaks of disease impacted African Americans during the Civil War and Reconstruction. The discussion will also touch on a recent piece Dr. Downs wrote for The Atlantic. Dr. Downs has provided two primary source documents for our audience to view ahead of the livestream.

DownsBlackMortalitySmallpox — A Report of African American Illness in Charleston.

DownsWhiteMortality — A report detailing the illness of whites in Charleston in 1865.

Introducing the 2019-2020 Fellows!

With the academic year off to a racing start, the Civil War Institute Fellows are hard at work on their assignments for this semester! Veteran Fellows Cameron Sauers ’21 and Isaac Shoop ’21 have been joined for this year by new recruits, Gavin Maziarz ’22 and Erica Uszak ’22. Each one of our Fellows is so excited to be engaged in their projects and sharing history with all of you!

We recently launched a new Facebook group titled “Gettysburg College’s Civil War Book Club,” where we will be discussing and debating recent works of Civil War scholarship. Fellows Gavin Maziarz, Cameron Sauers, and Isaac Schoop will be posting questions and leading the discussion in the group. Meanwhile, Erica Uszak will be writing a Killed at Gettysburg entry on First Lieutenant Elijah Hayden, Co. H , 8th Ohio.

Here on the blog, our Fellows will continue to share reflections and insights from their chosen projects. We will also continue to update the blog with posts reporting on special events both on campus and around Gettysburg.

We hope you will continue to support the Fellows by reading their posts, sharing and liking pieces, commenting, and asking any questions that these posts might provoke. We students are learning right alongside you and enjoy any opportunity to engage in thoughtful discussion about the topics at hand.

With that,

I present our 2019-2020 CWI Fellows

CWIFellows19-20

Back in Formation: Presenting the 2018-2019 CWI Fellows

By Olivia Ortman ’19

With the new academic year off to a racing start, the Civil War Institute Fellows are back and ready to muster in. Veterans, Ryan Bilger ’19, Savannah Labbe ’19, Jonathan Tracey ’19, and Zachary Wesley ’20 will be joined by new recruits, James Goodman ’20, Elizabeth Hobbs ’21, Benjamin Hutchison ’21, Benjamin Roy ’21, Cameron Sauers ’21, and Isaac Shoop ’21. Everyone is eager to begin working on their new projects and sharing history with all of you.

This year will bring exciting changes to the Fellows program. Some of our Fellows will continue working on Killed At Gettysburg, a digital history project that traces the lives and final footsteps of soldiers who fought and died here at Gettysburg. These Fellows will produce the first profiles of Confederate soldiers to be featured on the KAG website. Other Fellows will be using rare, original Civil War photographs to curate an exhibit on photography at Gettysburg that will be featured at the CWI’s annual summer conference. This group of Fellows will also be researching and several filming short video clips interpreting different parts of the battlefield, the memorial landscape, and the experiences of various soldiers and civilians who bore witness to the 1863 battle. These videos will be posted throughout the fall on our Facebook page, so be sure to keep an eye out for them!

Here on the blog, we will be taking on a slightly different interpretive focus as we shift our research and writing toward the study of 19th-century material culture. Writers will choose Civil War era objects that interest them and reflect on the broader social, political, and cultural context of that object. This approach to material objects will allow writers and readers to explore the Civil War era in a new light by learning about how the the objects that 19th-century Americans interacted with shaped the way individuals understood, visualized, and lived their lives. Likewise, students will study how 19th-century Americans shaped and reshaped the meaning of the objects themselves in important ways throughout their daily lives. Blog writers will also continue to keep you informed about the latest lectures and special events both on campus and around Gettysburg, as well as about their personal reflections on the various projects with which they have been tasked.

I hope you will continue to support the Fellows by reading their posts, sharing and liking pieces, commenting, and asking any questions that these posts might provoke. We students are learning right alongside you and enjoy any opportunity to engage in thoughtful discussion about the topics at hand.

With that, I present our 2018-2019 CWI Fellows!

Thank you,

Olivia Ortman, Managing Editor

To Arms! Announcing the 2017-2018 CWI Fellows

The Civil War Institute Fellows are back with replenished ranks for the 2017-18 academic year. This year, our veteran writers will be joined by green troops eagerly waiting to “see the elephant.” Armed with notebooks, libraries, and word processors, they stand united in line of battle to engage the history around them.

The Gettysburg Compiler remains the flagship of the fellowship, offering students the opportunity to showcase their hard work for the greater public. In the coming weeks and months, expect to see the Fellows tackle the past and present in new and exciting ways. As before, Fellows will share stories from the past, covering topics such as civilian life, slavery, and war and incorporating themes such as race, gender, and memory. The Fellows will be digging deep into the annals of history, examining eyewitness accounts of the often chaotic past and analyzing the ways in which people have engaged with their own versions of history. The Fellows are also keenly aware of their own place in history, so be sure to look out for their ruminations on the “living” history.

Continue reading “To Arms! Announcing the 2017-2018 CWI Fellows”

Interpretation as Provocation: Our 2017 Pohanka Interns Set Their Minds on Freeman Tilden

By Jill Titus

Every summer, we feature posts on the blog that provide a behind-the-scenes view of what it’s like to work on the frontlines of history. Our contributors – Gettysburg College students doing summer internships under the auspices of CWI’s Brian C. Pohanka Internship Program – share their experiences giving tours of some of the nation’s leading historic sites, talking with visitors, and working with historical artifacts, educational programs, and archival collections. This summer, our Pohanka interns will be grappling with the role of provocation in historical interpretation – how to define it, how to achieve it, and how to best harness its power to carve out a shared space for analysis and reflection

Over the course of the next few weeks, we’ll be featuring a series of student reflections on the role of provocation in interpretation, all taking as their central starting point Freeman Tilden’s classic introduction to heritage interpretation, Interpreting Our Heritage, 4^th Edition (University of North Carolina Press, 2008).

Two-time Pulitzer-Prize Winning Author T.J. Stiles to Speak at the 2017 Civil War Institute Annual Summer Conference

Special Promotion: Be among the first 25 people to register between now and January 1st and receive a FREE copy of Custer’s Trials by T. J. Stiles.

The Civil War Institute is pleased to announce two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author T.J. Stiles as a featured speaker at the June 2017 CWI summer conference. Mr. Stiles will deliver two talks based on his multiple-award-winning biographies of 19^th-century American icons, George Armstrong Custer and Jesse James. In addition to his esteemed works on Custer and James, Mr. Stiles is also the author of The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (Alfred A. Knopf, 2009) for which he received both the 2010 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

Continue reading “Two-time Pulitzer-Prize Winning Author T.J. Stiles to Speak at the 2017 Civil War Institute Annual Summer Conference”

Prepared to Engage: Presenting the 2016-2017 CWI Fellows

By Annika Jensen ’18

The 2016-17 Civil War Institute Fellows are back on campaign: a company of hardened veterans recently tested by summer internships and fascinating research positions will be joined by a platoon of fresh recruits eager for excitement and their baptism of fire. Now united, they stand on the fringes of battle, preparing blank word documents and primary sources. They await the bugle call that will urge them forward into the challenge of comprehending not just the Civil War but themselves as historians, students, and scholars.

Photo courtesy of Shawna Sherrell/Gettysburg College.

Continue reading “Prepared to Engage: Presenting the 2016-2017 CWI Fellows”

Dispatches from the Front: 2016 Pohanka Interns Explore Public History

By Jill Titus

Every summer, we feature posts on the blog that provide a behind-the-scenes view of what it’s like to work on the frontlines of history. Our contributors – Gettysburg College students doing summer internships under the auspices of CWI’s Brian C. Pohanka Internship Program – share their experiences giving tours of some of the nation’s leading historic sites, talking with visitors, and working with historical artifacts, educational programs, and archival collections. This summer, our Pohanka interns will be blogging on a wide assortment of questions dealing with interpretation of historic sites, battlefield monuments and historical memory, changes in archival practice, exploring race and gender at historic house museums, and the complicated relationship between material culture, identity, and the archaeological record.

Over the course of the next few weeks, we’ll be featuring a series of student reflections on these topics. Readers interested learning more about the issues the students will be discussing may want to consult the following books:

David Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Belknap Press, 2002)

Jessica Foy Donnelly, ed., Interpreting Historic House Museums (AltaMira, 2002)

John R. Gillis, Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity (Princeton University Press, 1994)

James O. Horton and Lois E. Horton, Slavery and Public History: The Tough Stuff of Memory (The New Press, 2006)

Kirk Savage, Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in 19^th-Century America (Princeton University Press, 1999)

Freeman Tilden, Interpreting Our Heritage, 4^th Edition (University of North Carolina Press, 2008)

Happy Valentine’s Day from the CWI

We at the Civil War Institute want to wish you a very happy Valentine’s Day. As for Thanksgiving and Christmas, CWI Fellow Megan McNish ’16 has once again created a Buzzfeed post for your browsing pleasure with help from Jen Simone ’18 and Alex Andrioli ’18. This time, they’ve created a set of Civil War-themed Valentine’s Day memes for your viewing pleasure.

If you’ve been keeping up with our posts this week, you will have noticed that we were feeling the season of Valentine’s Day this year. We ran a series of posts on romance in the Civil War, which for your convenience we’ve collected below.

On Monday, Jeff Lauck began our week of Civil War love stories with the tragic tale of Francis and Arabella Barlow. Mrs. Barlow followed her husband off to war as a nurse, cared for him when he suffered multiple injuries, and earned a reputation for her courageous and diligent service. Sadly, only one of them returned from the war. Continue reading “Happy Valentine’s Day from the CWI”