They are a leading military and general history publishing company. Since its inception in 2004 a in 2004, they have actively sought out and develop original manuscripts. Bringing them to you in the form of quality books that you can be proud to read and keep for a lifetime. Todays panel will be led by chris, who will serve as our moderator. He will introduce himself and arepanelists that comprising of the emerging civil war series collection. Thank you. I would just like to say thank you for being here at the Gettysburg Heritage Center. I am editor in chief of the emerging civil war. Emerging civil war is a blog consisting of about 20 different historians from a wide variety of backgrounds. We have a lot of different backgrounds, perspectives, and voices. You can find us at www. Emergingcivilwar. Com. It is for contact, we would love to have you read along. We like to spread the gospel of the civil war and keep people interested in our own history. By getting people interested and then getting them on fire to learn more we hope people will stay connected with our history. It is certainly one of the most important chapters of our American History. I am also a professor at satan bonaventure Saint Bonaventure university in new york. I am a professor at the university of leicester new and at a historical property on a battlefield. It is my privilege to introduce my colleagues tonight. I will work my way to the left and go down the table. He is the historic supervisor for william county. He is a coauthor of the emerging civil war book. He is a coauthor of the book the last road north. To his left is dwight hughes, a retired navy personnel. He is specializing in history. He is the author of the book confederate biography. O his left is ryan he is one of our newest authors. Determined to stand and fight is his book. He joins us from pennsylvania. To his left, i have to see who is down there. Dan davis dan is the coauthor , of several emerging civil war books. A also hastily historian with Fredericksburg Spotsylvania historic park. At the very end we had the coauthor of the emerging civil war series. Dan is a historian with the National Park service. Tonight i thought i would get us started by talking a little bit about the field of Civil War History. Centennial, theue question was what is next. All eyes were focused on the history of the civil war. It was the 150th anniversary. Now we are in the post sesque centennial era. Now now see that that we are in that era . What is next . I will start. I am right next to you. War stille civil inspires lots of controversy and passions. I think one of the good things has been the preservation effort. You see a a lot more effort, time and money dedicated to preserving the sites because i think we realized that our generation right now we have a Good Opportunity to preserve some of these sites for they as they get built over. Groups in virginia have done great work in preserving properties. I think the legacy of the sesquicentennial is present preservation. I think when you look at what is going on today and where the focus is it will be at preservation. I think we need to do a better job of education for schoolchildren as far as the , Younger Generation trying to teach them the importance of history. I think every generation has done that. Every generation talks about how they do not care. They do care. There are some guys appear that do care. That is my take on preservation. I think it is the goal. Education could be better. It will get to that next generation in a few minutes. What is next . I think where Civil War History needs to go is to connect with the public. Particularly with the young people. This is my third career. I feel like i am history myself as well as a historian. To apply whatever knowledge i have an pass on the legacy of the history that is so important to all of us. Startingy education more than half a century ago. I think it was a good education but it was incomplete. We have learned a lot since then and i have learned a lot since then. I hope to be able to pass that on with the emerging civil war provides an excellent platform to do that. What is next . As the young guy, i have the most at stake. I think it is a good question, what is next. I think with the 150th anniversary there are more stories to be told than just a story of battlefields and campaigns. The sesquicentennial is a chance for people to explore those other chances. You continue to look at those stories. We continue to revamp what the civil war meant for the entire nation not just for the , battlefield and the generals. I think in the future we will have the opportunity to continue to explore those stories. Give me an example of some of the other stories . Sesquicentennial certainly focused a lot on the other aspects on the , transformation of society. What does it mean for cities to be targeted . The wholesale of fredericksburg is one example. Petersburg, richmond even , chambersburg which was burned. It is a new chance to explore aspects of some of the lesserknown stories that have sometimes been passed over for your traditional 450 campaign study. Dan . I think it is a mix of what ryan and bob just mentioned. A lot of it has to do with us being good stewards of this history, being good stewards of the story, telling the story, engaging others and bringing them into the story so we can pass it along to them. I would have to agree with rob. We are at a very critical juncture. Done a lot about preservation and getting awareness out about the importance of preserving large tracts of land, and that continues to be done by a number of organizations. One of the things we can improve on is education and making sure that knowledge is passed to the next generation. One of the things that i am seeing that is encouraging when it comes to park visitation is something that comes out of the sesquicentennial. The sesquicentennial focused a lot of National Spotlight with this time period and these places. We are beginning to see in the post sesquicentennial years a , lot of firsttime visitors. They have been inspired to come and visit these places. I think there is a lot of opportunity to improve the education of this time period and really take advantage of those first time visitors across the country. Let me follow up with that. And i will open it up for a conversation instead of necessarily going down the line. We talked about firsttime visitors. What do you think is the challenge for engaging new firsttime people who are coming to the civil war . I guess i will go ahead and start with that. Obviously the civil war is so , multifaceted in its study. There is so many different avenues and approaches. As ryan was saying everything , from your traditional narrative and tactic of those accounts with civilian studies, womens studies, africanamerican studies during this for your time period. The challenge for the visitor relies on the public historian and the interpreter. Finding out what fuels their fire and their interest, connecting with them on that level and having enough of the background and a content specialty to be able to guide them into further study that will keep them interested and engaged. In other words, finding what lights someones fire and working with that . Absolutely. You do not want to talk to a first time visitor about cavalry if what they are interested in is artillery. You related to find what gets themengaged with makes connect to that Historic Site and story the process is ultimately creating future stewards. It is great if they are a firsttime visitor at gettysburg but if they dont understand why this place was important and why the story needs to be told that , opportunity of that next generation carrying on our history is lost. As a supervisor for a Historic Site it is a bottom line for you. Is difficult. Someone was talking about those who are interested in military minutia and stuff like that. Everyone says public history has the same issue where you have visitors on the tour who want to know exactly where company a of this regimen was located, and some people are just, they saw the brown sign off the highway and feel it is important because there is a brown sign. One thing we try to do where i i work in Prince William county which is a multicultural county, is try and relate these stories and they did not have these connections that my family had. We have a large hispanic population in Prince William and they have lots of different civil war stories of their own back home. If you go to our tours and programs, why do americans talk about their civil war where back at home they try to forget . It is a learning moment of why did we talk about it so much . Thosetrying to relate stories and how they can relate to their own civil war story, because lots of Different Countries do not talk about their civil strife like we talk about it, so often. It is difficult. A couple people have mentioned moving away from the traditional battlefields and leaders into other sorts of stories. But yet battles and leaders seem , to be the thing that a lot of people gravitate to. There seems to be kind of the bread and butter of a lot of civil war public history, at least. You look like you want to chime in. I think one of the vehicles is the latter. The leaders. At the end of the day they are still people. They are still human beings. There are still aspects of these human beings that we can relate to. Once we start to understand them a little bit better we can start , to understand the decisions they made and why they make the decisions. Battles and campaigns are very calm omplex, and complicated subjects to tackle. One of the things we can do if , we start with people first and go forward from there, it will make things a little bit easier and make the stories a bit more enticing for those who may want to delve deeper. I think what is really important is to help people what happened in the past to what happens today, so that they do not think because it is in the past it is gone and it is not important. Issues today are that have striking parallels to the civil war. Military history, but social history technological , history. They were in the middle of a technological revolution in those days. If we can take those pieces and when we are writing about this history and present the facts and present it in a way where they can draw the parallels between what is happening today and what is happening then what , strikes me about the history is that as i read about these , particularly the first person accounts and what they thought and felt and what was going on at the time. I can see a lot of myself there. I can relate to some of it. Some of it i really cannot relate to and then i have to understand the difference between those things and why and what has happened in between that makes those differences it. It helps me understand what happened then and what is happening now. I think you draw a really important distinction, i think i can understand them but i cant. Sort of understanding them and their own context. That can be a challenge for a lot of modern audiences where they try to understand what is happening with todays context. What sort of challenges do you guys see with helping people bridge that gap and peel back a century and a half of context . I think you need to try to be plain when you are asked whether you are explaining it verbally or writing it down. You have to make sure you have explained basically the context that the person in the past was dealing with. And then, you can kind of say or indicate how it may be different from todays context. People can kind of judge. Human nature does not change, circumstances do. You try to draw that distinction. You end up realizing that those people in the past were making very human reactions to circumstances which are somewhat different not completely different from ours. Start sorting out those differences and then you look at what is happening today, some of the issues going on today. Some ofsay, they face those same issues back then and there reactions were very human, very understandable, even if we do not agree. And then i can get a better feeling for the context today. You can see the continuity, and history is a continuity. We are in the middle of a time tunnel. We look behind us back to infinity and kind of see what is going on. It is kind of fuzzy through our looking glass, but you see pieces of it and can kind of pull it together. Aheadou see today looking and we do not see what is going on today, or what is going to happen in the future, but we can look back and kind of begin to get a better feel for that and understand. Lsch, let me reframe let me reframe this question. You have people at all levels. Some visitors, a geewhiz factor, im glad to be here. How do you help bridge that gap from what these guys 150 years to this visitor coming in say, help me figure this out. The first thing you have to take into account is that for this firsttime visitor, they are excited to be here. You want to capitalize on that enthusiasm. I think all of us as a casual visitor, historian, enthusiast, can think back to those Early Experiences that got us excited into Civil War History, those places, books, and authors. You have got to capitalize on that enthusiasm and understand that you will not be able to unload four years of information about this war, these leaders and battles and campaigns all at once. I had mentioned it earlier, kind of finding that sweet spot, what fuels their fire. Context, so off of much of capitalizing on that enthusiasm and relating to this firsttime experiences is taking these events such as the battle of gettysburg and personalizing and humanizing them. Maybe if we go out and we talk on Cemetery Ridge about picketts charge, maybe we do not particularly spend time constantly referring to the first virginia infantry. Maybe we refer to lieutenant john dooley and talk about how his family was one of the most prominent irish families in richmond, virginia, in the capital of the confederacy, and discuss how he had a tough choice, whether to stay in 1862, or to861 in go and fight in the confederacy with his brother and his father. There, we begin to personalize and humanize these people that participated in these events. For those firsttime visitors maybeome to these places, they have been in that situation. That they have had experience where maybe they have had to choose to go to college or face some other situation. Maybe they had to choose family over ideals or education over family or whatever the case or scenario may be. What you have done is laid the groundwork, giving them some basic foundational information about why this place is important. Related to a person a who asked who experienced these events in july of 1860 three, and you set them up for wanting to discover more. How do you counterbalance that . Counterbalance that against someone who says, he is a confederate, he supported slavery, which seems to be the opposite reaction of people with a broad brush. I think the challenge that all of us have and im going to ask you all about it. I think that is one of the reasons why history is so relevant. You read some of the news articles and the Media Coverage on the current Confederate Monument controversy. We are in this historical continuum. You may get those comments, and that is great. I just related to you the first virginia. He fought for virginia and he fought for the defense of the institution of slavery represented virginia and the confederacy. I think getting back to placing it in the context of the time he was fighting for what he believed in. He was fighting for what his family believed in. At think your comment about in the time is crucial. Many people leave that part off. At the time, it was different. Absolutely 100 . We have to place these events in the context of which they occurred. This context is 18611865. For this one, i am going to work way way down. I know rob will need a second to form a response. Dan . It was a very complex period it is one of the issues that drives people away, there is a lot to delve into. It is intimidating. It really is intimidating. There is a lot out there. I think going back and relating to the person at that time in that moment. History is frankly what it is. We just have to take those stories of the people we stand on the shoulders of and bring it forward. You are talking about things very complex. Are you saying that modern not like us tos process complicated stories or we do not have a patience . And think that is part of it. We do not have the attention span. That is painted probably which i do not want to do. Slavery is a very tough subject. The time between 1820 and 1865 was a tough time for our history. It is tough to talk about. It is difficult to get people to want to talk about it. I think it is a mixture of several issues that you mentioned. To follow up on what you said without painting in broad brush abouts, we are talking historians who have written these long, big bucks, but now we communicate with 140 characters. We are talking about how we have distilled and process this. It is a interesting question. When we talk about today and things like that, i think about the recent centennial at the National Park service. Called find your hashtag called , and they were inviting people to come out and see what these sites me to them. Mean to them. It is our job as interpreters to relate to that individual visitor what the site needs to them. It is not our prerogative to say what i should communicate. If somebody says this is what i think we can help but it is not our place to say that is that how you should do it. Different people have different stories in different backgrounds. That is kind of what i think about. Somebody could just as easily come in and say my ancestor had a very different experience and we need to treat those with respect. Rather than say, you do not understand. We have to treat both of those with a degree of respect and attention. Let me back up on something. People come in and say it is not your job to tell them what to think. Maybe with factual inaccuracies it is your job to correct them . Id draw the line between job and prerogative. If somebody comes with a factual inaccuracy, i do not want to get into a big debate. It is my job to help them try and understand the history of the United States and the larger context of the setting. Sometimes, you just have to say that goes for a lot of people. I can try my best. At the same time, some people have their opinions and you have to understand and respect them with the same degree of respect you would show in every direction. It became very personal for me when i was studying these officers in the confederate navy. With my experience in the navy, i read their accounts, and i was right there with them. I related to them, and i admire them for their courage and dedication and their professionalism. Then, i had to stop and think , because the cause they were serving was wrong. How can i think about these men and can i admire them . I want to. How do i then write about them so that i can help other people understand who they were and what they went through. The best way to do that was to back myself out of it and write the facts and use their words where i could. Tried to tell the story through them and let them speak to a reader. Let the reader make up their own mind. I think today it is human nature where it is easier to put people in boxes that are black and white. You put one person in a box according to these characteristics. That box is good or bad. You do not have to think about it anymore. It is very simple and easy. It does not hurt your train to think about. We need to try and relate to the audience and say that you need to think about it, and you need to try to understand what these folks went through on both sides of the question. You may find some pieces of yourself. All this time to think about it. Deep answer. Now, simple answer, we are raised as kids with movies and pop culture that shows us there is good and evil. There is superman and there is lex luther. The general public likes to see this good versus bad. It is simple and easy. We are trained from when we are raised to see who the good guys are. It is hard for us as historians and interpreters to say they are not all bad. There were some guys in the north who were just as bad as some guys in the south. It is too complex to make it so simple. We are talking to people who come to the parks and museums. They are getting the general Public People off of the street who have this notion of what is good and bad. It is hard to tell people that there are good and bad on both sides of the aisle. One thing about the context, i would challenge anyone in this , do youanyone watching not have skeletons in your own closet . We all do. You cant look at the civil war and say one side was good because it was fighting against slavery and one side was that because they were fighting for slavery. It is not. 1860 america was a lot different. I think that is one of the great challenges. They could just how different it was. We all like our nice, neat, tidy narratives. Try and construct a narrative based on todays context of 1860. It is really different. One of the themes that have kind of woven together is the sooner we recognize that history is messy and complicated and history is more than just names. Then, the sooner we will be able to understand the context and place ourselves in those positions. Relating to the earlier point that these people were human. They are human beings. They are human beings with the same feelings, emotions, problems, challenges, and interests we have today. Those are basic human qualities that do not change no matter what time period we are in. I am going to ask a question that some of you want to avoid with a 10 foot pole. Seeing what is going on with the headlines with the Confederate Monuments under siege today, is that a attempt to make things better or whitewash things . Is that a attempt to understand things out of context or is it a missed moment of understanding . How do you read what is happening . I think we are also looking at each other but that speaks to the larger dialogue that is going on. If you are trying to think in good guys and bad guys who thinks the opposite . I will say one thing. It is related to what you are saying. I think the way we are teaching and treating Confederate Monuments today is really affecting people who come to the parks. With School Teachers where i work, they are definitely afraid to touch the civil war because they think it is toxic. I think it will impact visitation and how it will impact the schools. I think people will be more inclined not to touch it because it can be toxic. Because we see it is toxic today. The media makes a toxic breed different groups make it toxic on both sides now. Extremism seemed to take the world today. It will hurt park attendance and make our job harder to get those stories out. I think that is kind of answering, not really. I do see a problem with how it will affect Civil War History of history and how people will affect those sites. It is very difficult subject. It has to to be taken on a casebycase basis. Symbols are very important. Symbols can also be very different to different people. For example, on one end, i think it was a good thing that the state capital does not fly the confederate battle flag anymore. That is a good thing. On the other hand, removing monuments well, it depends on how the local populace feels about it. I have mixed feelings. If you are celebrating someone he was ae. Lee great man or wasnt he . That is a question we all have to deal with. It depends on how you have to approach it. I do think that the idea of eliminating history from our landscape is not a good idea. Then, these elements and items are not out here to explain. They are for you to talk about. It is a lost opportunity. It is a lost opportunity, because you do not understand history by erasing it. The idea that it should not be there, because it is offensive to someone well, life can be offensive. History is life. People in the past are only separated they are not any harder for us to comprehend, because they are separated by time than the people in the next room or in the next county or across the world are for us to comprehend because they are separated from distance. It is a separation, and we should try to understand them. You dont do that by erasing history from the landscape. There are cases where certain elements in certain places are probably it is right to change that. Not as a general principle. Not as a general rule. Come back. All right, i will come back. [laughter] i think we have one very simple lesson. They are a reminder as what can happen to a nation when talking stops. A nation can read itself apart. They are there to remind us at times when we need to put aside our differences and remember that we are americans. That is how i tried to look at it as best as possible. What about robert e. Lee . Well, he served in the United States army. Jeb stuart served in the army , and he was wounded in action during the regular army. There are confederate generals who went on to serve in the American Army during the spanishamerican war. I think what is forgotten is that they were all americans. Slavery is a blight on our history. No one is questioning that. We as americans rose up and did something about it and in turn made ourselves better for the future. I come back to some of those descriptors we already use. I think by removing these monuments and these memorials it is an effort to make history neat and tidy. As i mentioned, it is not it is is not. It is messy and complicated. We have to have the desire and the want and the bravery and the courage to confront that messy and complicated history head on. By removing those tangible links to our past, a tangible link to , theseme period monuments and memorials were placed by people who were in that time or were in that context. As dwight was mentioning, it is a missed opportunity. We are trying to make that history cleaner and tidier. When we are talking about education, we are missing a chance to educate. The time for those people and that context. I will go back to something dwight said. It comes down to local communities. If the locals do not want it there, that is their community. You should not have to live with something in your community that you are uncomfortable with. At the same time, i would much rather see what some cities are doing by adding signs. Something that interprets something. Helping to interpret something. That is our job as interpreters. I would much rather see something interpret it. Something that says this one went up in the middle of a iod ortion per reconstruction period. What does that tell us about the monument . What does it say on the statue . Things like that. It is kind of one of two camps. I believe a community should have the right to say this is not what our Community Stands for. At the same time, i would much rather see added context to these monuments to explain their purpose a little bit more. As a followup my concern is where does it stop . If the main reaction to removing these monuments is because a person owned slaves, where does it stop . Do we start making decisions on individual morals and their beliefs and whether or not they are worthy to be remembered if be remembered . If we are removing monuments such as the Jefferson Davis memorial which are examples in new orleans on the premise that they are offensive because these people in our past and slaves traded to a remote monuments to and slaves, then do we remove monuments to washington . To jefferson . Do we remove monuments to people from the 20th century who may have had questionable decisions. They have some kind of personal skeleton that may or may not have influenced their greatness in history. Where does the line stop . Examples, at one point in time, catholics were not well thought of in the history. Could someone be frowned upon because they were atheist . Using slavery as once or a value judgment you could extrapolate that to a bunch of Different Things and talk about the slope. For me, one of the huge frustrations is it becomes impossible to have the discussion. Regardless of what you say, if you find something good or bad, then you alienate about one third of the audience. You will get people violently upset with you. You have one third on this end, one third on this end, and one third in the middle. It makes it hard to have a conversation. I would say less than one third. I would think for most people 50 will have the conversation. Ends,25 and 25 on both and they just happened to be very vocal. They have a tendency to approach these subjects with anger rather than reason. Quit put them in a box and draw a judgment and they get angry about it. Somehow, this reinforces your ego or whatever. If we put you in the right box, then you feel better, because you are against that. We have to try to counteract that tendency. Anger and understanding are not compatible. They do not work together. If you are angry, you are out to defend yourself, because someone is about to hit you over the head. That is what anger is for. It shuts off your reason, and it shuts off your thinking capacity and understanding. There is a tendency in the public sphere to use anger more as a tool with selfaffirmation rather than a real belief system. It is hard to fight that. I just want to ask them and say why are you angry . Not what are you angry about . I understand what you are angry about. Why are you angry . What good is it doing you to be angry . How can we have a conversation when you are angry . Because we cant. I think that circles back to something earlier. Emphasizing and looking at these situations with and that the rather then judgment makes it easier for them to understand the stories. Let me shift gears, because we are looking ahead for ways to engage people. How do we engage the next generation of civil war fans . I hear that a lot when i go out to roundtables. How do we get new voices involved . What do you guys think . I think one of the first challenges is getting this time period of American History firmly back in the American History curriculum. I have spent time in classrooms as a teacher with previous careers. I am very familiar with the state and federal standards. Period that, if not overt at all, is glanced very quickly. If you can remember back on that time period as being taught on school, youhigh will not retain any of that information. Time periodto this and all of its facets back into at a youngerm and age. History atassion for a lot younger age. Not waiting to teach American History until junior year of government as a graduation requirement. One of the things i mentioned earlier is that we cannot deny the influence and impact of play of 21st century technology. I cannot expect someone to get interested it in the civil war by reading a 700 page campaigns study. With no pictures or maps. It is just not happening. You have to meet them where they are. If that is 140 characters or if that is through a soundbite or a snap or a tweet or a chat or whatever else the kids are doing. In regards to technology, that is where we need to meet them and light that fire. Is there a distinction . Should historians interact in that way as well . I think they are. I think historians and adults are historically behind the eight ball when it comes to the latest technology craze. The latest craze that has come out. How many of you have heard of fidget spinners . It came and gone in less than one month. By the time you knew what it was an you were driving out to go find these things, we are behind the eight ball, so i think we need to be on that cutting edge in the use of technology and engaging a younger audience with the cutting edge technology. I am going to tag off of what dan just said. I think it starts with the children. Dad, dads, ons, uncles uncles, that they are coming to these National Parks, they are coming with mom and dad. Idea first asn to the what and why of the perk. The park. It is up to the families, the first line of engagement, to get the kids involved. That will then carry itself forward. Ryan, you are the youngest guy at the table. What do we do to carry this forward . I have said it a few times i think it is important to expand what we think of as a Civil War History. There are these weird camps that i find. You have to understand the military history of the war or the social setting. They do not talk to each other. Do both. Why not do both . If somebody is not a military historian or social historian , then they think they cannot do it because they are not in that category. It is ok. Your foot in the door get your foot in the door and go from there. I wholeheartedly agree with what dan was saying. Reenter and reintroduce the importance of American History. There has been this shift to math and science which is very important. However, it has been to the detriment of social studies. So that is kind of a threefold whammy. Tell everybody you do not have to fall into one camp and that encourage them where they are. Then they will come. They will come. I think a wonderful thing about this country is that it is the first instance, as far as i know, in Human History where a group of very well educated people sat down and thought about the history of what a country should be and then decided to fashion a constitution and governmental form as best as they could. They would have said, if you dont understand the history and you dont understand where this country came from, where the system came from, how it developed, and what its basis to, then you are not going be able to fully participate as a citizen. And to be as good of a citizen as you might be. You may make judgments that are not good for you or good for the country. So, they would have connected history and understanding of history with citizenship. , ifink it is important that we had indeed lost that in the schools, then that be reintroduced. Alsowise, as the founders understood, this experiment was not guaranteed. As we know as historians, history is not guaranteed. We look back at what these men went through. When they did what they did, they did not know what happened the next day either, and they could have just as easily gone a different way as well. It is that connection we need to make between citizenship and storytelling. Storytelling. That is what it is. With tenure roles, fouryearolds with 10yearolds, fouryearolds, fiveyearolds, it is all about the stories. We are here to tell stories about the people who thought the who fought in the war or lived through the war. Somebody who was enslaved. People are attracted to stories about people. If we keep doing that you have to upgrade the technology, that you also have two tell a good story. I think that is something that is lost today by a lot of historians. They will get up in front of a battle, talk about a but they are not telling a story. Movies are nothing but storytelling. When you to make an more applicable and be good storytellers. We have talked about how the neat and tidy narrative is working against us in a lot of ways. Having a good narrative is also probably the greatest tool. My last question for you, give us some examples. What is your civil war origin story . How did you get hooked on the civil war . I will start. Titanic kid. A my mom got me a book about the titanic. It came from the magic treehouse series. I was in the third grade and i got the next book about the civil war. There was a nineyearold drummer boy and i was a nineyearold or greater reading about the 9yearold drummer boy. Its important to tell good stories and connecting. I am that person. It has grown from there. I came to a focus on the civil war itself really late. On the very early focus sea and ships and the navy because thats where i wanted to make my career. Moved to virginia 30 odd years ago in the center of all and ionderful history really wanted to get back to history as my focus as my career. I was in the middle of the civil war and i had my Navy Background and i put them together. Something i could really get my hands around was fascinating. I grew up on mosby highway. I knew him as the robin hood of the area. He saved peoples farms and animals. Him. Ythology around obviously a lot of it is not true. It hooks me into the story. Around doinggoing magical crazy things against the huge even army that he had no chance against. It wasnt mosby and it grew into a deep understanding of the war. My dad has always had a great love for American History. Themember going to battlefields in pennsylvania. Gettysburg obviously. Brandy station. I found it incredibly fascinating and it was really through the efforts of my dad, those weekend trips. It was also through my father. The first family trip when i was five was to gettysburg was because his first trip to a Civil War Battlefield was gettysburg when he was five. Back through the generations. Getting a toy musket and being taken out on this battlefield and hearing storytelling. Outhe later years i found my father wasnt the most accurate with storytelling. The Confederate Army always seemed to win at gettysburg. It inspired me and this became this historical place that i wanted to live in. This time period i wanted to constantly learn about and understand the context and those decisions and events. The power of place. I think that very neat and ly ties back to our opening comments about preservation. How that impacted your understanding and influenced your interest. If you dont have a place you cant get hooked. That speaks to the importance of preservation. Youve got good landscapes to walk on and get hooked on in the first place. For one or two quick questions from the audience. I want to thank the Gettysburg Heritage Center for hosting us today. Thanks to our friends at cspan. Thank you. We hope you enjoy us and join us on the blog. Thank you. [applause] watching American History tv. All weekend every weekend on cspan3. To join in on the conversation, like us on facebook at cspanhistory. We will hear about some of south dakotas former leaders. You might recognize these trail of governors which stretched all the way down to the missouri river. Coming up next, we will hear about some of south dakotas former leaders. The trail of governors was started in 2011 by a couple of businessman in town who were a couple of history buffs and wanted to find a way to promote history in the capital city. The city gets a lot of taurus tourists who are visiting the capital, the capital city, and they wanted a way to inform people about the history of the state