Individually and as a team, they are interpreters of the civil war era who combine military history and social and cultural history and bring to their scholarship and their engagement with readers and audiences great knowledge, great sophistication and great style. As your biographical pacts enumerate, they have individually and together enriched and enlived the literature over the years. Gary gallagher is the john now the third Professor Emeritus in the professor of civil war at the university of virginia and youre all familiar, i know with his major works, the confederate war, the union war, lee and his generals in war and memory. Hes also like me and many others in this room, an oh fish gnaw doe, but more an expert on civil war themed films but his passion has inspired a terrific 2008 book causes won lost and forgotten. How hollywood and popular art shape what we know about the civil war. Hes the coed or the of with liz who just published new perspectives on the union war. Joan waug
Jonathan white and im vice chair of the Lincoln Forum and it is my pleasure to welcome you to this session. We are on Hallowed Ground and it is altogether fitting and proper that we come to gettysburg every november to commemorate the life and legacy of abraham lincoln. Our first speaker this morning is peter carmichael. Peter is the robert c. Flour professor of civil war studies at Gettysburg College and cwi hats around this morning its wonderful to see those here. He holds his, ph. D. From Penn State University where he had the fortune to study under gary gallagher. He is the author or editor of five books, including the last generation Young Virginians in peace, war and reunion published by unc press in 2005. He is one of the series editors for unc presss civil war america series and i know him best through this capacity. He was my editor for midnight in america and i can tell you his thoughtfulness, careful attention to detail and his generosity resources made my book a better book
My name is Jonathan White and ill the vice chair of the Lincoln Forum. Our final speaker this morning is brian dirck. Hes a professor of history at Anderson University in indiana. He is the author of numerous books on Abraham Lincoln, imagining america, lincoln in indiana and others. His subjects probe some of the most interesting and relevant topics in lincolns life and he has won awards for his work including the best book on lincoln published in 2007. He had the opportunity to travel to seoul where he addressed the korean Abraham Lincoln society. I know. Id like to hear more about that. How can i get on that gravy train . Today he will talk to us about his new book the black heavens a review at civil war monitor states students of the 16th president will want to add this concise thought provoking and sensitively written volume to their book shelves. Please join me in welcoming brian dirck. [ applause ] well, hello, everybody. Its good to be here. It really is. I wanted to thank you
Thanks for joining us on American History tv. Professor davis thanks for having me. Steve let me begin with your book, expected to be published in about a year. What have you learned so far . Professor davis oh, so many things. I started the project asking, is there a long history of black women in sports . I found more than i expected to find, quite frankly. There wasnt any archive labeled this is the history of black women in sports. So i kind of had to piece it together. I would say i got started by finding three women who actually played baseball in the negro leagues in the 1950s. It was a remarkable story. They played with the men. One of the things that stuck out to me about that story was that the owner who had brought in these black women to play against the men said he had something called the gal file, where women across the country and young girls too were writing in to request tryouts. That kind of stuck in my head as a young graduate student and i thought, if there were a
By emma lazarus that says give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free as the embodiment of the way we think about this country and immigration. As you look across the history of this nation, does it track with the reality of how we have treated immigrants . Dr. Kraut the history of immigration in the u. S. Doesnt track at all with emma lazaruss wonderful quotation. It has been a lovehate relationship. In the 19th century, there was a popular immigrant saying, america beckons but americans repel. In many ways that much more how ourly embodies relationship with immigration has been in the United States. One of the great ironies is that emma lazarus wrote the poem in 1883, and one year before, in 1882, the u. S. Passed the chinese exclusion law, excluding chinese laborers from coming to the United States. We would pass in the years after that increasingly restrictive legislation. So we want immigrants to come. We beckon them with opportunity. We beckon them