conference with professor gallagher. with that, i will turn it over to professor stephen cushman. thank you very much. i am grateful to everybody. i won t repeat all the thank yous that have been said, but on behalf of tamika nunley and myself i would say thank you for being courageous and not being driven away this morning by that first talk. [ laughter ] all right, let s start with a large claim. here it is. without the civil war, there would be no mark twain. but why stop with one big claim. there is another that i will throw in free of charge. without mark twain, memory of the civil war would be different from what it is today. twain played a very significant role in civil war memory, by publishing books by various other people about the war, at least one of which, the memoirs of grant, has become a classic of american literature and history. but let s stick to the first big claim. without the civil war, there would be no mark twain. as we think about mark twain and
so i have the very difficult task of going after gary. i would like to first thank carrie for inviting me and will, for accommodating all of my traveling snafus and being so gracious. and to thank liz baron, who is my former advisor and gary gallagher, who is also a dear mentor of mine, for not only having me here at the conference, but also just for years and years of mentoring. that don t seem to end. i am going to talk about i am going to begin with the battle that gary does not think is important, because it is in north carolina. to be fair, i don t think many people think that the battle of newborn is incredibly important or significant, so i don t think he is alone. nor am i arguing that the western theater is more important than the eastern theater. i wanted to throw my hands up and say that up front and maybe change the conversation a little bit. so, i will begin. on the morning of march 14, 1862, general john foster read the first troops to the front line in nort
exploring iconic photographs. everybody wrote one essay and we will see the historic images. the program is moderated by one of the coeditors, professor gary gallagher. peter has given me the official go-ahead. we are going to display mercy in this panel at the end of a long day. what we are going to do is go down the table. matt joan, aaron are our panel. we are each room to talk about our photograph and i will start with matt. i am going to start with mattgallman matt gallman because this book was his idea. is it ok if i stay seated? this is a book that we did and my job right now is to tell you about the impulse for this book. and what the book really is. they are sure got back there so you have no idea. shrink-wrapped back there so that you have no idea. i am going to tell you something that might shock you, the idea emerges over beer. [laughter] matt: we were sitting around and talking about what might be a good idea for a book. how about so that you have no idea
people were corrupted to provide mostly with information about movements. other things as well, in exchange for not that much money , but fairly lavish lifestyles. sunday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span s q and a. american history tv is on c-span3 every weekend featuring museum tour is, archival films, programs on the presidency. here s a clip from a recent program. i will never publish word of these reports, at least on my own, though i am proud of the work. one major report in tribal treaty rights. it involves analyzing a phrase in a treaty clause that ran less than a sentence. explaining the contemporary meaning of the words usual and accustomed places, and cultivate. parlayed those few words into a report that ran several hundred pages. the research led me to me considering myself for a time the leading historian on oyster cultivation, a title to which i never aspired it to which i did not have much competition. i ve experienced some of the most gratifying moments o
allow speakers to examine various facets of the civil war experience. e shenandoah th valley offered that potential. let me talk about the valley. briefly. most of you know it is a place of breathtaking beauty and agricultural bounty, then and now. it extends from the potomac river in the north to beyond lexington in the south, with the blue ridge mountains on the east and the alleghenies on the west. the valley runs southwest to totheast and drops gently meet the potomac river. this means someone traveling towards the potomac goes down the valley in an audit circumstance where north is always up, in the valley, north is always up. the massenet and mountain divides the valley. shenandoahork of the meanders toward the potomac. in the east, the south fork runs through the page valley on its journey to join the north fork at front royal. image of thea good valley in your mind, but that is how we conceived of it when we were talking about it. we settled on it because of the logis