Presentation by Dr. Peter Carmichael, Director Civil War Institute, Gettysburg, PA
UNT Health Science Center, MET Building, Room 124, 1000 Montgomery Street, Fort Worth, TX 76107
Dinner: 6PM Program Starts at: 7PM
(Menu: Chicken Parmesan, Penne Pasta, Garden Salad, Dessert: Cost – $13 per person, RSVP to jimrosenthal5757@aol.com or by calling or texting 817-307-9263)
So often we look at the battles and leaders of the Civil War and feel that this gives us a good picture of the conflict. But we are missing a critical element. How did Civil War soldiers endure the brutal and unpredictable existence of army life during the conflict? This question is at the heart of Peter S. Carmichael’s sweeping new study of men at war – The Civil War for the Common Soldier and will be the focus of his presentation. Through extensive research of the letters and records left behind by individual soldiers from both the North and the South, he has been able to explore the totality of the experience for the Civil War soldier –the marching, the fighting, the boredom, the idealism, the exhaustion, the punishments, and the frustrations of being away from families who often faced their own dire circumstances. His focus is not on what soldiers thought but rather how they thought. In doing so, he reveals how, to the shock of most men, well-established notions of duty or disobedience, morality or immorality, loyalty or disloyalty, and bravery or cowardice were blurred by war. He found that a pragmatic philosophy of soldiering emerged, guiding members of the rank and file as they struggled to live with the contradictory elements of their violent and volatile world. In the end, soldiering in the Civil War was never a state of being but a process of becoming.
Peter Carmichael is the Director of the Civil War Institute and a Professor of History at Gettysburg College. He received his PhD from Penn State University and is also the author of The Last Generation: Young Virginians in Peace, War, and Reunion (UNC, 2005) and Lee’s Young Artillerist: William R. J. Pegram (Virginia, 1995). In addition to his books, he has also published a number of articles for both scholarly and popular journals, and he speaks frequently to general and scholarly audiences. His latest book will be available for purchase and autographin at the meeting. This should be an excellent presentation on a seldom explored but very important topic. See you there!