Schedule:
The program is designed as a series of five conversations exploring different facets of the Civil War experience, informed by reading the words written or uttered by powerful voices from the past and present, as listed below.
- Imagining War (January 15, 2012, 3:00 p.m.)
- Geraldine Brooks, March [2005]
- Choosing Sides (February 5, 2012, 3:00 p.m.)
- selections from the anthology:
- Frederick Douglass, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" [1852];
- Henry David Thoreau, "A Plea for Captain John Brown" [1859];
- Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address [March 4, 1861];
- Alexander H. Stephens, "Cornerstone" speech [March 21, 1861];
- Robert Montague, Secessionist speech at Virginia secession convention [April 1-2, 1861];
- Chapman Stuart, Unionist speech at Virginia secession convention [April 5, 1861];
- Elizabeth Brown Pryor, excerpt from Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through his Private Letters [2007];
- Mark Twain, "The Private History of a Campaign That Failed" [1885]; and
- Sarah Morgan, excerpt from The Diary of a Southern Woman [May 9, May 17, 1862].
- Making Sense of Shiloh (February 26, 2012, 3:00 p.m.)
- selections from the anthology:
- Ambrose Bierce, "What I Saw of Shiloh" [1881];
- Ulysses Grant, excerpt from the Memoirs [1885];
- Shelby Foote, excerpt from Shiloh [1952];
- Bobbie Ann Mason, "Shiloh" [1982]; and
- General Braxton Bragg, speech to the Army of the Mississippi [May 3, 1862].
- The Shape of War (March 11, 2012, 3:00 p.m.)
- James M. McPherson, Crossroad of Freedom: Antietam [2002]
- War and Freedom (April 22, 2012, 3:00 p.m.)
- selections from the anthology:
- Abraham Lincoln, address on colonization [1862];
- John M. Washington, "Memorys [sic] of the Past" [1873];
- Frederick Douglass, "Men of Color, To Arms!" [March 1863];
- Abraham Lincoln, letters to James C. Conkling [1863] and Albert G. Hodges [1864];
- Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address [1863];
- James S. Brisbin, report on U.S. Colored Cavalry in Virginia [Oct. 2, 1864];
- Colored Citizens of Nashville, Tennessee, Petition to the Union Convention of Tennessee Assembled in the Capitol at Nashville [January 9, 1865];
- Margaret Walker, excerpt from Jubilee [1966];
- Leon Litwack, excerpt from Been in the Storm So Long [1979]; and
- Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address, 1865.
This program has been made possible by:
