Mary Margaret Miller
May 2, 2007
Civil War scholars and enthusiasts will gather in Oxford in May for the third annual University of Mississippi Conference on the Civil War.
The 2007 symposium, “The Experience of Combat,” will feature presentations by a range of scholars, journalists, authors, and military personnel, as well as book signings, battlefield excursions, speaker receptions, and a historical tour of the Ole Miss campus.
“One of the best parts of the Civil War is that its popularity and national importance attract a lot of attention from people of many different methodological backgrounds,” said John R. Neff, UM associate professor of history and author of Honoring the Civil War Dead: Commemoration and the Problem of Reconciliation.
“In a single conference presentation, this diversity of approach allows us to engage the war from a number of different viewpoints and interpretive positions.”
Earl J. Hess, a ssociate professor of history and the Stewart McClelland Distinguished Professor in the Humanities at Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tennessee, will give the keynote address. He is the author of several books on Civil War combat, including Pea Ridge: Civil War Campaign in the West , Pickett's Charge: The Last Attack at Gettysburg, and The Union Soldier in Battle: Enduring the Ordeal of Combat.
“We are excited that a scholar of Hess’s caliber is part of this event,” said Robert Fox, project coordinator for the Division of Outreach and Continuing Education.
"The programming and scholarship presented at this year’s conference will be both informative and insightful for Civil War academics and enthusiasts alike.”
Other speakers include Bradford A. Wineman of the US Army Command and General Staff College; Janette Thomas Greenwood of Clark University; Glenn Robins of Georgia Southwestern State University; Tom Ward of Rockhurst University; Brian Craig Miller of Emporia State University; Brian Risher of The University of Mississippi; Stacey Allen, NPS Historian at Shiloh National Military Park, as well as University of Georgia PhD candidate Barton A. Myers and Texas Christian University PhD candidate David Slay.
“Americans who have not experienced combat often hold a romantic view of what it is like to experience it,” said Barton Myers, a University of Georgia PhD candidate who will speak at this year’s conference. “Without historians and enthusiasts examining combat with a skeptical eye, the gap between those who serve in the military and those who have never experienced war grows greater. Trying to understand the challenges that a conflict like the American Civil War, or any war, places on soldiers and civilians alike is part of being a responsible, educated citizen, especially in a democratic republic where the people hold the power to start and stop wars.”
Myers will explore the abolitionist Civil War experience in his lecture, “At the Point of Black Bayonets: Emancipation and Union Military Policy in Coastal North Carolina.” Myers became interested in the 1863 counter-guerrilla raids of Union Brigadier General Edward Augustus Wild after discovering a brief Charleston Mercury article on the execution of a suspected Confederate guerilla living in northeastern North Carolina.
“My talk traces the frustrating transition that General Wild and his soldiers underwent as they moved from a strategy of discerning political loyalty in the community to a strategy of wide-spread economic destruction over a short operation,” said Myers. “I argue that the raid was not total warfare because the line between combatant and non-combatant never completely broke down, but it was clearly a rapid shift from a more limited type of warfare toward a more rigorous style of warfare.”
Dr. Glenn Robins of Georgia Southwestern State University will present the lecture "The Combat: Union Prisoners of War and the Culture of Resistance." Robins, who lives and teaches near the National Prisoner of War Museum at the Andersonville National Historic Site in Georgia, is currently editing the Lyle Adiar diary which explores the life of a white sergeant in the 111 th U.S. Colored Infantry who was held as a POW at five different sites during the Civil War. Robins’s lecture will move beyond the traditional study of POW experiences to further explore how soldiers mentally adapt to captivity and cope with confinement.
“By studying the experience of combat, we can come to a better understanding of why men and women fight,” said Robins. “We can better understand what motivated men and women to fight, or as military historian John Lynn has suggested, we can better understand the initial motivation, the combat motivation, and the sustaining motivation of soldiers.”
The conference will be held May 18-19 in the E.F. Yerby Conference Center on the UM-Oxford campus. Registration is required. Conference fee is $50 and includes lectures, reception, and campus tour. Educators and students qualify for a reduced registration fee of $35. Teachers who wish to receive 1.3 CEUs should include a separate $20 check made payable to the University of Mississippi. For more information visit http://www.outreach.olemiss.edu/events/civil_war or call 662-915-1408. For information related to disability assistance, call 662-915-1408.
