Conference 2017

The Center for Civil War Research and the Arch Dalrymple III Department of History present the eleventh annual Conference on the Civil War.

The keynote address will be given by Dr. Christopher Phillips (University of Cincinnati) author of The Rivers Ran Backward: The Civil War and the Remaking of the American Middle Border, which was the winner of the 2017 Tom Watson Brown Book Award. 

"Borders, Boundaries, and Lines in the Civil War"
September 29 & 30

Conference Program

Friday, September 29

Yerby Conference Center

9:00- First Session
Missouri and the Border War
Elle Harvell, University of California, Los Angeles
"'Fiends in human shape': The Boundaries of Warfare in Missouri's Little Dixie During the Civil War"

Jesse George-Nichol, University of Virginia
"'The certainness of right & the knowledge that good men must respect you': Edward Bates, Political Moderation, and Restrained Manhood"

Amy Fluker, University of Mississippi
"'Here in Missouri, . . . we understand each other': Marginalization and Reconciliation in Missouri's Civil War Memory"

10:30- Second Session
Native Americans and Southeastern Margins
Zachery Cowsert, West Virginia University
"Fraud, Feuds, and Factionalism on the Frontier: The Roots of the Creek Civil War"

Christine Rizzi, University of Mississippi
"'The Only Ark Left': Mobility and Secession in the Florida Borderlands"

Nicholas Roland, University of Texas at Austin
"'Our Worst Enemies Are in Our Midst': Violence in the Civil War-era Texas Hill Country"

Lunch

2:00- Third Session
African-American Soldiers and the State
Joe Funk, Catholic University of America
"'Breaking up the Iniquitous System': African-American Soldiers, Federal Authority, and the Mission to End Forced Apprenticeships in Maryland"

Andrew Lang, Mississippi State University
"The Origins of 'Separate but Equal'? Emancipation, Military Citizenship, and the Boundaries of Inclusion in Union Armies"

4:00-Wiley-Silver Prize Presentation, Yerby Conference Center
Matthew Hulbert, Texas A&M-Kingsville
The Ghosts of Guerrilla Memory: How Civil War Bushwhackers Became Gunslingers in the American West

5:00-6:00-Reception, Bryant Hall

6:30-Keynote Address, Croft Institute room 107
Christopher Phillips, University of Cincinnati
"Southern Cross, North Star: The Cultural Politics of Race and Irreconciliation on the Post-Civil War Middle Border"

Saturday, September 30

Yerby Conference Center

9:00- First Session
The Homefront on the Midwestern Border
Timothy Roberts, Western Illinois University
"'I Need Your Care and Protection Worse Than Old Abe Does': The Civil War Experience of a Copperhead Woman"

Stephen Rockenbach, Virginia State University
"'The Wolf Was Upon Us': The Ohio River Border and Guerrilla War in an Indiana Community"

10:30- Second Session
Black Civilians on the Boundaries of Freedom
Gary Edwards, Arkansas State University
"Reuben: A Black Overseer in Slavery and Freedom, 1849-1865"

G. David Schieffler, University of Arkansas
"'A 'sickly, pestilential, crowded post': The Boundary between Slavery and Freedom at Helena, Arkansas, during the Civil War"

Lunch

2:00- Third Session
The Eastern Border
Daniel Farrell, Kent State University
"'To Win by an Overwhelming Majority': Federal Interference in Maryland's 1861 Gubernatorial Election as an Act of Military Necessity"

Judkin Browning, Arkansas State University
"Nature and Human Nature: Environmental Influences on the Union's failed Peninsula Campaign, 1862"

Madeleine Forrest, University of Arkansas
"This Debatable Land: Life on the Civil War Border in Fauquier County, Virginia"