The Passage of the Armies: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Enslaved in the Civil War and Reconstruction

A Porter Fortune Symposium in Conjunction with the University of Mississippi Department of History

October 12-14, 2023

 

Program overview

Thursday, October 12

1:30-2:30 Campus Tour on the History of Slavery at the University (meet at Lyceum steps facing the Circle)

3:00-4:15 Panel 1:Shifting Loyalties (Butler Auditorium, Triplett Alumni Center)

4:30-6:00 Special Roundtable: New Directions in the History of Civil War Civilian-Military Interactions [Amy Murrell Taylor (University of Kentucky), Andrew Lang (Mississippi State), Barton Myers (Washington and Lee)] (Butler Auditorium)

6:30-8:00: Welcome Reception (Farrington Gallery, Bryant Hall)

Friday, October 13

9:00-10:30 Panel 2: Reconstruction (Butler Auditorium, Triplett Alumni Center)

10:45-12:00 Panel 3: Confronting Freedom (Butler Auditorium)

2:45-4:00 Panel 4: Soldiers and Civilians (Butler Auditorium)

5:00 Keynote Address: "The Union Army and the Limits of Presidential Power in the Civil War" (William Blair, Penn State) (Auditorium 124, Student Union)

Saturday, October 14

9:00-10:15 Panel 5: Wartime Emancipation (Butler Auditorium, Triplett Alumni Center)

10:30-12:00 Panel 6: Imagined Futures (Butler Auditorium)

Speakers & Papers

Panel 1: Shifting Loyalties (10/12; 3:00-4:15, Butler Auditorium)

Daniel Farrell, University of Cincinnati
-"For the Purpose of Squelching Butternuts": Partisanship, Loyalty and Republican Ideology within the Indiana Legion, 1861-1865

James Fuller, University of Indianapolis
-The Copperheads versus The War Governor: Richard Yates, Disloyalty, and Dissent in Civil War Illinois

John Sacher, University of Central Florida
-"Doubts are Entertained": Captain John Coke and Confederate Conscription in Virginia

Special Roundtable: New Directions in the History of Civil War Civilian-Military Interactions (10/12; 4:30-6:00. Butler Auditorium)

Amy Murrell Taylor, University of Kentucky

Andrew Lang, Mississippi State

Barton Myers, Washington and Lee

Welcome Reception: 10/12, 6:30-8:00, Farrington Gallery, Bryant Hall

Panel 2:Reconstruction (10/13; 9:00-10:30, Butler Auditorium)

Travis Patterson, University of Mississippi
-"Terror Reigns": Reconstruction, Violence, and Redemption in Jackson County, Florida, 1868-1871

Christopher Rein, Managing Editor, Air University Press
-Black and Red in Blue: Interactions between African-American and Native-American Soldiers in the Civil War-Era U.S. Army

Brianna Taylor, University of Mississippi
-Unexpected Visionaries of an American Empire: The Personal Writings of Civil War Veterans in the 1860s-1880s

Derek Wood, Tulane University
-"A Carnival of Treason": Confederate Violence and Resistance in Occupied Louisiana

 

Panel 3: Confronting Freedom (10/13; 10:45-12:00, Butler Auditorium)

Heath Anderson, Mississippi State
-Confederate Delusions: The Hubris of Mastery During the American Civil War

Wyatt Erchak, Carnegie Mellon University
-John Brown's Body: Guerrilla Warfare, Self-Emancipation, and Continuity in the Formation of the First Black Civil War Regiment

Ashley Towle, University of Southern Maine
-"Worthy of Vindication": Freedwomen's Demands for Child Support and Justice from their Former Enslavers

Panel 4: Soldiers and Civilians (10/13; 2:45-4:00, Butler Auditorium)

Noah Crawford, Texas A&M University
-"Feed Upon the Enemy": The Weaponization of Refugees in the American Civil War

Lisa Tendrich Frank, Independent Scholar
-"Domestic Warfare during the Civil War: The Importance of Gender in Military Strategy"

Chuck Welsko, Kentucky Historical Society
-Dirty Rags and Other Flags: Performing Loyalty and Dissent in the Civil War Era Mason-Dixon Borderland

 

Keynote Address: "The Union Army and the Limits of Presidential Power in the Civil War and Reconstruction" (10/13; 5:00, Auditorioum 124, Student Union)

William Blair, Penn State University

 

Panel 5: Wartime Emancipation (10/14; 9:00-10:15, Butler Auditorium)

Anne Brinton, Northwest Florida State College
-Escaping Slavery in the Border States: A Push/Pull Analysis of Wartime Missouri

Robert Gudmestad, Colorado State University
-The Mississippi Squadron and Military Emancipation

Cooper Wingert, Georgetown University
-Reconsidering Archer Alexander's Certificate of Freedom: Enslaved People, Union Provost Marshals, and the Relationship between Civil and Military Authority in Wartime Missouri

Panel 6: Imagined Futures (10/14; 10:30-12:00, Butler Auditorium)

Francesco Asano, New York Universityy
-"A Terrible Incubus of Blackness": Black Hunting and Nature Conservation in Post Civil War America

Andy Donnelly, University of Mississippi
-Converting the "Mean Whites": Imagining Ideological Conversion in Civil War Novels

Marcy Sacks, Albion College
-"I will send to you my contraband": White Yankees' Slave-Holding Fantasies and the Trafficking in Black Refugees during the Civil War

Maddie Setiawan, Texas A&M University
-Forgetting Unionists: The 1866 Southern Loyalist Convention and Their Fight for Reconstruction