Goodheart's New Civil War History Garners Early Critical Acclaim and Media Interest

CHESTERTOWN, MD, April 18, 2011—In a publishing year in which the 150^th anniversary of the Civil War has sparked a flood of new books about the conflict, none has received more positive press and critical acclaim than 1861: The Civil War Awakening, written by Adam Goodheart, the Hodson Trust-Griswold Director of the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington College.

Goodheart’s book was released April 11 by Alfred A. Knopf and is already in its fourth printing. The narrative actually begins in 1860, with Abraham Lincoln’s campaign for president, and ends July 4, 1861, when President Lincoln sent a message to Congress outlining his plans for prosecuting the war.

This new work of history, which Knopf describes as “a sweeping portrait of America on the brink of its defining national drama,” has been excerpted in the New York Times Magazine (April 3) and will be featured on the cover of the April 24 issue of the New York Times Book Review. In that upcoming review, Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Debby Applegate describes Goodheart’s account of the secession crisis as “at once more panoramic and more intimate than most standard accounts, and more inspiring” and admires how he combines the journalist’s eye for telling detail with the historian’s rigorous research and the novelist’s ability to make readers care about his characters.

Goodheart, who also regularly contributes to the popular “Disunion” blog about the Civil War on NYTimes.com, has recently appeared on panels with filmmaker Ken Burns and noted historian James McPherson. In the months ahead, he will be doing readings and talks across the country. (For a listing, visit http://www.adamgoodheart.com/events.) He’s also been a guest on the nationally broadcast public radio shows Fresh Air, Here and Now, and Studio 360. (Click here to listen to the Fresh Air interview with Terry Gross.)

Praise for the book has been effusive from the start. Kirkus Reviews called it “beautifully written and thoroughly original—quite unlike any other Civil War book out there,” and historian McPherson wrote that “Adam Goodheart is a Monet with a pen instead of a paintbrush.” Award-winning literary critic Anne Fadiman weighed in this way: “1861 isn’t merely a work of history; it’s a time-travel device that makes a century and a half fall away and sets us down, eyes and ears wide open, in the midst of the chaos and the glory.”

As Goodheart explains in 1861’s prologue, it was a student’s discovery that first inspired him to write the book. In April of 2008, he and his “Chestertown’s America” history class at Washington College were exploring Poplar Grove, an old plantation house in Queen Anne’s County, when Jim Schelberg, a U.S. Marine veteran attending Washington College on a Hodson Trust Star Scholarship, ventured into the attic and discovered there, buried beneath canvas and dust, a treasure trove of family papers going back some 13 generations.

Goodheart writes that, for him, the most intriguing find among the family records and documents was a small bundle “wrapped in paper and bound tightly with a faded yellow silk ribbon that clearly had not been untied in more than a century.”

On the outside of the wrapper was a date: 1861. And inside were letters written between a U.S. Army colonel stationed out west in the Indian Territories, and his wife and brother back East, in which the colonel weighed his allegiances and agonized over which side to take in the nation’s growing schism. A Southerner, a member of a slave-owning family, and even a good friend of Jefferson Davis, he also had reservations about the institution of slavery and felt a great loyalty to the U.S. Army, which he had served since enrolling as a cadet at West Point.

“It is like a great game of chance,” his wife, a Northerner, wrote in one of her letters. Ultimately, the Poplar Grove colonel decided to stick with country over region, and Goodheart decided to write a book that would show how, for millions of Americans like this colonel and his family, the coming conflict was “a great game of chance in which everything was on the line and no one could know the final outcome.”

Goodheart is a 1992 graduate of Harvard and a founder and senior editor of Civilization, the magazine of the Library of Congress. Since arriving in Chestertown in 2006 to become director of the College’s C.V. Starr Center, he has taught courses in American Studies, English, history, anthropology, and art.

Based at the circa-1746 Custom House along Chestertown's colonial waterfront, the Starr Center supports the art of written history and explores the nation’s past—particularly the legacy of its Founding era—in innovative ways through educational programs, scholarship and public outreach. For more information, visit http://starrcenter.washcoll.edu.

Influential Historian of Slavery to Explore Little-Known Winslow Homer Painting

CHESTERTOWN— In Winslow Homer’s 1866 painting, Near Andersonville, a group of tired, dusty men in blue are marched down a country road toward the infamous Confederate prisoner of war camp at Andersonville, Georgia. In the foreground, an enslaved woman stands at the door of her cabin, watching and waiting.

On Thursday, April 28, in an illustrated talk at Washington College, distinguished historian Peter H. Wood will use this image – one of Homer’s most striking, yet least-known works – to discuss the tumultuous final two years of the American Civil War. Sponsored by the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, and co-sponsored by the Department of Art and Art History and the Black Studies Program, “Near Andersonville: Winslow Homer’s Civil War” is free and open to the public. A book signing will follow the talk, which will begin at 5 p.m. in Litrenta Lecture Hall, John S. Toll Science Center, on the Washington College campus, 300 Washington Avenue.

Wood, one of this generation’s most influential historians of the African American experience, will be in residence at Washington College April 23-30 as the Starr Center’s 2011 Frederick Douglass Visiting Fellow. An emeritus Professor of History at Duke University, he is the author/editor of six books, including Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion. Originally published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1974, Black Majority remains a landmark book, credited with setting the stage for a new generation of scholarship on American slavery.

More recently, Wood has turned his attention to visual representations of African Americans in the artwork of Winslow Homer, authoring three books on the subject. The third installment in this trilogy, Near Andersonville: Winslow Homer’s Civil War, was released by Harvard University Press in 2010. Acclaimed Civil War historian James M. McPherson called the book “powerful and compelling,” and Harvard University’s John Stauffer raved, “part detective story, part history, and part art criticism, this book is a masterpiece.”

Unknown to art historians for nearly a century, Near Andersonville languished in a New Jersey attic for years before being donated to the Newark Museum in 1966. “This is undoubtedly one of Winslow Homer’s most complex images,” said Starr Center director Adam Goodheart. “In placing the Union troops and the enslaved woman side by side, it sheds new light on the ambiguities of 1864.”

A graduate of Baltimore’s Gilman School, Peter H. Wood earned his doctorate at Harvard University and has held fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Charles Warren Center at Harvard University. His other books include Strange New Land: Africans in Colonial America (2002), Winslow Homer’s Images of Blacks: The Civil War and Reconstruction Years (1989), and Weathering the Storm: Inside Winslow Homer's Gulf Stream (2004).

Established through a generous gift from Maurice Meslans and Margaret Holyfield of St. Louis, the annual Frederick Douglass Visiting Fellowship brings to campus an individual engaged in the study or interpretation of African-American history and related fields. Besides providing the recipient an opportunity for a week of focused writing, the fellowship also offers Washington College students exposure to some of today's leading interpreters of African-American culture. During his week in Chestertown, Wood will speak with students and faculty about his research on visual representations of African Americans, and his experience interpreting African American history to a broad public.

Founded in 1782 under the patronage of George Washington, Washington College is a private, independent college of liberal arts and sciences located in colonial Chestertown on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. The college’s C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience is dedicated to fostering innovative approaches to the American past and present. Through educational programs, scholarship and public outreach, and a special focus on written history, the Starr Center seeks to bridge the divide between the academic world and the public at large. For more information on the Center, visit http://starrcenter.washcoll.edu.

Civil War at the Smithsonian: Starr Center Sponsors Free Road Trip to Washington

CHESTERTOWN, MD— This month, the nation commemorates the 150th anniversary of America’s defining drama. To mark this milestone, the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience and the Washington College Department of Art & Art History will sponsor an exciting day of Civil War exploration in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, April 23.

A free bus will depart Chestertown at 11 a.m. and leave Washington at 7:30 p.m. Reservations are required; please contact Jenifer Emleyat 410-810-7161 or jemley2@washcoll.edu. Those interested in meeting the group in Washington should also contact Jenifer Emley to make arrangements.

The program will include a tour of Civil War-era art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum led by Professor Donald McColl and Smithsonian art historian Barbaranne Liakos, a 1998 alumnus of Washington College. Members of the group will have an opportunity to explore a building that hosted Abraham Lincoln’s inaugural ball and sheltered a Union army hospital where Walt Whitman tended injured soldiers.

At 2 p.m. Starr Center director Adam Goodheart will give a public talk on his new book, 1861: The Civil War Awakening (Knopf, 2011), in the museum’s Nan Tucker McEvoy Auditorium. Jointly sponsored by the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery, Goodheart’s talk will be followed by a book signing.

Participants will also receive a special guided tour of Clara Barton’s Missing Soldiers Office. During its two years of operation (1865-1867), the Missing Soldiers Office helped families and friends track the fate of the thousands of men missing in action at the end of the Civil War. Located directly across the street from the building that houses the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery, the building housing the Missing Soldiers Office is under restoration, and is not regularly open to the public.

There will even be an opportunity for dinner in the house where Abraham Lincoln’s assassination was plotted—a building that now houses a Chinese restaurant! “When we think of Civil War history, we often think of the Shenandoah Valley, or the battlefield at Gettysburg,” says Goodheart. “But our nation’s capital has its own remarkable Civil War story.”

Space on the bus and tours is limited, so those interested should contact the Starr Center immediately. Goodheart’s lecture is open seating; for more information, visit the Smithsonian American Art Museum events calendar.

Founded in 1782 under the patronage of George Washington, Washington College is a private, independent college of liberal arts and sciences located in colonial Chestertown on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Based in the Custom House along the colonial waterfront, the College’s C.V. Starr Center fosters the art of written history and explores our nation’s past—particularly the legacy of its Founding era—in innovative ways, through educational programs, scholarship and public outreach. For more information on the Center, visit http://starrcenter.washcoll.edu.

The Race To Save The Monitor: A Maritime History Lecture At Washington College October 10th

Chestertown, MD, September 27, 2002 — Washington College's C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience and Sultana Projects, Inc., present THE RACE TO SAVE THE MONITOR, a maritime history lecture by John Broadwater, Ph.D., Manager of the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary. The lecture will be held Thursday, October 10, 2002, at 7:30 p.m. in the College's Hynson Lounge. The event is free and the public is invited to attend.

The Civil War brought many advances in weaponry, including naval technology, and the U.S.S. Monitor represented a radical departure from traditional warship design. Powered by steam alone and constructed almost exclusively of iron, the ship's novel low-profile design, heavy armor and revolving gun turret set the stage for modern naval warfare. With the exception of her famous engagement with the Confederate ironclad Virginia at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, the Monitor's brief career was uneventful, and shortly after midnight on December 31, 1862, the Monitor sank in a gale off Cape Hatteras, lost at sea less than a year after her launch. But the Monitor did not fail to impress ship designers and naval personnel around the world: the U.S. Navy built more than 60 Monitor-type vessels during the Civil War, and similar ships were built in other countries.

Dr. Broadwater is the Chief Scientist of the Monitor Expedition 2002 and has been the Manager of the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary since 1992. A diver since 1969, Dr. Broadwater has participated in shipwreck dives and investigations throughout the United States and in more than a dozen countries. He also volunteered his services as an archaeologist for expeditions to the Monitor in 1974, 1979 and 1983. Between 1978 and 1989, as Senior Underwater Archaeologist of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, he directed the Yorktown Shipwreck Archaeological Project, which culminated with the complete excavation of a British ship sunk during the last major battle of the American Revolution. A well-known author and lecturer, Dr. Broadwater wrote “Secrets of a Yorktown Shipwreck” for the June 1988 issue of National Geographic, and the book Kwajalein, Lagoon of Found Ships, which chronicles shipwreck investigations in the Marshall Islands. On August 5 of this year, under his direction, the Monitor Expedition successfully raised the ship's unique 160-ton turret from 240 feet of water off of Cape Hatteras. The turret is now submerged in a special tank at The Mariners' Museum in Newport News, VA, in order to slow its decay and to allow special research and preservation measures. Dr. Broadwater's lecture will describe the efforts being taken and what remains to be done to save and to preserve the historic Monitor.

Dr. Broadwater's lecture is the third in a four-part Maritime Lecture Series sponsored by the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience in partnership with Sultana Projects, an organization that provides unique, hands-on educational experiences in colonial history and environmental science on board Chestertown's reproduction 18th Century Schooner Sultana. The series will conclude November 7, 2002, with a lecture by Lisa Norling, author of Captain Ahab Had a Wife: New England Women and the Whalefishery, 1720-1870, discussing the role of women in the American whaling industry. Look for coming announcements or contact Kees deMooy, Program Manager for the C.V. Starr Center, at 410-810-7156, or visit http://starrcenter.washcoll.edu for a complete program of events.

Talk to Address the Civil War in the American Memory

Chestertown, MD, March 14, 2001 — Dr. David Blight, Professor of History at Amherst College, will address the topic "Healing and Justice: The Problem of the Civil War in American Memory" on Thursday, March 22, 2001, at 4:30 p.m. in the Sophie Kerr Room of Washington College's Miller Library. The free talk is sponsored by the Guy F. Goodfellow Memorial Lecture Series and the public is invited to attend.

Dr. Blight received his Ph.D. in American History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1985. He has concentrated his studies on the Civil War, Reconstruction, African-American history, and American intellectual and cultural history. He is the author of the recently published book, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Belknap Press, 2001).

Dr. Blight will examine the myths and reinterpretations of the Civil War that have been fostered in America since the end of the war and are still popularized today in American politics and society.

In an recent editorial for The Washington Post, Dr. Blight wrote: "Let us be clear about the nature of the Lost Cause and the state's rights doctrines historically tied to the Confederacy. After the Civil War, the Lost Cause took root in the South in an admixture of physical destruction, the psychological trauma of defeat, the revitalization of a Democratic Party that resisted Reconstruction, white supremacy, racial violence and--with time--an abiding sentimentalism that disseminated countless images of 'faithful' slaves. The Lost Cause also became for many white southerners a web of organizations and rituals, a civil religion that assuaged their sense of loss."

The Guy F. Goodfellow Memorial Lecture Series was established upon Goodfellow's death in 1989 to honor the memory of the history professor who had taught at Washington College for 30 years. The intent of the endowed lecture series is to bring a distinguished historian to campus each year to lecture and spend time with students in emulation of Dr. Goodfellow's vibrant teaching style.