The
goal for this blog has always been to avoid writing in the first person. It is
a personal writing challenge that I set for myself and typically this blog is written
that way.
Today
I get to break the rule and write in the first person about the Civil War
Institute, a conference I attend each year at Gettysburg College in
Pennsylvania. The CWI is a five-day, deep dive into Civil War study and it is
my favorite week of the year, every year. I was worried that last year might be
our last Gettysburg visit and with everything that happened last summer it
could have been. But we’ll be back this year and I want you to know why this is
such good news for us.
The
speakers at the CWI cover a wide range of Civil War-related topics. Every topic
you might imagine has been covered, one way or another, in the years I have
attended the conference and I am sure that something new will be covered this
year. My interest in the war mostly concentrates on what happened on the
battlefields. I want to know about the strategy and tactics, the quality of leadership,
the impact of the terrain on the flow of battle and the successes or failures
of the individual soldiers. But I know that you can’t understand the four years
of battlefield struggle if you don’t understand everything else about the era. In
2012 we heard about race and the American military tradition and about life in
post-war Kentucky. In 2015 a panel explored the iconic photographs of the war.
In 2016 Mark W. Summers spoke about the questions of Reconstruction and I wrote
in my CWI notebook, “Wow – what a speaker.” Dr. Peter Carmichael runs the CWI
and he speaks every year. His 2019 address, A Hoosier Couple at War – And
Mostly With Each Other: Mahala and David Beem, was brilliant. Other
speakers I have come to really enjoy at the CWI include Gary Gallagher,
Susannah J. Ural, Megan Kate Nelson and Jennifer Murray. I have other favorites
but this would be a long blog if I mentioned all of them.
Last
year, Amy and I explored both Richmond and the battlefield at Petersburg before
we went to Gettysburg and I explained to my patient, loving and brilliant wife
how the trenches of the American Civil War set the stage for the trench warfare
of World War I. A few days later, during a CWI address, Earl Hess explained on
national television exactly how wrong I was. Dr. Hess is a terrific historian
and a wonderful speaker, but I could have done without his eloquence that day.
Amy
does not attend the conference but she has come to love Gettysburg. There are
several places where we like to eat and the staff at the hotel where we stay
has come to know her after ten years. I usually have the car – whether I’m
walking the battlefield or attending the CWI I hog the car – but there is a
very good bus service that Amy uses to get around town and she enjoys using
that service. The hotel also has a multi-screen movie theater in the same
parking lot, so Amy catches up on the flicks while we are there.
Sometimes
I’ll figure something out on a battlefield somewhere, some very minor point of
little importance, and I’ll drive Amy out near the location so that I can show
her whatever it is that I was so slow to understand. Amy always thanks me for
showing her what I’ve learned. Then she tells me where we’re going for lunch.
My best girl listens to me prattle pointlessly on a battlefield with lunch
looming. Life is pretty good sometimes.
And
I have to write something else, too, another personal note. The CWI staff has
been so friendly through the years that I have come to feel as though I am
coming home every time we leave our home and head for the CWI. There has never
been a time when I didn’t feel welcome. The staffers simply make you happy to
be there.
In
short, this blog recommends the CWI for those people interested in history of
any kind and especially the American Civil War. You can’t help but learn a lot,
you get to spend time with roughly 400 other like-minded people and have a
great time doing it. If you register and attend, I hope you’ll find me and say
hello.
Just
don’t bring up the trenches of World War I. That topic has been covered.
Thanks for reading.
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