Recent Entries:

Jonathan Neu "Doles Brigade on July 1" (Feb 25 2007)

Brian Jordan "Bleeding Kansas Conference" (Feb 23 2007)

 

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Doles Brigade on July 1

Jonathan Neu

Jonathan's Article in The Gettysburg Magazine

Thank you for your e-mail. It's fun to see that the article has been noticed! I'd certainly be thrilled if it were mentioned on the webpage but I don't know if I have too many profound words to say about it. I will say that it's a unique experience to take the researching and writing that has been learned in the classroom (much of the learning having been done in Civil War Era Studies classrooms) and apply it to a wider audience. It's a thrill to see a topic of personal interest find an outlet to fellow Civil War buffs through the Gettysburg Magazine publication. Three years ago, when I was choosing which college to attend, the easy accessibility of the battlefield to Gettysburg College was the deciding factor. The time I was able to spend walking the battlefields became the true inspiration for the article. Countless hours roaming the battlefields developed into an interest to uncover the history of this particular aspect of the battle. In this way, I was able to fuse the past story of the brigade with the present-day grounds over which I had been walking. Hence, the article was born.

Well, I don't know what would be useful to the webpage, but I hope that's a help! If I can do anything more for you, don't hesitate to contact me. Certainly I want everyone in the CWES department to know that they've had a significant hand in furthering my interest in the Civil War.

Thank you very much,

Jonathan Neu

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Bleeding Kansas Conference

Brian Jordan

On February 9, I traveled to Lecompton, Kansas, to participate in the "Bleeding Kansas '07" lecture series, sponsored by Constitution Hall State Historic Site. The site preserves the building where the fraudulent Lecompton Constitution was drafted in what amounted to a rush to Kansas statehood by proslavery forces. This fraudulent document was accepted by a browbeaten President James Buchanan in perhaps the consummate display of his lack of temerity, exacerbating the feud between him and Senator Stephen Douglas and sowing the seeds of the disruption of the Democratic Party. In summary, it was an important benchmark on the road to the American Civil War; it was literally a "point of no return" on the question of the ability of the American democracy to settle the slavery issue.

My lecture, "The Little Giant and Old Buck: Stephen A. Douglas, James Buchanan, The Lecompton Constitution, and the Coming of the Civil War," coincided with the sesquicentennial of the Lecompton Constitution, and for the first time in those one-hundred fifty years, the actual document returned "home" to Constitution Hall from the Kansas State Archives. Speaking in the room where the document was written was moving itself; yet, speaking with cognizance that the last time the document was within those four walls it was being drafted moved that connection to a higher level.

My lecture, which attempted to both place the Lecompton affair in its proper historical context and illuminate its effects by casting it through the lens of the oft-overlooked Douglas-Buchanan feud, was received with a standing ovation. Sharing this important piece of Kansas history and American history with the audience was a pleasure.

Of course, while in Kansas, being hosted by Tim Rues, the site administrator for Constitution Hall, and my friends Herschel and Jacque Stroud, I was able to do some site seeing as well. I visited Mine Creek State Battlefield, the site where two federal brigades warded off two Confederate divisions on October 25, 1864 in the largest battle west of the Mississippi River. I also followed John Brown for a while, tracing his steps from his cabin in Osawatomie to the massacres at Pottawatomie Creek and the battle at Black Jack.