Burrus (Buzz) Carnahan speaks to the Civil War Round Table of the District of Columbia on February 12, 2013, at the Fort McNair Officers' Club in Washington D.C. on the topic: "The Historical Roots of the Emancipation Proclamation.”

For additional information about his presentation, download CWRTDC's February 2013 newsletter available at http://cwrtdc-newsletters.blogspot.com/   For information about the Round Table or to apply for membership, visit http://www.cwrtdc.org

Summary of Presentation:
Dr. Carnahan delves into the historical roots of the Emancipation Proclamation. In his first inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln declared he had "no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it already existed," and stated that as President he would "have no lawful right to do so." Yet less than two years later, on January 1, 1863, he issued the final Emancipation Proclamation, recognizing the immediate freedom of slaves held in Confederate territory.

What led him to change his mind? Carnahan will explain how, ironically enough, the policies of Confederate President Jefferson Davis helped Lincoln develop a legal theory to justify the Proclamation. When his critics challenged the constitutional soundness of the act, Lincoln pointed to the international laws and usages of war as the legal basis for his Proclamation, asserting that the Constitution invested the president "with the law of war in time of war."

As the Civil War intensified, the Lincoln administration slowly and reluctantly accorded full belligerent rights to the Confederacy under the law of war. This included designating a prisoner of war status for captives, honoring flags of truce, and negotiating formal agreements for the exchange of prisoners -- practices that laid the intellectual foundations for emancipation. Once the United States allowed Confederates all the privileges of belligerents under international law, it followed that they should also suffer the disadvantages, including trial by military courts, seizure of property, and eventually the emancipation of slaves. While there were historical precedents for offering freedom to an enemy’s slaves in wartime, our speaker will also demonstrate that Lincoln’s action was more radical than anything that had previously been done.

Even after the Lincoln administration decided to apply the law of war, it was unclear whether state and federal courts would agree. Carnahan’s conclusion is that if the courts had decided that the proclamation was not justified, the result would have been the personal legal liability of thousands of Union officers to aggrieved slave owners. This argument offers further support to the view that Lincoln's delay in issuing the Emancipation Proclamation was an exercise of political prudence, not a personal reluctance to free the slaves. Carnahan further asserts that Lincoln was no reluctant emancipator; he wrote a truly radical document that treated Confederate slaves as an oppressed people rather than merely as enemy property. In this respect, Lincoln's proclamation anticipated the psychological warfare tactics of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Introduction and Biography:
Burrus M. Carnahan is a Foreign Affairs Officer in the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation at the U.S. Department of State and a Professorial Lecturer in Law at the George Washington University in Washington, DC.

Previously, he was a private sector consultant on international arms control issues and is an authority on international law and arms control. Carnahan served for 20 years as a lawyer in the U.S. Air Force specializing in the law of war. From 1969 to 1989 he served as a Judge Advocate in the U.S. Air Force, specializing in international legal issues. From 1974 to 1978 he was an Associate Professor of Law at the U.S. Air Force Academy. He also participated in several international negotiations on arms control. Carnahan’s JD degree is from Northwestern University (1969) and he holds an LL.M from the University of Michigan (1974).

Carnahan is the author of Act of Justice: Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the Law of War and Lincoln on Trial: Southern Civilians and the Law of War. Both books examine the role of law in the American Civil War. He has also penned numerous articles on Abraham Lincoln, international law, and the law of war. He was the principal researcher on United States legal practice for the International Committee of the Red Cross study on Customary International Humanitarian Law (Cambridge U. Press, 2005), and was U.S. correspondent for the Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law.

Additionally, he has spoken on Lincoln and his era at the Abraham Lincoln Institute Symposium at the National Archives, the Gettysburg College Civil War Institute, the Filson Historical Society in Louisville, Kentucky, and many other venues. In 2012, he was appointed to the Scholarly Advisory Group for President Lincoln’s Cottage at the Soldiers’ Home for a two year term.

Dr. Carnahan Speaks to the CWRTDC on the Historical Roots of the Emancipation Proclamation-2/12/2013

Robert Lee Hodge speaks to the Civil War Round Table of the District of Columbia on May 13 2014, at the Fort McNair Officers' Club in Washington D.C. on the topic: "Confederates in the Attic."

A PDF copy of the PowerPoint to Mr. Hodge's presentation is available at https://drive.google.com/file/d/13SzkZoGlG9zLxZOWSccd_BEazPF3Yp7-/view (NOTE: For copyright purposes, the slides contained in this document vary in part from those displayed during the presentation and discussed in the audio recording).


Biography:
Robert Lee Hodge - born on Stonewall Jackson’s birthday - has had a keen interest in The War Between the States since age 4. 

For over 25 years Robert has worked in historical based films – from dramas like ABC's North and South and TNT’s Gettysburg and Andersonville, to many programs on The History Channel, Arts and Entertainment Channel, and the National Geographic Channel, to his own Civil War documentaries that have won 5 Tally awards and an Emmy in 2007. 

Mr. Hodge has been featured on National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation, NBC's Late, Late Show, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, the PBS program Going Places, C-SPAN II, and on the National Public Radio program Soundscapes. 

He has also written for The Nashville Tennessean, America’s Civil War magazine, The Washington Post, and North and South magazine. He played a major role in the New York Times' 1998 best-selling book Confederates in the Attic (and appears on the cover) hosting Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Tony Hurwitz, on an eclectic and memorable Civil War tour-de-force of historic sites.  

Mr. Hodge was a historical researcher, primarily at The National Archives and Library of Congress, working with nationally-recognized experts. He also was principle researcher on Time-Life Books 18-volume series Voices of the Civil War and The Illustrated History of the Civil War. 

 He became interested in preserving historic green space when he interned with the National Park Service's Civil War Sites Advisory Commission. Rob has organized battlefield preservation fundraisers that have garnered over $140,000 for the purchase of endangered battlefield land. He serves on the board of directors of the Central Virginia Battlefields Trust, an organization that has protected nearly one thousand acres near Fredericksburg, Virginia.  

___________________________

For additional information about his presentation, download CWRTDC's May 2014 newsletter available at http://cwrtdc-newsletters.blogspot.com/   

For information about the Round Table or to apply for membership, visit http://www.cwrtdc.org

Robert Lee Hodge Speaks to the CWRTDC on the "Confederates in the Attic" - 5/13/2014

Edward H. Bonekemper III Speaks to the Civil War Round Table of the District of Columbia on the "Western Theater Campaign, 1864-1865," November 12, 2014, at the Fort McNair Officers' Club in Washington D.C.

A PDF copy of the handouts associated with Mr. Bonekemper's presentation is available by clicking HERE or by visiting https://drive.google.com/open?id=1OeOKW5dSVCIV1pFWHzaEHGKpLvIEA8Je

This presentation will be an overview of the 1864-65 campaigns that led to Lincoln’s reelection and the Union victory in the war. While General Grant’s Overland Campaign and other Eastern developments will be discussed, our speaker, Ed Bonekemper, will emphasize the events in the West.

Mr. Bonekemper will discuss William T. Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign which focused on opening the “Gateway to the South.” The city’s fall set the stage for his famous (or infamous) “March to the Sea.” During the March, General Sherman’s forces destroyed military targets in Georgia as well as industry, infrastructure, and civilian property which further disrupted the South's economy and its transportation networks.  Sherman’s bold move of operating deep within enemy territory and without supply lines is considered to be revolutionary in the annals of war.  Sherman then persuaded Grant to allow him to march north through the Carolinas instead of putting his army on ships to reinforce the Army of the Potomac at Petersburg.  Mr. Bonekemper will also review the Carolinas Campaign which was the last campaign of the Western Theater and destroyed everything of military value along the way.

After Atlanta’s fall, General John Bell Hood drove north and, after a brief pursuit by Sherman, George Thomas was left to deal with the aggressive Hood.  Our speaker will talk about the Franklin-Nashville Campaign and Hood’s attempt to defeat the Union force under John Schofield before it could converge with Thomas's army at Nashville. Battles at Springhill, Franklin, and Nashville ensued and the Union’s smashing victories at Franklin and Nashville virtually destroyed Hood’s forces. General Hood resigned his commission shortly thereafter.  Mr. Bonekemper will conclude his talk with a discussion of 1865 events and the end of the war.

About The Speaker:  Historian Edward H. Bonekemper III is the Civil War News Book Review Editor and a native and resident of Pennsylvania. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in American history from Muhlenberg College and Old Dominion University, respectively, and his J.D. from Yale Law School. During his 34 years as a federal government attorney, he wrote for Navy and Coast Guard publications and spoke on a variety of topics for the Coast Guard and the Interior and Transportation departments. He is retired as a commander in the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve.

Mr. Bonekemper writes and lectures widely on the topics of his books, slavery, turning points of the Civil War and Union and Confederate generals. He has taught several Civil War and other military history courses and is an adjunct lecturer on U.S. military history at Muhlenberg College. He has spoken at numerous Civil War Round Tables, given nine lectures about the Civil War at The Smithsonian Institution, and lectured at The Chautauqua Institution and on numerous other occasions.

Mr. Bonekemper has published: Grant and Lee: Victorious American and Vanquished Virginian; McClellan and Failure: A Study of Civil War Fear, Incompetence and Worse; A Victor, Not a Butcher: Ulysses S. Grant’s Overlooked Military Genius; How Robert E. Lee Lost the Civil War; and Lincoln and Grant: The Westerners Who Won the Civil War.

Ed Bonekemper Speaks to the CWRTDC on the "64-65 Western Theater Campaign" - 11-12-2014

Related tracks