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

Perry Jamieson  speaks to the Civil War Round Table of the District of Columbia about “General Winfield Scott Hancock” on May 9, 2017,  at the Fort McNair Officers' Club in Wash, D.C.

The images used during his presentation are available at https://drive.google.com/open?id=1tXmSSPae2jWd0-QMzV0GcyL7eYXHpXHS 
More information about the speaker is available at cwrtdc-audio.blogspot.com/p/jamieson-audio.html

About the Topic:  General Winfield Scott Hancock gained his greatest fame for his crucial contributions to the Federal victory at Gettysburg in July of 1863. Union veterans remembered Hancock as a general who led from the front and whose forceful presence could change the course of a battle. In addition to his service in the Civil War, though, the General's military service included experiences during the Mexican-American War, Reconstruction, and the Indian wars. He also pursued a national political career, which ended in an unsuccessful try for the presidency in 1880.

Dr. Jamieson’s talk introduces the General as an American soldier who put his mark on many of the important military and political events of his lifetime.  It will highlight topics covered n his 2003 book, Winfield Scott Hancock: Gettysburg Hero.
Dr. ”Jamieson handles well the details of Hancock's wartime rise to fame as ‘Hancock the Superb,’ as he does the rest of the general's Civil War service," wrote John E. Deppen on the Civil War News Web site. 

About the Author:   Dr. Perry D. Jamieson, was born in Detroit, Michigan, and spent his boyhood in one of its suburbs, Farmington. He grew up reading Bruce Catton (one of our Round Table’s founder’s), T. Harry Williams, and other historians of the Civil War centennial era. Dr. Jamieson’s parents encouraged his interest in history and they gave him his first look at the Antietam battlefield, on a summer vacation trip. That memorable visit made the battle seem more real to him. The terrain of Sharpsburg’s farms and the words on the War Department tablets reinforced the historical accounts that he had read. The experience confirmed in his young mind that there really had been a Battle of Antietam: it wasn’t a story made up by Bruce Catton and other writers.

Dr. Jamieson received his Ph.D in history from Wayne State University, taught at the University of Texas, and served as the historian at the Air Force History Support Office, in Washington, DC.  He has also lectured at the U.S. Defense Department's Joint Military Intelligence College, and he was appointed fellow to the Grady McWhiney Research Foundation. 

Dr. Jamieson's other books include Crossing the Deadly Ground: United States Army Tactics, 1865-1899, University of Alabama Press (Tuscaloosa, AL), 1994; Death in September: The Antietam Campaign, Ryan Place Publishers (Forth Worth, TX), 1995; and of course, Winfield Scott Hancock: Gettysburg Hero, McWhiney Foundation Press (Abilene, TX), 2003.

After ending his Air Force career, Dr. Jamieson and Stephanie moved to Sharpsburg, where he now spends time hiking his favorite place, the Antietam battlefield. He has always been impressed with the sharp contrast between the area‘s past and present.  On September 17, 1862 the Antietam valley was the terrifying scene of horrific events. Today it’s a reassuring landscape of peaceful fields. “I’ve seen a lot of battlefields,” Dr. Jamieson says, “ones in the United States and elsewhere--Marston Moor, Culloden, Waterloo, and many others. None of them takes hold of me the way that Antietam does.” He is concerned that, as historian Grady McWhiney once put it, “Americans are in danger of losing their history.” He has warned, “If we don’t preserve the Antietam battlefield, a crucial part of our national past will disappear forever. We can’t let that happen. . ..”

Perry Jamieson Speaks to the CWRTDC About “Winfield Scott Hancock” - 5/9/2017

CWRTDC

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