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.  

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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

Robert O'Harrow, Jr. speaks to the Civil War Round Table of the District of Columbia about Montgomery C. Meigs, on January 9, 2018, at the Fort McNair Officers' Club in Washington, D.C.

More information about the topic and the speaker is available at cwrtdc-audio.blogspot.com/p/oharrow-audio.html

Robert O'Harrow's book, "The Quartermaster: Montgomery C. Meigs, Lincoln's General, Master Builder of the Union Army," is "[t]he lively story of the Civil War’s most unlikely—and most uncelebrated—genius” (The Wall Street Journal)who built the Union Army and was judged by Abraham Lincoln, William Seward, and Edwin Stanton to be the indispensable architect of the Union victory.

Meigs was also involved in a number of important projects as a young man prior to the Civil War.  Born in 1816 to a well-to-do, connected family, he graduated as an engineer from West Point, helped build the country's forts, and even served under Lt. Robert E. Lee to make navigation improvements on the Mississippi River.  Meigs also designed the aqueducts in Washington during a time when people were dying from contaminated water.  In addition, he built the spectacular wings and the massive dome of the then-brand new U.S. Capitol.

It was Meigs' work during the Civil War that made him a national hero, though. After being Introduced to President Lincoln by Secretary of State William Seward, Meigs was appointed Quartermaster in charge of supplies, and he commanded Ulysses S. Grant’s base of supplies that made Union victories, including Gettysburg, possible. Meigs also sustained Sherman’s army in Georgia and his March to the Sea.  After the war, Meigs built Arlington Cemetery (on land that had been Robert E. Lee’s home).

 Civil War historian James McPherson calls Meigs “the unsung hero of northern victory,” and Robert O’Harrow Jr.’s biography of the general (who was never on the battlefield) tells the full dramatic story of this fierce, strong, honest, loyal, forward-thinking figure. The Civil War Monitor reports that O'Harrow's work is an "excellent …thorough, masterfully crafted, and impeccable researched biography [ ] destined to become the authoritative volume on Meigs.” 

About the Speaker: Robert O’Harrow, Jr. is an award-winning reporter on the investigative unit at The Washington Post. His work has focused on privacy, technology, national security, law enforcement, federal contracting and the presidential election.

 Mr. O’Harrow is also the author of “No Place to Hide,” and “Zero Day: The Threat in Cyberspace.”  In No Place to Hide, Mr. O'Harrow lays out in detail the post-9/11 marriage of private data and technology companies and government anti-terror initiatives to create something entirely new: a security-industrial complex. Drawing on his years of investigation, Mr. O'Harrow shows how the government now depends on burgeoning private reservoirs of information about almost every aspect of our lives to promote homeland security and fight the war on terror. 

 Mr. O’Harrow is a two-time Pulitzer prize finalist and winner of the Sigma Delta Chi award for excellence in journalism and the Investigative Reporters and Editors ("IRE") award for outstanding investigative work. He studied economics and history at Virginia Tech. 

Mr. O'Harrow lives with wife and son in Arlington, Virginia.

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For information about the Round Table and to apply for membership, visit www.cwrtdc.org

Robert O'Harrow Speaks to the CWRTDC About Gen. Montgomery Meigs - 1/9/2018

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