Author: Matthew Pinsker

1851 Political Cartoon

(Carlisle) On Monday, September 17, 2018, the House Divided Project and the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues will be co-hosting a special panel at Dickinson in honor of Constitution Day that will address the topic:  “The Fugitive Slave Law and the Crisis Over Immigration Policy: Assessing a Forgotten Legacy.”  Panelists include noted scholars Richard Blackett (Vanderbilt), Andrew Delbanco (Columbia) and Judith Giesberg (Villanova) with project director Matthew Pinsker serving as moderator. 

The controversial 1850 Fugitive Slave Law provoked a bitter national debate over open borders, due process, family separation, federal power and northern states’ rights. Our panelists will discuss those earlier controversies and assess how they might offer important insights or perspective for the current and increasingly intense debates over Trump Administration immigration policies.

Teachers and students who want to prepare for this discussion might want to begin by consulting Giesberg’s recent op-ed for the Washington Post entitled, “Jeff Sessions is Wrong.  Sanctuary-city advocates aren’t like secessionists. They’re like abolitionists.”  Another good starting point for understanding this historic parallel comes from law professor Jeffrey Schmitt who has written law review articles on this subject.  But Schmitt also has a helpful blog post that describes why Blackett’s new book on the fugitive crisis (Captive’s Quest) is such an important addition to our understanding of how the resistance to the fugitive law evolved.  Drawing historical lessons for the “resistance” was also a topic that noted historian Eric Foner explored in a recent op-ed for The Nation.  Delbanco’s new and much-anticipated book on the fugitive slave law is not quite available for sale yet (War Before the War, November 2018), but audience members can preview some of his views on President Trump’s historical legacy in this roundtable from the New York Review of Books which came out at the very end of the 2016 election.  Finally, for those seeking more in-depth treatments of these subjects and the historic parallels and connections between the fugitive slave crisis of the 1850s and the immigration crisis of our era, see freely available scholarly articles by  Kraehenbuehl (2011), McKanders (2012), and Schmitt (2013), or shorter but context-filled recent magazine pieces in Time or Slate.

Finally, what makes this topic so especially relevant here in Carlisle is something the panelists will also address.  In particular, they will describe Dickinson College’s complicated and surprisingly deep connections to the fugitive issue.  In 1847, for example, the college and the Carlisle community were nearly ripped apart by a violent fugitive slave episode, involving Professor John McClintock and a network of black antislavery figures in town. It is also true that the most notorious fugitive slave commissioner of the 1850s, a man named Richard McAllister, was a graduate of the college (Class of 1840).   

The combination of historical context and modern-day relevance is sure to make for a fascinating panel.  The entire session is open to the public and will also be available over YouTube via live-streaming at the House Divided YouTube channel.

CONSTITUTION DAY PANEL

“The Fugitive Slave Law and the Crisis Over Immigration Policy: Assessing a Forgotten Legacy.”

Monday, September 17, 2018
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Panelists:

Richard Blackett, Vanderbilt University
Andrew Delbanco, Columbia University
Judith Giesberg, Villanova University
Matthew Pinsker (moderator), Dickinson College

Richard Blackett

Andrew Delbanco

Judith Giesberg

Matthew Pinsker

Co-hosted by House Divided Project and Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues with co-sponsorship from the Dickinson College American Studies, History and Policy Studies departments

(Carlisle, PA)  Registration for the March 23, 2019 House Divided Project workshop on Teaching Slavery opens today.  Please go to this form in order to sign up now!  The sessions are entirely free but space is limited to the first 50 registered participants –open to educators (or self-educators!) from any level, Dickinson students or home-schooling parents.

Sessions for the teacher workshop will include presentations on slavery, resistance and Civil War memory by Matthew Pinsker, Director, House Divided Project at Dickinson College, Deanda Johnson, regional coordinator for the National Park Service Network to Freedom, and Christy Coleman, CEO of the American Civil War Museum in Richmond.  There will also be special pedagogy sessions on slavery led by master teachers from the region, Todd Mealy (Penn Manor H.S.) and Kevin Wagner (Carlisle H.S.).

Participants in the workshop will receive the following:

• Signed copy of Eric Foner’s Short History of Reconstruction (2015)
• Facsimile packet of slavery and emancipation documents
• Behind-the-scenes tour of the new Dickinson & Slavery exhibit

The full schedule for Saturday, March 23, 2019 looks like this:

• 9am to 10am   || Registration opens at Denny 317 (corner of West & High Streets)
• 10am to 11am  ||Matthew Pinsker on Teaching Slavery 
• 11am to 12pm  || Deanda Johnson on slave stampedes and Network to Freedom
• 12pm to 2pm  || Lunch break
• 2pm to 3pm   || Pedagogy sessions by master teachers Todd Mealy, Kevin Wagner
• 3pm to 4pm   || Christy Coleman on the updated American Civil War Museum

All sessions during the day will be held in Denny 317 (corner of West & High Streets) on the Dickinson College campus. [campus map]

During the day, Saturday, March 23, 219, from 9am to 5pm, the House Divided studio at 61 N. West Street will also be open to the public, featuring the new Dickinson & Slavery exhibit.  Participants at the workshop will be expected to view the exhibit as part of their daytime commitment.

We will provide certification for up to 6 hours of professional development credit in the form of a letter from Dickinson College.  Pennsylvania teachers should note, however, that Dickinson is not an Act 48 provider, and thus they will have to take this letter to their home institution for review and formal certification.

From 7pm to 8:15pm at the ATS auditorium, Saturday evening, March 23, 2019, Christy Coleman, CEO of the American Civil War Museum in Richmond, VA will also deliver a keynote address for the Dickinson & Slavery initiative, entitled “Getting Right with Civil War Memory.”  Coleman’s lecture is free and open to the general public.

KEYNOTE SPEAKER

Christy Coleman grew up in Williamsburg, Virginia and earned her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Hampton University. She currently serves as CEO of the American Civil War Museum, located in Richmond and Appomattox, Virginia. In her role as CEO, she has been instrumental in furthering discussion around the Civil War, its legacies, and its relevance to our lives today not only in the Richmond region but around the nation.   Christy strives to make museum experiences meaningful to diverse communities. A tireless advocate for the power of museums, narrative disruption and inclusivity, she has been an innovator and leader in the history museum field. She’s written numerous articles, is an accomplished screenwriter, public speaker and has appeared on several national programs. Her work has been featured in global and national publications. Time Magazine has named her one of 31 People Changing the South.

ROSTER OF PRESENTERS

Deanda Johnson, PhD, is currently the Midwest Regional Coordinator for the National Park Service Network to Freedom Program in Omaha, Nebraska. She joined the program in 2010. In this capacity, she works with local, state, and federal entities, as well as other interested parties to preserve, promote, and educate the public about the history of the Underground Railroad. Previously, Johnson was the Coordinator of the African American Research and Service Institute at Ohio University where she was involved with the “The African American Presence in the Ohio River Valley Oral History Project.” At the university, she also served as a visiting instructor in the Department of African American Studies. She received her BA from University of California, San Diego and her MA and PhD in American Studies from the College of William & Mary.  Johnson will serve as the agreement technical representative (ATR) for the slave stampedes project.

Todd Mealy holds a Ph.D. from Penn State University. He also attained a Master’s degree from the same institution, where he was the 2014 recipient of the John S. Patterson Award for academic and creative achievement. In 2018, he received the university’s Sue Samuelson Award for his doctoral dissertation.  Todd has been a social studies teacher at Penn Manor High School in Millersville, PA since 2007 and serves as an adjunct faculty in History at Dickinson College. He is the author of six books, including a two-volume biography of William Howard Day. You can read more about Todd’s research at his author’s website.

Matthew Pinsker is a Professor of History and Pohanka Chair for Civil War History at Dickinson College, where he also serves as Director of the House Divided Project. Pinsker graduated from Harvard College and received a D.Phil. degree in Modern History from the University of Oxford.  He has held visiting fellowships with the New America Foundation in Washington, DC, the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, PA, and the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. He is the author of two books and numerous articles on Abraham Lincoln and various topics in the Civil War era and the history of slavery resistance.

Kevin Wagner is the Social Studies Program Chair (6-12) for the Carlisle Area School District in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and has been an educator for 22 years. He holds a BA in Social Studies Certification/History from Messiah College and a MA in Educational Leadership from Shippensburg University. He has received numerous awards for education and teaching, including the Thomas W. Holtzman, Jr. Educational Leadership Award for outstanding contributions in educational administration, the National Liberty Museum’s “Teacher as Hero” Award for making a difference in the lives of students, the Gilder-Lehrman PA Teacher of the Year, and the AHA Beveridge Family Teaching Award. His most recent recognition was by the National Council for Social Studies as a recipient of the 2018 Christa McAuliffe “Reach for the Stars” Award, recognizing his innovative initiative to tell the story of World War II soldiers through his “Silent Heroes” website development program. 

On Saturday, March 23, 2109, from 9am to 5pm, the House Divided Project is sponsoring an open house at 61 N. West Street to highlight its new Dickinson & Slavery exhibit.  For that day only, visitors will also be able to view rarely seen relics associated with slavery and emancipation from the renowned J. Howard Wert Collection.

The Dickinson & Slavery exhibit opened on February 1, 2019 and features little-known stories about the college’s deep and complicated ties to slavery and anti-slavery.  Exhibit panels describe the paradox of college founders, like John Dickinson and Benjamin Rush, who initially owned slaves but eventually became converted to abolitionism.  Visitors will also learn about the stories of Dickinsonians during the sectional crisis, including Stephen Duncan (Class of 1805), a Mississippi planter who was one of the country’s largest slaveholders, and Richard McAllister (Class of 1840), who was the nation’s most aggressive fugitive slave commissioner.  But perhaps most revealing, exhibit panels describe the lives of formerly enslaved families that came to call Dickinson and Carlisle their home, during and after the Civil War.  One of these figures, Robert C. Young, a long-serving janitor and policeman on campus, also helped to integrate the school in 1886.  

The exhibit is usually open to the public only on Wednesdays from 9am to noon.

On Saturday, March 23, 2019, visitors will also be able to see relics from the J. Howard Wert Collection, which is considered one of the finest privately held collections of Civil War era artifacts.  Wert came from a prominent antislavery family in Adams County, Pennsylvania. They knew Benjamin Rush.  Wert himself was a graduate of Gettysburg College who served as a scout for Union forces during the 1863 battle and was present for the Gettysburg Address later that year.  Wert eventually enlisted in the Union army and became a teacher, author and noted school superintendent in Harrisburg.  He died in 1920.  During his lifetime, however, he continued the family tradition of collecting important historical artifacts.  On display at the open house, visitors will see:

• Relics from Sam and Bayard Wilkeson, a father and son who were at Gettysburg.  Sam Wilkeson was the lead correspondent for the New York Times covering the battle.  Bayard, his oldest son, was a young lieutenant, killed on the battle’s first day.  
• Relics of slavery and the Underground Railroad, including an s-brand like the one used in the episode that inspired John Greenleaf Whittier’s famous anti-slavery poem, “The Branded Hand”
• Relics from George Washington, passed along to the Wert family by their friend Benjamin Rush

George Washington’s document box (Courtesy of J. Howard Wert Collection)

The HISTORY channel has just launched a new short video series for teachers and students called, “Sound Smart,” that offer concise ways to think about major topics in U.S. history.  House Divided Project director Matthew Pinsker has helped inaugurate the series with several episodes from the antebellum and Civil War era.

Pinsker’s topics include:

• Manifest Destiny (1840s)
• Compromise of 1850
• Fugitive Slave Law (1850)
• Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854)
• Bleeding Kansas (1856)
• Dred Scott Case (1857)
• Fort Sumter (1861)
• Women in the Civil War (1861-65)
• Homestead Act (1862)
• 19th Amendment (1920)

Each episode offers a summary of the topic in just about two minutes, designed mostly to help focus classroom discussions and provoke further research at the middle or high school level.

(REVISED AND UPDATED) The House Divided Project at Dickinson College celebrated its tenth anniversary in March 2016 by hosting a special conference on the Reconstruction Era, with a series of campus events headlined by Pulitzer-Prize winner Eric Foner, and featuring noted historians Gregory Downs, Matthew Pinsker, Jeffrey Rosen, and Anne Sarah Rubin.  All events were streamed over YouTube and are available now via embedded viewers on this page.

Here is a snapshot of the Reconstruction conference schedule (March 24-26, 2016):

• Thursday, March 24, 2016, Public Lecture by Eric Foner on The Significance of Reconstruction in American History, ATS auditorium, 7pm to 830pm
• Friday, March 25, 2016, Conversation with Jeffrey Rosen on America’s Second Founding, Stern Great Room, 12pm to 1pm
• Saturday, March 26, 2016, K-12 Teacher Workshop on Reconstruction (Stern)
  • Check in, 9am to 930am
  • Welcome and opening session, Matthew Pinsker,  930am to 1030am
  • After Appomattox, Gregory Downs, 1045am to 12pm
  • [Lunch break, 12pm to 130pm]
  • Sherman’s March in American Culture, Anne Rubin, 130pm to 245pm
  • Closing Remarks, 245pm to 3pm

Participants in the K-12 teacher workshop on Saturday received free signed copies of Eric Foner’s book, A Short History of Reconstruction (2015 ed.) as well as other educational materials on Reconstruction provided by the House Divided Project and its co-sponsors.  After the workshop, all participants may continue to request certification for up to 4 hours of professional development credit in the form of a letter from Dickinson College.  Pennsylvania teachers should note, however, that Dickinson is not an Act 48 provider, and thus they will have to take this letter to their home institution for review and formal certification.

• Listen to Matthew Pinsker and local teacher participants Todd Mealy (Penn Manor High School) and Linda Niesen (Crossroads Middle School) discuss Reconstruction on WITF “Smart Talk” (March 21, 2016):

• Check out coverage of the conference at Dickinson Today: “Civil War History, At Your Fingertips,” (April 1, 2016)
• View Twitter summaries via two student Storify essays from the Reconstruction workshop by Michael Abu (Class of 2016) and George DeRosa (Class of 2016)

The House Divided Project at Dickinson College began during academic year 2005-06 as an effort to create free digital and multi-media resources for K-12 and undergraduate classrooms studying the broader Civil War era (1840-1880).  The Project has produced over two dozen websites and web-based exhibits, digitized over 15,000 public domain images, and has partnered with several leading cultural and educational institutions, such as the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in New York and the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, both of which are co-sponsoring the conference on Reconstruction.  Principal funding for the March 2016 conference comes from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation via a generous grant provided by the Dickinson College Digital Humanities Advisory Committee (DHAC).  During the conference, the House Divided also opened its new studio at 61 N. West Street in Carlisle, PA 17013 (tel: 717.245.1865).  Free tours and class sessions are now available by appointment.

The video above highlights contributions from House Divided interns Christina Braxton (Class of 2018) and Jia “Majer” Ma (Class of 2016).

Speakers (with video recordings)

Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, is one of this country’s most prominent historians. He received his doctoral degree at Columbia under the supervision of Richard Hofstadter. He is one of only two persons to serve as president of the three major professional organizations: the Organization of American Historians, American Historical Association, and Society of American Historians, and one of a handful to have won the Bancroft and Pulitzer Prizes in the same year. Foner is the author of numerous books, including Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (1988).  He has also served as co-curator with Olivia Mahoney, of the online exhibition, America’s Reconstruction: People and Politics After the Civil War (1995) which will be featured during the March 26 teacher workshop at Dickinson.

Jeffrey Rosen is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Constitution Center, the first and only nonprofit, nonpartisan institution devoted to the most powerful vision of freedom ever expressed: the U.S. Constitution. He is a professor at The George Washington University Law School, where he has taught since 1997.  He is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he explores issues involving the future of technology and the Constitution. Rose is the author of several books including The Supreme Court: The Personalities and Rivalries that Defined America (2007). He has also just helped launch the Second Founding initiative to explore the reconstruction of America’s constitution in the years after the Civil War.  Rosen will discuss this initiative at his Friday, March 25 conversation at Dickinson.

Saturday Teachers Workshop

Matthew Pinsker is the Pohanka Chair for Civil War History at Dickinson College and the Director of the House Divided Project.  Matt is also a fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington DC.  He has previously held visiting fellowships at Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College and the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. Matt graduated from Harvard College and received a D.Phil. degree in Modern History from the University of Oxford. He is the author of two books:  Abraham Lincoln –a volume in the American Presidents Reference Series from Congressional Quarterly Press (2002) and Lincoln’s Sanctuary: Abraham Lincoln and the Soldiers’ Home (Oxford University Press, 2003).  Matt’s next book is forthcoming from W.W. Norton & Co., tentatively entitled, Boss Lincoln: Understanding Abraham Lincoln’s Partisan Leadership.  On Saturday, Matt will be unveiling plans for the new Reconstruction Digital Classroom which will go online shortly after the anniversary conference.

Gregory Downs studies the political and cultural history of the United States in the 19th and early 20th centuries at the University of California / Davis.  He is the author or editor of several books. Downs’s latest monograph, After Appomattox: Military Occupation and the Ends of War (2015) examines the immediate period after Confederate surrender as an extension of wartime and through the lens of occupation, as the U.S. Army sought to remake life on the ground through alliances with organized freedpeople and against the ongoing resistance of ex-Confederates.   With the support of the University of Georgia and the American Council of Learned Societies, Downs and Scott Nesbit produced an interactive digital history of occupation during Reconstruction, Mapping Occupation that will be featured on the Saturday, March 26 teacher workshop at Stern.

Anne Sarah Rubin is a Professor of History at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where she teaches courses on the Civil War, American South, and the Nineteenth Century United States.  She is also the Director of the Center for Digital History and Education. She is the author of several historical monographs.  Her latest book, a study of the many legacies of Sherman’s March is Through the Heart of Dixie:  Sherman’s March and American Memory (2014).  Her online exploration of Sherman’s March can be found at www.shermansmarch.org and will be featured at the Saturday, March 26 teacher workshop. Rubin is currently a member of the Executive committee of the Southern Association for Women Historians, and an OAH Distinguished Lecturer.  She was president of the Society of Civil War Historians from 2012-2014.

(Carlisle, PA) The House Divided Project at Dickinson College is launching a new e-book series that features short biographies of underrated figures from Civil War era history.  Forgotten Abolitionist: John A.J. Creswell of Maryland by John M. Osborne and Christine Bombaro is the first offering in this series, currently available for free download via Smashwords.

“The story John Creswell is a good example of what this new e-biography series might be able to accomplish,” claims project director Matthew Pinsker.  “He is an unknown figure today, but could be used in any classroom in America to help illustrate the revolutionary changes wrought by the Civil War.  Creswell was a former Democratic politician from a border slave state, who developed into a leading advocate for abolition while serving in Congress during the conflict and then later became an important Republican cabinet officer during Reconstruction.  He was one of the pivotal figures in January 1865 who helped secure passage of the Thirteen Amendment in the House of Representatives.”

Osborne, an emeritus history professor, and Bombaro, an associate director of the Dickinson library, have been researching and teaching about Creswell (Class of 1848) at Dickinson College for years.  But other scholars have largely ignored him, and he has never before been the subject of a full-length biography.  Creswell did appear, however, in James Oakes’s ground-breaking recent study, Freedom National (W.W. Norton, 2013), and Oakes, who serves on the board of scholarly advisors for the House Divided Project, helped review the manuscript.

Pinsker promises that House Divided will seek out other short biographical projects from qualified, willing authors, covering any worthwhile American figure from the period 1840 to 1880.  “It is challenging –especially for young authors– to find publication outlets for such biographies today,” observes Pinsker.  “Academic journals and presses are usually more interested in other subjects, and trade houses are too focused on the bottom line to see much value in the study of obscure figures.  We predict that historical biography will become a valuable new educational niche for free or low-cost e-books.  More important, we hope to contribute good material toward building that genre with a series of well-written, well-edited volumes.  Forgotten Abolitionist is the type of book that any high school or undergraduate student could read and enjoy, connecting it easily to survey narratives or to popular historical movies, like Spielberg’s  “Lincoln” (2012), which sadly omitted Creswell, by the way.”

Sunday, December 6, 2015 marks the 150th anniversary of the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment.  It might be a good day to download a free copy of Forgotten Abolitionist.  This academic year (2015-16) also marks the 10th anniversary of the House Divided Project, which will be celebrated on campus from March 24-26, 2016.

• Forgotten Abolitionist by Osborne and Bombaro (via Smashwords)
• Dickinson news profile on authors Osborne and Bombaro
• Please submit query letters for new e-biography projects to hdivided@dickinson.edu (attention: Matthew Pinsker)

(Carlisle, PA, June 25, 2015) Today, the House Divided Project released an expanded online research guide for the Underground Railroad which includes links to dozens of highly rated sites.  Teachers and students can now explore primary source documents from the most active vigilance committees in cities like Boston, New York and Philadelphia.  They can explore first-rate scholarship, including several full-text essays, and they will be introduced to a wide variety of multi-media tools, including videos, interactive maps, and extensive image galleries.  Those interested in using the guide can access it at Project Director Matthew Pinsker’s online Civil War course.

Pinsker will be teaching a special teacher seminar on the Underground Railroad for the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History this summer in New York City, July 13-17, 2015.  You can find out more about the summer seminar program at the Gilder website.

Here is a snippet of the expanded online guide:

House Divided Project

• Digital Classrooms:  Underground Railroad and Emancipation
• Exhibits:  Henry “Box” Brown and Daniel Anthony
• Field Trips:  Google Earth files
• Videos:  Henry W. Spradley
• Interviews:  Kate Larson on Harriet Tubman and Fergus Bordewich on myths
• Lesson Plans:  K-12 units featuring Runaway Ads
• Research Engine:  Fugitive Slave Law and Underground Railroad

PRIMARY SOURCES

Federal Laws and Codes

• US Constitution: Fugitive Slave Clause (1787) with debate August 28, 1787
• Fugitive Slave Act (1793)
• Fugitive Slave Act (1850)
• Revised Articles of War (March 13, 1862)
• Repeal of 1850 Fugitive Slave Act (June 1864) with Senate debate (April)

To see more, go to the Web Guides section of the Civil War undergraduate online course.

On Tuesday evening, April 25, 2017, the House Divided Project is hosting two major public events at Dickinson College: an open house at its studio on 61 N. West Street from 4-6 p.m. and then a special premiere of the powerful new documentary film on the legacy of lynching in the American South, “An Outrage,” at the Weiss Center for Performing Arts from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.

The open house will feature a tour of our newly renovated Civil War era reading room and the presentation of special augmented reality (AR) exhibits on 19th-century Dickinson College history.  Various History students at Dickinson have contributed to the making of these exhibits, including:  Christina Braxton, Fiona Clarke, Trevor Diamond, Liam Donahue, Amanda Donoghue, George Gilbert, Sarah Goldberg, Alden Mohacsi, Alexia Orengo Green, Samantha Reiersen, and Ian Ridgway.

• Open House, House Divided Studio, 61 N. West Street, Carlisle, 4-6 p.m. (April 25, 2017)
• Researching Dickinson College History (for background on the participating History students)
• To find out more about augmented reality (AR) visit our easy “how-to” guide at Civil War Carlisle

“An Outrage,” is a new 30-minute documentary film about the legacy of lynching from Virginia-based filmmakers Hannah Ayers and Lance Warren of Field Studio.  The Southern Poverty Law Center has already promised to help distribute this provocative yet inspiring film to thousands of secondary school classrooms around the country .  The House Divided Project at Dickinson College and the History Department are proud to host the first Northern screening of this powerful film.

• Premiere: “An Outrage,” and Q&A with filmmakers, Rubendall Recital Hall (Weiss Center, 250 W. High Street, Carlisle) 830 – 930 p.m. (April 25, 2017)
• The Legacy of Lynching Syllabus (for background readings & viewings)
• Recent media coverage from AAIHS, Fairfield University and Richmond Style Weekly

Project Director Matthew Pinsker at Ford’s Theatre

In April 2011, the House Divided Project at Dickinson College launched to the public at the start of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War and now in April 2015 it is helping to commemorate the end of the Civil War anniversary with a series of special events and new resources.

• Thursday, April 9, 8 p.m.
  Free webinar on Leadership at Appomattox with Dickinson professors Jeffrey McCausland & Matthew Pinsker, register here to participate (hosted by Diamond6 Leadership) with recording archived online for registered participants
• Monday, April 13, 7 p.m.
  Lecture on Mary Lincoln’s Assassination with noted historian Catherine Clinton, ATS auditorium, Dickinson College,  click here for more details (hosted by The Clarke Forum with video archived online here)
• Tuesday, April 14 (all day)
  Video Tour of Ford’s Theatre, led by Dickinson professor Matthew Pinsker, available anytime here (hosted by Ford’s Theatre Society).

Also, here are some key highlights from the Civil War 150 with the House Divided Project:

• Launched an online database, Civil War Research Engine, which America’s Civil War magazine calls “one of the most compelling sesquicentennial online projects.”  The research engine now contains nearly 14,000 public domain images and over 50,000 individual records, covering the period from 1840 to 1880, with a focus on connecting visitors to events and experiences as they happened 150 years ago.
• Curated Lincoln’s Gettysburg Addresses, a special online exhibit featured on the Google landing page and in the Washington Post for the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address.
• Developed an innovative online graduate course called “Understanding Lincoln,” with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.  The course enrolled nearly 1,000 students from 2013-14, from over forty states and four continents.  Participants in this course helped build Lincoln’s Writings, a new website ranked by NEH EDSITEment as “Best of the Web” for its series on digital humanities resources.
• Produced dozens of free educational videos designed for classroom use and which have received more than 400,000 views via YouTube and Vimeo.  These efforts include virtual tours of Gettysburg and Fords’ Theatre, close readings of Lincoln documents, interviews with leading historians, and student-produced documentary films and video tutorials.
• Built nearly 20 major websites on the Civil War era, including the Emancipation Digital Classroom with its popular Unofficial Teacher’s Guide to Spielberg’s Lincoln, Underground Railroad Digital Classroom, Lincoln-Douglas Debates Digital Classroom, Origins of the Civil War, A Texas Farmer’s Civil War, Cumberland Civil War, Digital Lincoln, 150 Dickinsonians, Blog Divided, and Lincoln’s Writings.
• Established a vibrant community of learners and educators, including a distinguished Board of Advisors (David Blight, Catherine Clinton, Eric Foner, Harold Holzer, James Oakes, and Anne Sarah Rubin), more than 50 hard-working undergraduate interns, nearly 5,000 K-12 educators trained with the project either in workshops or online, and several notable institutional partners, including the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, Google, and the Journal of American History.

Altogether, these online resources from the House Divided Project have generated about four million page views during the four-year Civil War 150th anniversary.  Yet the project will continue to grow and expand in the coming years.  Please follow our progress here and on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

(February 11, 2014) On the eve of Lincoln’s 205th birthday, the House Divided Project announces a series of new digital multi-media tools to help teachers and students commemorate Abraham Lincoln’s most important autobiographical statement –a short but revealing document that he produced in December 1859 as he prepared for a presidential bid. These new classroom resources include:

• Lincoln on Lincoln –a documentary short filmed version of Lincoln’s 1859 autobiographical sketch
• Lincoln on Genius –a new annotated edition of the 1859 sketch on the fast-growing Rap Genius platform
• Lincoln on Quora –a lively, well-curated discussion on the question, “Was Lincoln Self-Made or Self-Invented?”
• Lincoln on Multi-Media  –a full-page teaching guide to the 1859 sketch from the new site: Lincoln’s Writings: The Multi-Media Edition

The documentary short film (6 mins.) produced by Dickinson College student Leah Milller (’14) and narrated by Dickinson College Theatre professor Todd Wronski offers a compelling tour of Lincoln’s life through his own words and images.

The annotated version of Lincoln’s 1859 autobiographical sketch now available at PoetryGenius represents the beginning of a brand new partnership between the House Divided Project and the Genius platform spearheaded by Dickinson College student Will Nelligan (’14).  We have created two classroom-inspired tools.  The first is a general annotated guide to the autobiographical sketch.  The second is especially designed as an open Common Core platform for studying the sketch.  Our new dedicated page at RapGenius can be found here.

Using the social Q&A site Quora, recently profiled by the New York Times, we have created a lively exchange on the question:  Was Abraham Lincoln self-made or self-invented, especially during the years before he became president?  So far, this question has produced over 50 thought-provoking answers, mostly from participants in our “Understanding Lincoln” online course, and has generated nearly five thousand views.

During Fall Semester 2013, we built as part of the “Understanding Lincoln” open online graduate course that we launched in partnership with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.  That site, recently named as one of the “Best of the Humanities Web” by NEH EDSITEMENT, features an expanded guide to the Autobiographical Sketch (December 20, 1859) which it ranks as #5 on a list of the 150 “most teachable” Lincoln documents.  The page includes a host of resources for teachers and students, such as:

• Annotated transcripts
• Soundcloud Podcast
• Videotaped close reading by Lincoln expert Matthew Pinsker
• Documentary short film
• Custom Google Map
• Image Gallery
• Excerpts from How Historians Interpret
• Other Primary Sources (including the transcript for the 1860 newspaper article that emerged from the sketch)
• Further reading

Lincoln’s Writings: The Multi-Media Edition is still in development and will be further expanded in Summer 2014 when we launch the second round of the “Understanding Lincoln” course with our partners at the Gilder Lehrman Institute.  Registration for the 2014 course will open by March 15, 2014.  See more information at the Gilder Lehrman website.

For more information on this effort and all matters related to the House Divided Project, please contact Director Matthew Pinsker at hdivided@dickinson.edu or pinskerm@dickinson.edu