Author: Matthew Pinsker

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

(March 15, 2014) The House Divided Project at Dickinson College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History are currently opening registration for  “Understanding Lincoln,” an open,online graduate course that will begin on June 3, 2014 with regular classes running through July 16, 2014.  The course, taught for the second time by noted Lincoln scholar Matthew Pinsker is designed for anybody who wants to learn more about Abraham Lincoln and his legacy but offers special appeal for K-12 educators seeking creative ways to master new Common Core State Standards. The limited enrollment graduate section of this unique online seminar provides a full-semester graduate course credit (3.0 hours certified by transcript from Dickinson College) at the cost of only $600.  Auditors to the course are also welcome at the cost of only a $25 registration fee with a special discount available for educators who are part of Gilder Lehrman affiliate schools.   Registration closes on May 27, 2014.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER NOW

SPECIAL PANEL AT FORD’S THEATRE TACKLES QUESTION,
“WHAT WOULD LINCOLN DO?”  (click below to view)

October 15, 2013

Noted Lincoln historians and top-flight national policy experts debate
how Abraham Lincoln gets used and sometimes abused by Washington policymakers as they invoke his legacy on behalf of their policy positions

Washington, D.C. – A unique partnership of four major non-profit institutions will host a special panel titled, Understanding How Lincoln Gets Used (and Abused) in Today’s Washington at Ford’s Theatre (511 Tenth Street, NW) on Tuesday, October 15, 2013. The panel of noted historians and policy experts will be filmed and streamed over the Internet as part of an open, online graduate course currently being offered by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and the House Divided Project at Dickinson College.

The Ford’s Theatre Society, New America Foundation, House Divided Project, and Gilder Lehrman Institute are the four co-sponsoring institutions for this unique panel, which promises to offer a wide-ranging discussion of ways that modern policymakers have sometimes tried to channel Abraham Lincoln’s example in formulating and selling their policies. The panelists will debate whether Lincoln’s legacy has been used or abused in the modern context, and will offer their own assessments about how (or whether) to apply Lincoln’s lessons to some of the challenges of modern times. Panelists include:

* Moderator: Matthew Pinsker, Pohanka Chair for Civil War History, Dickinson College and Fellow, New America Foundation
* Michael Lind, Policy Director, Economic Growth Program, New America Foundation and author What Lincoln Believed (2006)
* Richard Norton Smith, noted presidential historian, George Mason University and former founding director, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum
* Craig Symonds, Emeritus Professor of History, U.S. Naval Academy and Lincoln Prize-winning author, Lincoln and His Admirals (2008)
* James L. Swanson, Senior Scholar, Heritage Foundation and best-selling author, Manhunt (2006)

This is event is free and open to the press. Interested media should contact Lauren Beyea at lbeyea@fords.org to reserve tickets. Advance tickets may also be reserved via Ticketmaster (fees apply) or at the Ford’s Theatre Box Office (no fee) beginning September 16, 2013. For more information, visit http://www.fords.org/event/what-would-lincoln-do. The session will also be available for online viewing the next day in conjunction with a live teacher’s session and filmed virtual tour of Ford’s Theatre that will run from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. EST (Oct. 16, 2013) at the “Understanding Lincoln” Livestream webpage: http://new.livestream.com/gilderlehrman/lincoln

Event summary:
Understanding How Lincoln Gets Used (and Abused) in Today’s Washington
Ford’s Theatre (511 Tenth Street, NW, Washington, DC)
October 15, 2013
12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.

About Ford’s Theatre
One of the most visited sites in the nation’s capital, Ford’s Theatre reopened its doors in 1968, more than a hundred years after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. Operated through a partnership between Ford’s Theatre Society and the National Park Service, Ford’s Theatre is the premier destination in the nation’s capital to explore and celebrate Abraham Lincoln’s ideals and leadership principles: courage, integrity, tolerance, equality and creative expression.

About the New America Foundation
The New America Foundation is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy institute that invests in new thinkers and new ideas to address the next generation of challenges facing the United States. To learn more, please visit us online at www.newamerica.org or follow us on Twitter @NewAmerica

About the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History 
Founded in 1994, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History is the nation’s leading nonprofit provider of K–12 teacher training and classroom resources. Our programs promote excellence in the teaching and learning of American history. Gilder Lehrman programs include Teacher Seminars, a national Affiliate School Program, online courses, Traveling Exhibitions, online materials, and more for teachers, students, and the general public. Visit www.gilderlehrman.org to learn more.

About Dickinson College
Dickinson College, founded in 1773, is a highly selective, private residential liberal-arts college known for its innovative curriculum. Its mission is to offer students a useful education in the arts and sciences that will prepare them for lives as engaged citizens and leaders. The 180-acre campus of Dickinson College is located in the heart of historic Carlisle, Pa. The House Divided Project at Dickinson, directed by history professor Matthew Pinsker, specializes in building digital resources on the Civil War era for K-12 and undergraduate classrooms.  To find out more about the project and its flagship online course, “Understanding Lincoln,” go to http://housedivided.dickinson.edu/sites/
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MEDIA CONTACT: Lauren Beyea at lbeyea@fords.org