“Loyalty and America’s Civil War”

Presented by Edward Ayers
President of the University of Richmond

Thursday, October 7, 2010  •  Reception at 6:00 pm  •  Lecture at 6:30 pm

Southern Methodist University  •  Grand Ballroom
Umphrey Lee Center  •  3300 Dyer Street  •  Dallas, TX

 In Civil War America, the fundamental categories of loyalty shifted beneath people’s feet.  How were people to be true to a nation when nations were being created or divided before their eyes?  How were people supposed to be true to a state when the state could not decide its own loyalties?  How were people supposed to be true to their family when fathers and sons, husbands and wives, declared loyalty to different nations?  What did loyalty mean to an enslaved person who had the opportunity to be a free person?  And what did it mean to be loyal to people you claimed to own when they proved themselves to be loyal to their blood families instead of to you?  This talk will explore this remarkable and revealing moment in American history, identifying what was perhaps the key struggle of the Civil War era.

  A historian of the American South, Ed Ayers has written and edited ten books. The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. In the Presence of Mine Enemies: Civil War in the Heart of America won the Bancroft Prize for distinguished writing in American history and the Beveridge Prize for the best book in English on the history of the Americas since 1492. A pioneer in digital history, Ayers created The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War, a Website that has attracted millions of users and won major prizes in the teaching of history.  Ayers has received a presidential appointment to the National Council on the Humanities, served as a Fulbright professor in the Netherlands, and been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is now the President of the University of Richmond, in Richmond, Virginia. 
 

SMU would like to recognize the Organization of American Historians for its help in arranging the Stanton Sharp Lecture Series on the Civil War.  All the guest speakers are OAH Distinguished Lecturers.  The OAH promotes excellence in the scholarship, teaching, and presentation of American history, and encourages
wide discussion of historical questions and equitable treatment of all practitioners of history.  For more information go to www.oah.org . 

The Sharp Lectures are also sponsored by SMU's Clements Department of History and the Scott Hawkins Lecture Series and are free and open to the public.  Seating is not reserved.

Visitor parking is available in the parking garages at Ownby and binkley ($1 per hour) or SMU Blvd., and Airline ($5 per day).  For more information, call 214-768-2967, or email hist@smu.edu.

COMING UP:  October 28, 2010, in McCord Auditorium, Dallas Hall, beginning at 6:30 p.m.: -Stephanie McCurry, Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, speaking on "Confederate Reckoning:  Power and Politics in the Civil War South."