How Surrender Defined the Civil War with David Silkenat

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Hey all - I am super stoked to welcome Dr. David Silkenat to The Rogue Historian! David is a senior lecturer at the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of three books: Driven from Home: North Carolina's Civil War Refugee Crisis (2015), Moments of Despair: Suicide, Divorce, and Debt in Civil War Era North Carolina (2011) – and most recently, Raising the White Flag: How Surrender Defined the American Civil War (2019), He is a two-time winner of the North Carolinian Society Book Prize and serves as the Chair of the Scottish Association for the Study of America and on the Editorial Board for the Journal of the Civil War Era and American Nineteenth Century History. He co-hosts the Whisky Rebellion podcast with Frank Cogliano.

I’ve been working a lot lately on infusing the latest scholarship into my own courses on American history…illustrating (hopefully) the virtues of keeping up to date with fresh ideas in the classroom. Our talk hit on a lot of topics involving surrender during the Civil War - and if you’re a history teacher you should take note. I can speak from experience here…these points make for some lively and engaging discussion in the classroom!

We discuss:

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  • Why Americans think that surrender has never been an option (because it really has…)

  • A surrender of principles?

  • Ft. Sumter and setting the tone of surrender

  • U.S. Grant and “unconditional surrender”

  • The terms at Appomattox and elsewhere at the end of the war

  • An honorable and dishonorable surrender

  • Black Union soldiers, the breakdown in the exchange system, and the changing prospect of surrender

  • Veterans and Civil War memory

All of this, naturally, is great stuff…and for more engaging conversation, be sure and follow David on Twitter and his podcast: The Whiskey Rebellion. And…get right on over to Amazon and buy the book…especially you history teachers out there. I know you want to :)

AND…don’t forget to subscribe to The Rogue Historian Podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite app so you never ever ever ever miss a show. That would be dumb.

With compliments,

Keith




The Rogue HistorianKeith HarrisCivil War, Prisoner, POW, Prisoner of War, U.S. Grant, William T. Sherman, Lincoln, ACW, American Civil War, Prisons, Civil War Prisons, Andersonville, ElmiraComment