All News

Little did John Troast ’23 imagine, when he wrote a 20-page paper for Chamberlain Fellow and Visiting Professor of History Ty Seidule, that his words would be featured on the homepage of a national news site.

The Hamilton College seal, “Know Thyself” parallels the modus operandi of Chamberlain Fellow and Visiting Professor of History, Ty Seidule’s critically acclaimed book, Robert E. Lee and Me.

President Trump has vowed to veto a bill authorizing more than $740 billion in defense spending because it includes a provision to change the names of 10 Army installations, wrote Chamberlain Fellow and Professor of History Ty Seidule in a Washington Post essay on Sunday, Nov. 29.

Bells in municipal towers and religious buildings – including Hamilton’s chapel bell – rang across the country on April 9 at 3:15 p.m. to commemorate the time 150 years ago when Generals Grant and Lee exited the Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia bringing the Civil War to an end.

In concert with the National Park Service's call to ring “Bells across the Land: A Nation Remembers Appomattox,” the College's Chapel bell will ring for four minutes at 3:15 p.m. on Thursday, April 9, to mark the four years of war that ended 150 years ago at Appomattox.  One hour later, at 4:15 p.m., a short memorial program will commemorate the role Hamilton students and alumni played in the Civil War, as well as  in the abolitionist movement that preceded the war. This program is free and open to the public.

Although the United States remained intact after the Civil War, animosity between northerners and southerners has never fully dissipated. Joseph Glatthaar, the Stephenson Distinguished Professor at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, believes this can be largely attributed to the “raiding strategy” employed by the Union during the latter half of the Civil War. Glatthaar travelled to the Hill on Nov. 11 for a lecture and book-signing.

University of North Carolina historian and author Joseph T. Glatthaar will present a lecture, “The Destructive Civil War 1864-1865,” on Tuesday, Nov. 11, at 7 p.m., in the Kennedy Auditorium of the Taylor Science Center. The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will discuss the critical later years of the Civil War.

Columbia University Professor Eric Foner, preeminent historian of the Civil War era, will discuss his latest book, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery, on Thursday, Nov. 15, at 7 p.m., in the Bradford Auditorium, K.J.  Foner is the DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University and specializes in the Civil War and Reconstruction, slavery and 19th century America.  The lecture is free and open to the public.

The New York Times’ current entry on the publication’s Civil War blog is the work of James L. Ferguson Professor of History Maurice Isserman. Titled “From the Playing Field to the Battlefield,” the article reveals that during the war, the majority of Hamilton students participated on both the Union and Confederate sides and that many perished.

James Robbins came to Hamilton to talk about someone no Hamilton student wants to be: the individuals last in their class. Robbins was talking in particular about the “Goats,” men who graduated last in their class from West Point and ended up fighting in the Civil War. He drew extensively from his book, Last in their Class: Custer, Pickett and the Ghosts of West Point (2006) in providing an often-humorous overview of America's most famous Goats.