Videos at HIST 4140: Koofers

43:07

Introductions: Why Does the Civil War Era Have a Hold on American Historical Imagination?

Professor Blight offers an introduction to the course. He summarizes some of the course readings, and discusses the organization of the course is discussed. Professor Blight offers some thoughts on th..

Author: David W. Blight Views: 19

51:49

Lincoln, Leadership, and Race: Emancipation as Policy

Professor Blight follows Robert E. Lee's army north into Maryland during the summer of 1862, an invasion that culminated in the Battle of Antietam, fought in September of 1862. In the wake of Antietam..

Author: David W. Blight Views: 3

51:00

A Southern World VIew: the Old South and Proslavery Ideology

Professor Blight lectures on southern slavery. He makes a case for viewing the U.S. South as one of the five true slave societies in world history. He discusses the internal slave trade that moved tho..

Author: David W. Blight Views: 10

52:07

Southern Society: Slavery, King Cotton, and Antebellum America's Peculiar Region

Professor Blight offers a number of approaches to the question of southern distinctiveness. The lecture offers a survey of that manner in which commentators--American, foreign, northern, and southern-..

Author: David W. Blight Views: 7

51:23

A Northern World VIew: Yankee Society, Antislavery Ideology, and the Abolition Movement

Having finished with slavery and the pro-slavery argument, Professor Blight heads North today. The majority of the lecture deals with the rise of the Market Revolution in the North, in the 1820s, 1830..

Author: David W. Blight Views: 4

50:13

Telling a Free Story: Fugitive Slaves and the Underground Railroad in Myth and Reality

Professor Blight discusses the rise of abolitionism. Blight begins with an introduction to the genre of slave narratives, with particular attention to Frederick Douglass' 1845 narrative. The lecture t..

Author: David W. Blight Views: 2

53:16

Expansion and Slavery: Legacies of the Mexican War and the Compromise of 1850

In this lecture, Professor Blight discusses some of the conflicts, controversies, and compromises that led up to the Civil War. After analyzing Frederick Douglass's 1852 Fourth of July speech and the ..

Author: David W. Blight Views: 3

47:54

A Hell of a Storm: The Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Birth of the Republican Party

Professor Blight narrates some of the important political crises of the 1850s. The lecture begins with an account of the Compromise of 1850, the swan song of the great congressional triumvirate--Henry..

Author: David W. Blight Views: 12

52:27

Dred Scott, Bleeding Kansas, and the Impending Crisis of the Union

Professor Blight continues his march through the political events of the 1850s. Blight continues his description of the aftermath of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, describing the guerilla war that r..

Author: David W. Blight Views: 0

52:24

John Brown's Holy War: Terrorist or Heroic Revolutionary?

Professor Blight narrates the momentous events of 1857, 1858, and 1859. The lecture opens with an analysis of the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. Next, Blight analyzes the Dred Scott decision ..

Author: David W. Blight Views: 0

51:01

The Election of 1860 and the Secession Crisis

This lecture picks off where the previous one left off, with a discussion of the legacies of John Brown. The most important thing about John Brown's raid, Professor Blight argues, was not the event it..

Author: David W. Blight Views: 1

50:18

Slavery and State Rights, Economies and Ways of Life: What Caused the Civil War?

Professor Blight begins this lecture with an attempt to answer the question why did the South secede in 1861? Blight offers five possible answers to this question: preservation of slavery, the fear th..

Author: David W. Blight Views: 0

46:37

And the War Came, 1861: The Sumter Crisis, Comparative Strategies

After finishing with his survey of the manner in which historians have explained the coming of the Civil War, Professor Blight focuses on Fort Sumter. After months of political maneuvering, the Civil ..

Author: David W. Blight Views: 3

52:53

Terrible Swift Sword: The Period of Confederate Ascendency

Professor Blight discusses the expectations, advantages, and disadvantages with which North and South entered the Civil War. Both sides, he argues, expected and desired a short, contained conflict. Th..

Author: David W. Blight Views: 0

50:28

Never Call Retreat: Military and Political Turning Points in 1863

Professor Blight lectures on the military history of the early part of the war. Beginning with events in the West, Blight describes the Union victories at Fort Donelson and Fort Henry, introduces Unio..

Author: David W. Blight Views: 0

48:40

Days of Jubilee: The Meanings of Emancipation and Total War

This lecture focuses on the process of emancipation after the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. The Proclamation, Professor Blight suggests, had four immediate effects: it m..

Author: David W. Blight Views: 1

50:47

Homefronts and Battlefronts: Hard War and the Social Impact of the Civil War

Professor Blight begins his lecture with a description of the sea change in Civil War scholarship heralded by the Social History revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. Along with a focus on the experience..

Author: David W. Blight Views: 0

50:32

War So Terrible: Why the Union Won and the Confederacy Lost

This lecture probes the reasons for confederate defeat and union victory. Professor Blight begins with an elucidation of the loss of will thesis, which suggests that it was a lack of conviction on the..

Author: David W. Blight Views: 1

51:12

To Appomattox and Beyond: The End of the War and a Search for Meanings

Professor Blight uses Herman Melville's poem On the Slain Collegians to introduce the horrifying slaughter of 1864. The architect of the strategy that would eventually lead to Union victory, but at a ..

Author: David W. Blight Views: 1

48:35

Wartime Reconstruction: Imagining the Aftermath and a Second American Republic

This lecture begins with a central, if often overlooked, turning point in the Civil War--the re-election of Abraham Lincoln in 1864. Although the concerted efforts of northern Peace Democrats and a pa..

Author: David W. Blight Views: 2