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Emancipation Topic for ASU’s Civil War Series

February 06, 2012

On the 203rd anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, Angelo State University’s Civil War Lecture Series commemorating the 150th anniversary of the conflict will focus on “Emancipation, 1862” at 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 12, at the Fort Concho Commissary.  

Panelists will be ASU history faculty Dr. Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai, speaking on “The Abolitionist Stance,” and Dr. David Dewar, addressing “The Moderate Republican View.”  The panel will be moderated by Joe Muñoz, ASU’s senior executive assistant to the president and assistant to the president for multicultural initiatives. 

The lecture is open free to the public in the Fort Concho Commissary, which is located on the fort grounds near the intersections of Flipper and Burgess streets.  The program is the fifth of seven public presentations that will address various aspects of the Civil War during the 2011-12 academic year. 

Dr. Kenneth J. Heineman, head of the ASU History Department and organizer of the lecture series, said ultimately the Civil War was about slavery and that Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation brought clarity to the issues at stake. 

Said Heineman, “A war that began as an effort to reunite a divided nation became, in the wake of the Sept. 17, 1862, battle of Antietam, the single bloodiest day in American history, a war to abolish slavery.  Although many Americans in the North were opposed to the emancipation of slaves, one fact reverberates across the centuries:  at no other time in the course of human events have members of the same race fought each over the liberation of members of another race.  America is truly an exceptional nation and ‘the last best hope,’ in President Lincoln’s words, for freedom in the world.” 

The Civil War speaker series is jointly sponsored by multiple ASU departments, including the History Department, Center for Security Studies, West Texas Collection, Multicultural Center and Air Force ROTC, as well as Fort Concho and the Concho Valley Civil War Roundtable, to commemorate the watershed event in American history. 

Heineman said Angelo State’s “Civil War 150th Commemoration Discussion Series” will continue through April with ASU and local historians addressing various topics related to Civil War personalities, events and ramifications.  All programs are scheduled at either ASU’s Davidson Center or in the Fort Concho Commissary. 

Other presentations in the Civil War series will be: 

?“Civil War/Total War,” 7 p.m. March 20, Fort Concho Stables; Panelists:  Cory Robinson, “Before San Angelo, Benjamin Grierson Dropped by on Mississippi,” and Dr. Kenneth Heineman, “William Tecumseh Sherman Demonstrated that War is Hell;” Moderator:  Dr. Robert Ehlers. 

?“A New Birth of Freedom: The Post-Civil War World,” 7 p.m. April 17, Davidson Center; Roundtable:  Dr. John Klingemann, “Mexico, 1910,” Dr. Joe Zheng, “China, 1911” and Dr. Rob Nalbandov, “Georgia, 1989;” Moderator:  Dr. Kenneth Heineman. 

Heineman said the goal of the lecture series is to engage the community in reflection on the Civil War and its impact, even on contemporary society.  He said the lecture series would also be a learning experience for secondary school teachers and their students.