Podcast appearances and mentions of douglas egerton

Douglas Egerton, author of "A Man on Fire: The Worlds of Thomas Wentworth Higginson"

Douglas Egerton, author of "A Man on Fire: The Worlds of Thomas Wentworth Higginson"

Luke joins Douglas Egerton, author of The Wars of Reconstruction: The Brief, Violent History of America's Most Progressive Era, for a conversation about an epoch-defining period in U.S. history. Drawing from the lives of lesser-known actors, Douglas details attempts to transform the foundation of society following the Civil War and the vociferous resistance to those changes. Douglas provides an overview of Reconstruction, the forces involved, and, crucially, the way in which the period has been memorized and presented in academia and popular culture.

On April 11, 1865, Abraham Lincoln addressed a crowd gathered outside the White House. He spoke not of recent  victories, or those to come, but to the shape of the peace that would follow. Now that the Thirteenth Amendment had been passed by Congress, he urged that it be ratified. Moreover, it seemed to him, Lincoln said, that it was necessary for “the colored man” to have the right to vote. “I myself,” Lincoln told the crowd, “would prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers.” That might now seem like a timid suggestion, but not to one man then standing  in the listening crowd. When John Wilkes Booth heard Lincoln's words, he turned to a companion and vowed “That's the last speech he will ever make!” It was not the fall of Richmond, the flight of the Confederate government, or the surrender of Robert E. Lee's army that finally made Booth decide to act, but the threat of black suffrage. With me to discuss the cause of black suffrage in the weeks, months, and years following Lincoln's death is Paul D. Escott, Reynolds Professor of History Emeritus at Wake Forest University. He is the author of numerous books, including Slavery Remembered: A Record of Twentieth-Century Slave Narratives; The Worst Passions of Human Nature: White Supremacy in the Civil War North; and most recently Black Suffrage: Lincoln's Last Goal. For Further Investigation Many previous conversations on this podcast are related to this one. For an overview of Reconstruction, see my conversation with Douglas Egerton in Episode 67; how Black Americans created American citizenship was the focus of a conversation with Christopher Bonner in Episode 167; and most recently my conversation with Clayton Butler discussed Unionism as an ideology, and in part how it explains part of the mentality of Andrew Johnson. For a different take on Lincoln than that held by Paul Escott, see my conversation with Michael Burlingame in Episode 242; Burlingame would argue that Lincoln was never interested in colonization prior to the war, and never serious about colonization during the war.

In late November, 1864, David R. Snelling visited his uncle, who then lived in Baldwin County near Milledgeville, Georgia. As a boy, he had worked in his uncle's fields alongside those his uncle enslaved. Now Snelling returned home as a Lieutenant in the Army of the United States, commanding Company I of the First Alabama Cavalry–though detached on temporary duty as commander of the headquarters escort for General William Tecumseh Sherman. The homecoming was not a happy one, at least for Snelling's uncle. The troopers who accompanied Snelling took what provisions they could find, and then at Snelling's direction burned down the family's cotton gin. Snelling and the First Alabama were some of the very small percentage of Unionists who persisted in the Deep South following secession. Yet Clayton Butler argues that their importance in the minds of both the Union and the Confederacy “helps to shed light on some of the most crucial issues of the entire era.”  He examines these Unionists, and those illuminated issues, in his new book True Blue: White Unionists in the Deep South During the Civil War and Reconstruction.  For Further Investigation The Andrew Johnson National Historic Site, in Greeneville, Tennessee An informative website constructed by historical reenactors who interpret the First Alabama Cavalry (USV) The image is of a Union scout in Louisiana, during the Red River campaign of 1864. For more,  ""Union Scouts in Louisiana," artist's impression, Harper's Weekly, May 1864, detail," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College For an introduction to Reconstruction, see the conversation in Episode 67 with Douglas Egerton. For a view of the Civil War that dovetails nicely with this conversation, see Episode 132, a conversation with historian Elizabeth Varon.

Ayiti, in the Black radical imagination, is more than an idea. It is the material representation of African/a freedom. It is the exemplar of the promises, failures & potentialities of African/a liberation. It is the colonial knot that the African/a world must untied. Just as Ayiti represented freedom in the past, it also represents the potentiality of collective freedom today. The question of Ayiti is intricately linked to the global African/a movement against oppression, as fortified by the colonial, in all of its forms. I assert, that it is with Haiti, then and now, along with Afro communities in Colombia, burgeoning movements across the continent of Africa; Afro Brazilian communities, Afro and African descendant communities in Europe; critical thinking African descendants here in the U.S., along with our historically and ethnically oppressed allies who stand in the long tradition of collective resistance to the dehumanizing nature of racial capitalism to create another future. Maurice Jackson in his article, “Friends of the Negro! Fly with me, the path is open to the sea”: remembering the Haitian Revolution in the History, Music, and Culture of the African American People, writes: “As early as 1797, Prince Hall, an African American who had fought in the war against Great Britain, applauded events in Haiti and reflected on their implications for the United States. In a speech to the Boston African Masonic Lodge he declared, ‘‘My brethren, let us not be cast down under these and many other abuses we at present labour under: for the darkest is before the break of day…Let us remember what a dark day it was with our African brethren, six years ago, in the French West Indies. Nothing but the snap of the whip was heard, from morning to evening (60).'' Sixty years later and a few years before the first battles of the Civil War, in 1857, the Reverend James Theodore Holly, the missionary, emigrationist, and first African American bishop in the Protestant Episcopal Church, preached that the Haitian Revolution ‘‘is one of the noblest, grandest, and most justifiable outbursts against tyrannical oppression that is recorded on the pages of the world's history (60).'' Taking note of Ayiti's interdependent impact on the sociopolitical conditions in the African/a world, specifically, Gabriel Prosser's revolutionary program, Douglas Egerton has written: “Saint Domingue served as an inspiration to Gabriel and completed his development…The distant figure of Toussaint…seemed to clarify the domestic situation and told him that if he dared, success might be within his reach.” At the trial of Rolla Bennett, one of Vesey closest friends and an enslaved African of Governor Thomas Bennett, another black identified as Witness No. 1 swore that Rolla had told him that white men ‘‘say that, Santo Domingo and Africa will assist us to get our liberty, if we will only make the motion first.” Indeed, the ideas and material reality of freedom represented through the series of resistance filtered through Ayiti is important to contextualize for many reasons, reasons I will let you determine. But a clear historical consciousness is a prerequisite for addressing the inequities that pass, unabated, through time and space. Where are we now? Today, Africa Now World Project's Mwiza Munthali recently caught up with our partners in Port-au-Prince, Ayiti to discuss what is happening on the ground. Today, we look at the People's Movement in Ayiti with Vélina Elysée Charlier, member of Nou Pap Domí movement in Port-au-Prince, Ayiti. Our show was produced today in solidarity with the native/indigenous, African, and Afro-descended communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; Ghana and Ayiti; and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all people.

A historian shares how the United States put an end to the transatlantic slave trade. Douglas Egerton of Le Moyne College explains the daring escape of the enslaved man, Robert Smalls, and his distinguished legislative career.

In this first episode, I read excerpts from the following texts: *A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare* by James Shapiro -- secretly setting-up The Globe*The Wars of Reconstruction* by Douglas Egerton -- violent losers*The Electric Life of Michael Faraday* by Alan Hirshfeld -- almost missing the transformer*Nixonland* by Rick Perlstein -- multiple burglaries*Why Poetry* by Matthew Zapruder -- taking your head off

Anna Mae Duane shares how two fugitive slave boys, James McCune Smith and Henry Highland Garnet, grew up to inspire abolitionists before the Civil War. Douglas Egerton of Le Moyne College tells the story of the daring escape of an enslaved man, Robert Smalls, and his ensuing successful legislative career.

Author Kyle MacDonald traded up a paperclip for various items, each "bigger and better" until he wound up with a house. Douglas Egerton of Le Moyne College explains the daring escape of the enslaved man, Robert Smalls, and his distinguished legislative career. What you can learn from hostage negotiator Chris Voss, CEO of Black Swan Group. Una Mcllvenna of the University of Melbourne describes the Renaissance version of tabloid news.

If you’re interested in my post-college story, I want to let you know I’m sharing all of my tips on the post-college job search, nailing informational interviews, and more on the Bri Books Podcast Newsletter. @BriBooksPod - Instagram @BriBooksPod - Twitter What are you reading?! Show and tell using #bribooks Editor’s Note: "Welcome to Bri Books podcast! I knew that reading Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery’s book “They Can’t Kill Us All:Ferguson, Baltimore and a New Era in America's Racial Justice Movement” would knock me off my feet, but I wasn’t expecting that on the day this episode was recorded, (8/11/17), exactly two days to the date of Michael Brown’s murder in my hometown (Ferguson, MO), that same evening hundreds of grown men and women in Charlottesville, VA would march on a college campus in the name of white supremacy and racism. That reality is hanging over this episode, and I hope the book we discuss, “They Can’t Kill Us All,” encourages and challenges you. I can’t recommend the book enough. Let’s get into it.  Resources: Ju-Hyun Park’s essay on thefader.com, “Love Needs Fury to Defeat Hate” DeRay McKesson’s podcast “Pod Save The People,” “BONUS: CHARLOTTESVILLE”   @wesleylowery – Twitter, Washington Post  SHOW NOTES    As I prepared to read Wesley’s book, I first read “Wars of Reconstruction” by Douglas Egerton, to remind myself of the systemic obstruction of police and black self-advocacy that immediately followed Civil War, Emancipation Proclamation and Lincoln’s assassination. The book talks about how the time post-Emancipation Proclamation was the most violent yet politically progressive time in America’s history for freed blacks, as literacy rates and involvement in political and social office grew exponentially. The inclusion of African-Americans in the Union Army definitively helped the Union clinch the war. I wanted to read “The Wars of Reconstruction: The Brief, Violent History of America’s Most Progressive Era,” by Douglas Egerton. 1:03 – Wesley’s first book is a reporter’s notebook of sorts, chronicling his work as a reporter dispatching from Ferguson, MO at the height of the shooting death of Mike Brown. From there he found himself flying to Cleveland, Baltimore, and too many cities to cover too many people who had become hashtags in the light of police violence and the death of black men and women at the hands of police 1:30 I knew Wesley’s book would knock me off my feet but I wasn’t expecting that on the day we recorded, 3 years and 2 days to the date of Brown’s death, hundreds of men and women would march on a college campus in the name of white supremacy and racism. That very real pall is hanging over this episode, and I hope our conversation encourages and challenges you. 2:00 – Resources: Ju-Hyun Park’s essay on thefader.com, “Love Needs Fury to Defeat Hate” DeRay McKesson’s podcast “Pod Save The People,” “BONUS: CHARLOTTESVILLE” 3:15 – This episode has special place in my heart because Ferguson is my family hometown. My mom grew up there at a time when her own mom was the first black person to live on the block. By the time my grandmother died when I was 18, there were no white people left in the entire neighborhood. 3:55 – Wesley thanks for being on this episode. Watching my hometown become a hashtag was interesting for me. Tell us about where you grew up. 4:10 – Thank you! It’s important to me, as someone who writes about places I’m not from to really listen and learn the context of those places. I was fortunate enough to spend a lot of time in STL and Ferguson before having to write about it in a longform way. I had dozens, then hundreds, of conversations that hopefully help me portray things that are accurate and right true to the people who lived the lives I’m depicting. 4:45 – Wesley spent his childhood in 2 places, first in a Jersey suburb until his early teens. At 13, moved to Shaker Heights, Ohio, a suburb on the East Side of Cleveland. It used to be held to be true that the East side is where blacks lived, west is where ethnic whites, Slavic, Italian, city workers, cops and firefighters on the west side. East side was where black families lived. “Shaker Heights was one of 2-3 cities that began instituting public school bussing before the supreme court order. It’s a hyper-progressive community, has always ben extremely diverse. I grew up in a place where we were constantly having conversations about race, racism, prejudice, stereotyping. I was in programmers as a high schooler focused on mentorship and achievement. And having tough conversations. It prepared me for the work now.” 6:35 – I love that your book really humanizes protestors. It adds color and dimension to their lives outside of moment they became known as protestors with capital P. what did you learn from the act of protesting, when you were reporting in Ferguson, that you brought back to newsroom in terms of how you tell stories. 7:02 – “One of the things I still think of a lot, that is how those of us in the media and who haven’t protested, want to subscribe and ascribe solutions/ motives to protests. Most of us who work in media have never attended a protest we were participating in. many of our decision makers like in DC have never themselves felt like this is how they’re going to petition the government. 7:45 – “The reality was in Ferguson, Baltimore, charlotte, Milwaukee, this was an organic overflow of pain and anger. no one was calling the residents of Ferguson saying come outside and be upset. They were looking out their window and seeing the body of a teenager and saying this is where I draw the line I deserve better for my government. 8:07 – “We hear of people very often who are dismissive of protest, is why don’t they why don’t they go vote? Write a letter to congressman? That type of mindset fundamentally misunderstands protests. People who take to the street do so because their government has otherwise not listened to them when they’ve petitioned them in other spaces. Protest is in many ways, a means of voicing and demanding an audience for otherwise unheard needs. I think that’s not something that those of us who often have our needs heard that people can appreciated. 8:50 – “There’s this deep skepticism sometimes, and we always hear these conversations, people who say, “If you want to win me over, why did you block the highway?” It fundamentally.it fundamentally misunderstands point of disobedient protests, and why they’re taking to the streets. 5:29 – “People aren’t taking to street to convince you in your house they’re right about something. They don’t care about you. That’s not the point of this. They’re directly communicating what the powers that oversee their government, etc., and they’re saying, you value order. 9:40 – Chris Hayes’ book “A Colony in the Nation” talks about this idea of order. That we, in the majority, what we care about is traffic lights that at work, busses that run on time, no traffic jam, my street being clean. In many ways, we prioritize the order of our spaces or the rights and liberties of other people. That we care about things seems peaceful and calm, and the way you made my street orderly is by stopping and frisking every black person on my street or harassing them for their music, I don’t care about that because t’s orderly. It’s my comfort.” 10:30 – With conversations about highway, its people saying, why would you disrupt my order with your silly concerns about your lives? You see drastic disconnect in priority. And like I said earlier, there’s a standard misunderstanding of the point of these protests. 11:00 – In his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther King, Jr. says this isn’t about negotiating or gaining a seat at a table. It’s not about winning allies or friends. It’s about making the conditions of this political problem so untenable that it makes it impossible for the powers to be to do nothing. Not only are we upset with you, but these people who have been inconvenienced are calling your office. It’s calling you to do “something,” which means you’re gonna call and say, “what is it you really want?” 11:45 – “For those of us who value order, we can often underestimate the power of political disorder as a tactic. 11:55 – Part of the currency that helped Wesley report so deeply is that you could’ve even classmates of protestors or the young brother of any of the young boys who got killed. How did you take it from reporter’s notebook to workable manuscript? 12:35 – “Procedurally it started by me sitting back and looking at the first anniversary, and tracing back my previous year. Where’d I gone? Ferguson, Cleveland, New York City, Charleston, Baltimore. How did pit stops tell the story of what was going on and tell the story of what became a protest movement? 13:15 – “I sat down and would begin with stories I’d written from city, and grabbing.in the emails, grabbed, all the unedited feeds id sent in from protests, people I’d interviewed previously. 13:40 – “In one case I’d interviewed Jonathan Butler in Ferguson. I literally just man-on-the-street interviewed him. The next year, he launches hunger strike and university of Missouri. Before he was hunger strike student. I’d take all the material from take period of time, copy and paste the articles and drafts back in, and say, how do I convert this whole thing into first person? How’d I get there? I’d write it long, whittle it down, and convert it into a guide into how I did some of the reporting. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t always the most comfortable with writing in first person I’m not someone who came up writing in 1st I was always doing 3rd persons. I was hesitant to insert myself in the story that way. 15:00 - “In a way, especially when people don’t understand he media and literacy is low…there’s real value in showing people how we do what we do—woke up. Story happening. People don’t assume that reporting process for everything they rad anymore…I think there’s real value in walking people through these processes of how we get these stories how we see them, how we choose the story. 16:00 - “If I tell you how I got here, why seeing, what I was seeing, could help you understand the subjective decisions that were made. That’s part of what I was trying to do. 16:20 – You succeed at that. Your book knows you’re in the story but not the subject of the story. In the first chapter, you say there’s a moment when I became a thing. But you moved past it. Was that a strategic decision? 17:00 – “That was a purposeful decision. 2 days after arriving in Ferguson, my friend Ryan and I were arrested covering the protest. We were first of dozens of journos who would find themselves arrested. Eric holder commented on it, we became these political footballs… 17:35 – I knew to write this book there would be people saying you got this because fame. No, no, I helped cover Boston Marathon bombings for Boston Globe before this. Got a lot of blowback from people ho didn’t know me or work. By writing this, I wanted to dispense of my moment of fame at the very beginning. I wanted to say yes, I’m that guy, let’s deal and never talk again. This book isn’t’ about me. Its’ about all these young people and these families who lost loved ones and had been so gracious as to allow me to tell me their stories. 19:00 – “I really wanted to, through this book, tell the story of the young people who stepped into the streets. From someone whose covered this protest movement from close to the beginning, I find myself frustrated. I spent time talking to activist’s demonstrators, I found almost all of them to be thoughtful, intelligent, deliberate. But I’d see this caricature of many of them in the media by and large especially in conservative media….and I’d hear this from my colleagues, editors, and also my readers. And I felt frustrated. I knew all these people personally at this point, and for whatever reason, it wasn’t being communicated to a broader audience. 20:12 – “I’d written dozens, maybe over a hundred articles about Black Lives Matter, about protests, police shootings. And I’d still get emails from subscribers saying I don’t get this. 20:29 – “For me, I think that to be a reporter writer is to be a translator. I’m dispatched to a place. I’m witnessing something that’s happening. It’s my job to translate what has happened to a bunch of people who can’t be there, to explain it to them. I’m writing articles about a protest, and you send me an email saying I don’t understand what this protest is about, it means that at some point in my translation I have failed you. 20:52 - “So, the goal of writing a book was to say, what if I can do it in a longer form? What if I can write everything I know about this down? And if I do that someone who is genuinely interested can sit down and read all the stuff I know, see all these different people and places, and then maybe if they don’t agree with the politics of the protestors, maybe they can understand. That’s the goal of what I was doing.” 21:20 – I sometimes wonder, if I’d be going home…I always wonder, how would I have served that community? Would I be protestor? Organizer? Religious sense? 21:46 – For you, in Cleveland, do you ever wonder how, if you’d been home and been a civilian, how you would’ve voiced your frustration? 22:00 – “I think that’s something a lot of us think about. Is, if this happened where I live what would I do? If I’d been there what would’ve I do? There’s this feeling, every time we hear of new case, see a new video, there’s a moment where everyone simultaneously has a guttural need to do something. You watch Philando Castile video, the Eric Garner video, you say that’s wrong I want to do something about it. You hear it all the time. 22:40 – “I thought a lot about how if I’d made one or two different decisions in life, how I very likely would’ve been on a different side of these protests. I think of how if I’d gone student government instead of student newspaper. Or if I’d stuck with political science major instead of barely getting my journalism degree. I wonder if those would’ve changed any of these moments. And I don’t know the answer to that. 23:10 – “I’ve always been an inside the room at the table type. But I do wonder, had I stayed out of journalism, had I not been a writer and reporter tethered to this idea of fairness and distance (not personally involved,) if the events of the past few years would’ve been enough, for someone like me, who valued respectability politics who valued working through systems, would it have been enough for someone like me to step in the streets. I don’t completely know the answer to that, but I see a lot of people for whom it was enough, and I think I might’ve been in the same boat. I see peers and colleagues of mine. And for them, the crisis in front of them was enough to demand a new tactic. 24:40 – “I like to think that if I’d been in another field at another time, that would’ve been enough for me too. 24:50 – That said. What I like about the field I’m in is that in that moment of crisis, pain and trauma, when new names start trending and there’s a new hashtag, I have something I can do every single time. When I see Michael Brown, Jordan Edwards…I don’t have to sit in this moment of pain and trauma. I don’t have to sit here and wonder what I can do. I pick up the phone I start calling people. I start writing things down. And I start collecting the information that hopefully will allow other people to process what has happened. And empower them, to if they so desire, act and do something themselves. 25:33 - So, I think the role of the journalist and reporter is important. Especially at times when the federal government may not be so inclined to address the systemic issues that still exist in our CJS, I think it’s more important than ever for journalists to write down true things so in the future we can write down what was happening in the summer of 2014 2015 2016 2017. And that’s what I think of when I wake up wondering, I have something I can do.

In this episode of ITPL, we focus on the experiences of African Americans who joined the Union Army during the Civil War and the profound impact they had on the war's final outcome -- and on American society in the decades that followed. There's a lot more to this story than what you may have seen in the award-winning film, "Glory" (1989). So here's the lineup:  1. First, I provide a brief backgrounder on the basic details regarding African Americans and their service in the Union Army and Navy.  2. Second, I sit down with historian Douglas Egerton to talk about his new book, Thunder at the Gates: The Black Civil War Regiments That Redeemed America (Basic Books, 2016).  3. Finally, I present a feature on the Ft. Pillow Massacre, perhaps the grimmest incident in the whole Civil War.  You can find show notes for this episode and more information about the podcast here.  In The Past Lane is a production of Snoring Beagle International, Ltd.

History is complex, and therefore generalizations are a historian’s inaccurate, crude, and necessary tools. So I’ll make one: The Post-Civil War era of Reconstruction is perhaps the least understood – or, when something is known about it – most misunderstood period in American history. In addition to knowing little more about Reconstruction than the bare facts presented as a footnote in history surveys, many of us have engravings about it. (Lendol Calder and I explore this in an earlier conversation.) To paraphrase Mark Twain on engravings: It's not the lack of knowledge about history that's the problem; it's what we know about it that "just ain't so." Reconstruction seems to have more engravings per square foot on the American mind that just about any other era. Our expert witness on Reconstruction is Dr. Douglas Egerton. A professor of American history at Lemoyne College in Syracuse, NY, he has since 1989 produced a literal bookshelf of works on enslavement and liberty. Along with his 2010 Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election That Brought on the Civil War and 2009 Death or Liberty: African Americans and Revolutionary America, his 2014 book The Wars of Reconstruction: The Brief, Violent History of America's Most Progressive Era forms, to my mind, a trilogy on the African-American struggle for liberty. This conversation came about as a result of a listener request from Dr. Jerry Herbert. If you would like to hear a conversation about a particular historical event, a historian, a book, a place--or anything else we talk about on this program, I’d welcome your suggestion; please join our Facebook group and post a request. Thanks for listening! For Further Investigation • There's no need to provide a long Reconstruction reading list here, since Civil War Memory's Kevin Levin provides such a great one. • Douglas Egerton's web page at LeMoyne College links to his many books • HarpWeek is an educational site using the archives of Harper's Weekly, an illustrated news magazine in publication from 1857-1916. During the Civil War and Reconstruction, it featured the art of such giants as Thomas Nast and Winslow Homer, as well as writing dedicated to the Republican and Union cause. The "sub sites" on the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments are really features on Reconstruction. (Alfred Waud's illustration "The First Vote"  provides us with the iconic image I include above.) • More Than Anything Else, by Maria Bradby. Children's literature is often a powerful tool for teaching history. Perhaps with more immediacy than any monograph ever could have, Bradby recounts the experience of a formerly enslaved child (in this case future teacher and college-builder Booker T. Washington), hitherto prevented from reading and learning, as he harnesses the power of words. A brilliant child's-eye view of the power of the Reconstruction era.

Douglas Egerton, auhtor of "Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election that Brought on the Civil War."

Douglas Egerton, auhtor of "Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election that Brought on the Civil War."

Douglas Egerton, auhtor of "Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election that Brought on the Civil War."

Douglas Egerton, author of Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election that Brought on the Civil War. CWTR Episode 907 (Season 9, Show 7) Show#244

Douglas Egerton, auhtor of "Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election that Brought on the Civil War."

On March 24, 2011, Douglas R. Egerton delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election that Brought on the Civil War." In "Year of Meteors," Douglas R. Egerton recreates the tumultuous presidential election year of 1860, which upset every conventional expectation and split the American political system beyond repair. At the beginning of the year, Senator Stephen A. Douglas, leader of the Democrats, the only party with a large following in both North and South, seemed poised to win. By fall the Democratic Party had disintegrated, enabling the upstart Republicans to put an untried but canny dark horse candidate in the White House. "Year of Meteors" tells the story of Abraham Lincoln's rise to power and the series of events that led to secession and ultimately civil war. Dr. Egerton teaches history at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, N.Y. (Introduction by Nelson D. Lankford)