"Let's Talk About It: Making Sense of the American Civil War" is a free reading discussion series that will be held at 7 p.m. Wednesdays in six sessions between Feb. 18 and April 25 at Pleasant Valley Library, 5568 Adams Ave., Washington Terrace.
* Wednesday: Opening discussion about the Civil War, the readings and the program schedule.
* Feb. 8: "Imagining War" -- reading "March" by Geraldine Brooks.
* Feb. 29: "Choosing Sides" -- readings from "America's War: Talking About the Civil War and Emancipation on Their 150th Anniversaries," edited by Edward Ayers; "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" by Frederick Douglass; "A Plea for Captain John Brown" by Henry David Thoreau; Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address; "Cornerstone" speech by Alexander H. Stephens; speech for secession of Virginia by Robert Montague; speech for Virginia remaining in the Union by Chapman Stuart; excerpt from "Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee" by Elizabeth Brown Pryor; "The Private History of a Campaign That Failed" by Mark Twain; and "The Civil War Diary of a Southern Woman" by Sarah Morgan.
* March 21: "Making Sense of War" -- readings from "America's War": "What I Saw of Shiloh" by Ambrose Bierce; excerpt from "Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant" by Ulysses S. Grant; excerpt from "Shiloh" by Shelby Foote; "Shiloh" by Bobbie Ann Mason; and a speech to the Army of the Mississippi by Gen. Braxton Bragg.
* April 11: "The Sense of the War" -- reading "Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam" by James M. McPherson
* April 25: "War and Freedom" -- readings from "America's War": address on colonization by Abraham Lincoln; "Memorys of the Past" by John M. Washington; "Men of Color, To Arms!" by Frederick Douglass, letters to James C. Conkling and Albert G. Hodges by Abraham Lincoln; report on U.S. Colored Cavalry in Virginia by James S. Brisbin; excerpt from "Jubilee" by Margaret Walker; excerpt from "Been in the Storm So Long" by Leon Litwack; Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural Address, both by Abraham Lincoln.
Copies of the three books for this series can be checked out from the library on the first evening, and if needed, on following evenings of the program.
Call 801-337-2690 for more information.
The series is sponsored by The National Endowment for the Humanities, the Utah Humanities Council, the Fort Douglas Museum, the Weber State University history department and the Weber County Library.
Comments