In 2011, Willard Sunderland, head of the UC History Department, and Herb Reisenfeld, owner of Provident Travel and a UC alumnus, developed an initiative that would enlist history faculty to lead groups of interested alumni on a series of tours to historical sites, providing insights from trained experts on the events and issues covered throughout the various trips. 

In 2012, coincident to the 150^th anniversary of the American Civil War, Christopher Phillips, a professor and published specialist, led more than 25 members on the inaugural, weeklong tour, The Civil War Revisited.  This exciting historical journey offered exposure to the most bitter struggle in American history, where disputes over Union, states’ rights, slavery, and the meaning of freedom pitted countrymen against each other and resulted in more than 620,000 American lives.

The group visited a number of prominent and lesser known Civil War and Lincoln sites from the eastern campaigns lying within two hours of Washington, D.C., including Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Gettysburg National Military Parks, Harper’s Ferry and Lincoln Cottage National Historical Parks, as well as Ford’s Theater, the Petersen House, and the home of Dr. Samuel Mudd, key sites associated with the Lincoln assassination.

The event proved so successful that on June 1-8, 2013, Phillips will lead The Civil War Revisited II, visiting numerous historical Civil War sites associated with the western campaigns and relating especially to noted Ohio-born Union commanders Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman.  Highlights will include visits to the Fort Donelson, Shiloh, Vicksburg, Stones River, and Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Parks in Tennessee and Mississippi, the Confederate White House and the original Confederate capital in Montgomery, Alabama, the Cyclorama depicting the Battle of Atlanta, a laser show at Stone Mountain featuring the carving of Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis, and the birthplace sites in Kentucky of both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis.  In Memphis, the tour will also enjoy a different era of history in an evening of food and entertainment in the famous Beale Street music district.

Please join the History Department at UC for “Becoming Lincoln: Steep Falls and Cunning Comebacks On An Epic Journey,” a lecture by William W. Freehling, Singletary Professor of the Humanities Emeritus at the University of Kentucky and Fellow at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, Emeritus.  Professor Freehling, who previously taught at the University of Michigan, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Buffalo, is one of the foremost historians of 19^th-Century America and the Civil War era.  His books include Prelude to the Civil War (winner of the Bancroft Prize and the Allan Nevins Prize), The Road to Disunion (a 2-volume work on the coming of the Civil War), and The South v. the South, standard reading on dissent within the slave states and Confederacy during the Civil War.  His lecture, drawn from his current book project, will focus on how Abraham Lincoln, famous for becoming arguably our most successful president, experienced our most extended series of failures on the way toward presidential triumph.  Professor Freehling explores the largely untold history of Lincoln’s journey from seeming inconsequence to unparalleled success.

Speaker: Professor William W. Freehling (History, University of Kentucky Emeritus)
Lecture: Becoming Lincoln: Steep Falls and Cunning Comebacks on an Epic Journey
Date/Time: Thursday, April 18^th, 12:30-1:45 PM  (Brownbag lunches welcome!)
Location: Electronic Auditorium in The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives at Hebrew Union College, Clifton Avenue.

This lecture has been made possible thanks to the generous support of Hebrew Union College, the McMicken College of Arts and Sciences and the Department of History of the University of Cincinnati.

Looking forward to seeing you!