Clarksville Civil War Roundtable to hold next meeting on July 17, 2024 – Clarksville Online

Clarksville, Tennessee: – The Clarksville Civil War Roundtable announces its program and speaker for July 2024. The meeting is always open to interested members of the public.

The next Clarksville (TN) Civil War Roundtable meeting will be held on Wednesday, July 17, 2024, at Fort Defiance Park, our new home, 120 Duncan Street, at New Providence Boulevard. At New Providence Boulevard, turn onto Walker Street and then onto Duncan Street. There are markers on New Providence Boulevard above and below the park.

The meeting begins at 7:00 p.m. and is always open to the public. The Clarksville Civil War Roundtable began in March 2004 and features well-known authors and historians as speakers. We continue into our 20th year!

Our speaker and topic – ” Elections in the Civil War: The Long Election Campaign of 1860 and the Crisis of Constitutional Democracy

The election of 1860 is considered the most important in American history. The result of Abraham Lincoln’s election led to the beginning of the secession of South Carolina in December 1860. Four candidates vied for the post: Lincoln from the new Republican Party, who was nominating only his second candidate ever; John Bell from Tennessee from the Constitutional Union Party; John Breckinridge from Kentucky from the Southern Democratic Party and Lincoln’s fellow countryman Stephen Douglas from the Democratic Party.

The problems were serious and had been building up for decades. The country was divided in many ways and the elections set in motion massive events that led to a bitter civil war just 80 years after the country’s founding.

Our speaker this month has been with us before. Dr. Aaron Astor’s talk will focus on the pivotal presidential election of 1860, in which Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln defeated three opponents. Although South Carolina seceded from the Union immediately after Lincoln’s victory, Astor will show how the long, turbulent election campaign mobilized much of the country for both secession and the Civil War.

Aaron Astor, Ph.D.is a professor of history at Maryville College in Maryville, Tennessee. He is the author of the books, Rebels on the Frontier: Civil War, Emancipation, and Reconstruction in Kentucky and Missouri, 1860–1872 (2012) and The Civil War along the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee (2015) and co-editor of the book, Slavery: Interpreting American History (2021). He has also written eleven articles for the award-winning New York Times separation The series covers topics such as guerrilla warfare, battles and campaigns in the Western theater of war, popular politics, emancipation and race, and regional identity in the southern Appalachians.

He is currently working on a book project that examines the 1860 presidential election as a grassroots phenomenon from the perspective of four different American communities. Astor received his Ph.D. in history from Northwestern University in 2006 and his BA from Hamilton College in 1995.

Dr. Astor will offer copies of his previous books for sale at the conference.