Join us on Friday, May 19, 2023, as Commonwealth University professor Dr. Robert M. Sandow shares his research on political dissent and draft opposition in the Keystone State.

Political opponents of Lincoln, dubbed “Copperheads” by detractors, have often been viewed as villains in the narrative of the Northern war effort.  Lincoln referred to them as “the fire in the rear” and the Republican Party deployed a language of treason and disloyalty in election campaigns against them.  What was the reality behind the accusations?  How did partisanship fuel divisive attitudes toward the war and its policies about censoring speech and complying with the military draft, for instance?  What is the place of political opposition in wartime?  We’ll address these questions with examples from Pennsylvania.

Dr. Sandow is a scholar of the Civil War and professor of history at the recently consolidated Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania.  His research and writing is on the Northern Home Front, with a special interest in issues of political dissent, civil-military relations, and the social impacts of the war on communities.  He is the author of Deserter Country: Civil War Opposition in the Pennsylvania Appalachians (2009) and editor of Contested Loyalty: Debates over Patriotism in the Civil War North (2018).  He has also contributed essays for Reconstructing Appalachia: The Civil War’s Aftermath, edited by Andrew L. Slap (2014), and This Distracted and Anarchical People: New Answers for Old Questions about the Civil War–Era North, edited by Andrew L. Slap and Michael Thomas Smith (2013).  His chapter on “The Northern Home Front” was published in the two-volume Wiley-Blackwell series A Companion to the U.S. Civil War edited by Aaron Sheehan-Dean (2014).  He was also a major contributor to the Smithsonian Institution’s The Civil War: A Visual History (2015).

Dr. Sandow graduated from Gettysburg College (’92) before entering the Richards Civil War Era Center at Pennsylvania State University, where he studied with William A. Blair, Mark Neely, and Gary Gallagher.  Since earning a Ph.D. in 2003, he has taught at Lock Haven University, now part of Commonwealth University.

Those who are unable to attend this engagement in person are invited to tune in to the lecture and Q&A session via Zoom.  Click on the following link:  https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86908882880

The meeting ID # is:  869 0888 2880.  No password is required.

To dial in by phone call 1-301-715-8592 or click the following link for your call-in number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kcZMegwHg

Zoom participants should join the meeting by 7:30 pm.