CWRT Oct 2018 Meeting:Ted Karamanski: The Civil War as an Indian War

It is well known that Indians fought in the Civil War and that several Indian wars occurred at the same time as crisis of the union, but that is not the focus of this talk. “The Civil War as an Indian War” will be an illustrated lecture exploring how the experience of American Settler Colonialism shaped the American way of war in general and the Civil War in particular. Understanding the tactics of settler-Indian conflicts helps explain the origins of the “hard war” program instituted to defeat the Confederacy. Theodore Karamanski (Loyola University Chicago, Ph.D., 1979; B.A., 1975) is a Professor of History and Public History Director at Loyola University Chicago where he teaches courses in American Indian history, the Civil War, and public history. Karamanski has been a leading and national voice in the promotion of American and public history for more than three decades. He was the founder and later director of Loyola’s Public History Program (1981-1990, 2006-current), the first such program in the Midwest and later the first to offer the Ph.D. in public history. A founding director of the National Council on Public History (NCPH), Karamanski was later elected president of the body for the 1989-1990 term, and named Graduate Faculty Member of the Year at Loyola (1993-94) and Faculty Member of the Year at Loyola (2001-2002). Karamanski has been a prolific author in the fields of American Indian, Great Lakes, Civil War, and nineteenth-century American history. He has written and edited numerous books, including: Civil War Chicago: Eyewitness to History with Eileen M. McMahon (Ohio University Press, 2014), which was chosen as the best book on Illinois history for 2015 by the Illinois State Historical Society; Blackbird's Song: Andrew J. Blackbird and the Odawa People (2012); Fur Trade and Exploration: The Opening of the Far Northwest, 1821-1852 (1983); Rally ‘Round the Flag: Chicago and the Civil War (Nelson Hall, 1991), which was winner the Illinois State Historical Society's “Special Achievement Award" (1992). He has written more than 30 articles in a variety of journals.