Please note: During construction of this web site, the following letter from the director contains preliminary information regarding the project.

November 2009

Dear Colleague,

Join us June 14-18, 2010 or June 21-25, 2010 for a one week Teacher’s Workshop:

“Wilson’s Creek: How a Forgotten Battle Saved Missouri and Changed the Course of the Civil War”
Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities
Landmarks of American History and Culture: Workshops for Schoolteachers

Drury University and Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield invite you to join us for an extraordinary chance to relive one of the most overlooked—and yet important—battles in the Civil War.

We will hold these special workshops for schoolteachers on the site where Union and Confederate soldiers confronted one another in the early days of the war. There you will study with six of the foremost Civil War scholars in the nation. You will take part in daily seminars and in guided tours and will engage in stimulating interactions with colleagues from all over the country. On the cornfield where the battle commenced or upon the “Bloody Hill” where it ended, you will learn about the battle’s importance from a wide range of academic perspectives. And you will come away from the experience intellectually refreshed and ready to share your knowledge with your students.

“Wilson’s Creek: How a Forgotten Battle Saved Missouri and Changed the Course of the Civil War” is designed for full-time and part-time classroom teachers who teach the Civil War in American history, literature, art history, or religion classes in middle school and high school. The workshop is open to teachers and librarians in private, public, parochial, and charter schools, as well as to home-schooling parents. K-12 school personnel, including administrators, substitute teachers, and classroom professionals, are also eligible to participate, subject to available space.

Historical Theme
Throughout the summer of 1861, Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis were preoccupied by the fate of a single state. Sharing borders with Union and Confederate territory, Missouri possessed waterways vital to the transportation and communication of both armies. Losing it, Lincoln declared in the early days of his administration, would simply be “too much for us.”

Yet losing Missouri was a very real possibility for the Union. The issue of slavery had deeply divided the state since the Missouri Compromise of 1820. That debate extended into the era of “Bleeding Kansas,” a fierce struggle that began in 1854 to determine whether the state’s western neighbor would be a free or slave state. In March, 1861, shortly after Lincoln took office, state delegates rejected secession. But when the war started a month later, Governor Claiborne Fox Jackson, a Southern sympathizer, began secretly planning to ally Missouri with the Confederacy. Tacitly allowing pro-secessionist militia to camp outside St. Louis, he hoped they would seize the Federal armory and secure the state for the South.

Into this tinderbox stepped Nathaniel Lyon, Union Army Captain and stern abolitionist, assigned that spring to the armory in St. Louis. Lyon was fanatical in his hatred of the “traitors” to the Union. He promptly secured the surrender of the pro-Confederate militia units just outside the city, but created a riot in the streets of St. Louis when he marched his captives through the city. Twenty-eight citizens were killed or mortally wounded in this riot, and the battle for Missouri had begun in earnest.

On a broiling hot August 10, 1861, ten miles southwest of Springfield, Missouri, the Civil War’s second major battle erupted. The Union Army, led by General Nathaniel Lyon, attacked Southern forces amassed in the hopes of securing Missouri for the Confederacy. Technically, the battle at Wilson’s Creek was a victory for the South. On Bloody Hill, where the heaviest fighting took place, there were over 1,700 casualties—some twenty percent of the men who fought there. But the Confederates soon withdrew from Missouri, and Wilson’s Creek became known as “the battle that saved Missouri for the Union.” As we shall discover in our workshops, the battle ultimately shaped the course of war’s first half in military and cultural terms, and ultimately it contributed to Union victory.

The Week’s Activities, Scholars, and Site Visits
History at Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield is not something you simply study. It’s something you walk through, breathe in, touch. During our five days together we will explore the cornfields, farmhouses, and knolls where Union and Confederate soldiers fought and died during the first summer of the Civil War. We will also examine a veritable treasure trove of new course content, including original letters, journals, and drawings by soldiers who fought in the battle. We will discuss poetic accounts of Wilson’s Creek by authors such as Herman Melville as well as dozens of engravings and lithographs by Currier & Ives and others. Many of these items are conveniently located at the Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield, widely regarded as the most pristine battlefield in the National Park Service system.

Led by a group of renowned scholars, we will examine this overlooked conflict through the multiple lenses of history, art history, African-American history, literature, religious studies, and the interdisciplinary theme of memory and commemoration. We will learn how the war put tremendous strain on two armies, two economies, two political entities, and how it challenged the divided nation’s understanding of religion, of art and literature—of the very meaning of life and death and memory.
Through class meetings, frequent field trips, and individual projects, participants in “Wilson’s Creek: Understanding the Civil War’s Second Major Battle” will acquire the tools necessary to interpret this significant historical event. The institute will be directed by Dr. Randall Fuller, Associate Professor of English at Drury University, who has written extensively about nineteenth-century American literature and culture. Fuller is the author of Emerson’s Ghosts: Literature, Politics, and the Making of Americanists (Oxford University Press, 2007), co-editor of The Business of Reflection: Hawthorne in His Notebooks (Ohio State University Press, 2009) and Written in Blood: American Literature and the Civil War (Oxford University Press, 2010).
The interdisciplinary faculty includes William G. Piston (Missouri State University), the preeminent expert on the battle of Wilson’s Creek; John Stauffer (Harvard University) ,one of the world’s leading scholars of slavery and the antislavery movement, and the author of seven books and more than 45 articles, including The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race (2002), which won four major awards; Angela L. Miller (Washington University in St. Louis), an art historian whose book, The Empire of the Eye: Landscape Representation and American Cultural Politics, 1825-1875, was the winner of the John Hope Franklin Prize for the American Studies Association and the Smithsonian Institute’s Charles Eldredge Prize; Harry S. Stout (Yale), Co-Director of the Center for Religion and American Society and the author of Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War, a study of the way in which religious beliefs and rhetoric helped to shape the Civil War; Mark S. Schantz (Birmingham-Southern College), author of Awaiting the Heavenly Country: The Civil War and America’s Culture of Death, recently reviewed in The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books; Shawn Leigh Alexander (University of Kansas), who has recently published an anthology of T. Thomas Fortune’s writings, T. Thomas Fortune, the Afro-American Agitator and is completing a monograph on civil rights activity in the post-Reconstruction era; and Jayne White (Drury University), a professional educator for 35 years who will serve as our curriculum development specialist.
Participants will be given the opportunity to work side by side with faculty during breakout sessions each morning. Working in small groups or independently, they will be expected to develop a classroom-ready document based on content covered in the workshop, with a plan in place before leaving Springfield.

Schedule
Each five-day seminar begins on Monday morning and ends on Friday afternoon. On your application, please indicate your order of preference regarding the week that you would like to attend.

Workshop 1: June 14-18, 2010
Workshop 2: June 21-25, 2010.

Location
Drury University and Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield, Springfield, Missouri.

The Week at a Glance
Sunday evening: Welcome Banquet
Drury University’s President and Vice President for Academic Affairs and Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield’s Superintendent will host a pre-workshop dinner for participants.

Day 1—Monday: Why Wilson’s Creek?
The first morning will begin with an introduction to the workshop and overview of the week. Led by Professor William G. Piston, participants will explore the events and issues that led to the confrontation at Wilson’s Creek, especially the socially- and politically-charged issue of slavery, which made Missouri a hotbed of pro- and antislavery violence. Professor Mark S. Schantz will connect these issues to a broader survey of antebellum America’s attitudes toward death and dying, discussing why so many young men were willing to sacrifice their lives for the competing causes of Union, abolition, and state rights. Following lunch and a discussion of the day’s readings, an introductory tour of Wilson’s Creek will occur in the afternoon, with a library orientation and tour of the museum. The tour will be followed by breakout sessions to begin the process of designing a lesson plan.

Day 2—Tuesday: Who Fought and Why
The day begins with a brief survey of the Drury University Rare Book Room’s collection of Civil War memoirs, including works with marginalia made by soldiers. Professor Piston will then discuss the ethnic, class, and political composition of the two armies that clashed at Wilson’s Creek. Participants will learn about the various community militias that fought in August 1861, as well as the role of honor and community pride in motivating those militias. Professor Harry S. Stout will explore in greater detail the religious beliefs of those who fought, explaining how such beliefs enabled both sides to participate in what they viewed as a “holy war” fought beneath the banner of God. A tour of war-related sites in Springfield and discussions of curricular design, led by the project director and curriculum specialist, will follow.

Day 3—Wednesday: The Battle
Wednesday will be devoted to an intensive exploration of the Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield historical site. Participants will be given a tour of the 1,700-acre site, led by Professor Piston and by National Park Historian Connie Langum, who will describe in detail key combat sites as well as a chronology of events. Participants will have an opportunity to explore the extensive area on their own before reconvening after lunch to explore Wilson’s Creek library resources in greater depth. Discussions about assigned readings and about employing primary sources (textual as well as site-based) will comprise the teaching workshops at the end of the day.

Day 4—Thursday: Wilson’s Creek in Art and Literature
Wilson’s Creek captured the imagination of numerous artists and poets. Images of the battle—and especially of Nathaniel Lyon’s fateful advance on Bloody Hill—appeared in dozens of popular lithographs. Herman Melville was only the most famous of many authors who attempted to capture the battle in verse. Professor Angela Miller will discuss the iconography surrounding Wilson’s Creek as a way of exploring the profound changes wrought to visual art by the war. Project Director Randall Fuller will lecture on the ways in which the war contributed to a radical reevaluation of literary style, focusing his talk on the literature about Wilson’s Creek. Participants will visit the museum at Wilson’s Creek and become familiar with a wide range of cultural artifacts (journals, letters, drawings) pertaining to the battle. Pedagogical sessions in the late afternoon will focus on ways to incorporate visual and literary art into history classes.

Day 5—Friday: Wilson’s Creek in Cultural Memory
Only in the past decade or so have historians become concerned with the ways in which the Civil War was commemorated and reshaped in cultural memory. Professor William Piston will begin the final morning of the workshop with a lecture on the immediate repercussions of Wilson’s Creek, including the series of ceremonies in the North that attended the transportation of Nathaniel Lyon’s body back to his home state of Connecticut as well as the more tangible experiences of destruction and trauma experienced by the residents of Springfield and the surrounding area. Professors John Stauffer and Shawn Leigh Alexander will then address the issues of race and the memory of the Civil War during the Reconstruction era. The afternoon will include a trip to the National Cemetery, where the remains of Union and Confederate soldiers killed at Wilson’s Creek are buried. Project Director Fuller and Curriculum Specialist Jayne L. White will conclude the workshop with a session entitled “Putting it All Together: How do We Teach What We Have Learned?” A banquet hosted by Drury University will round out the week.

Housing and Travel
Drury University is located on 60 acres in the middle of Springfield, Missouri, a city of 175,000 in the southwest portion of the state. Wilson’s Creek, our landmark site, is located about 10 miles southwest of campus.
Transportation from Springfield-Branson Airport in to campus is available at approximately $20. On the last day of the workshop, we will provide limited van shuttle service from campus to the airport at no cost to participants. Advance notice from participants is required.
Living units in College Park include some of the most advanced student living environments on any American university campus. The cost is $50 per night. Each unit is part of fully-furnished 4-bedroom apartments, 3-bedroom townhouses, 1-person studios or large 4-bedroom houses. All units have private bedrooms and two bathrooms (single units have one bath), a living area and kitchen. Kitchens feature a refrigerator, microwave, oven, stove and garbage disposal. Living areas have a couch, chair, TV stand, coffee table, two end tables, a lamp and two barstools (if the apartment has a breakfast bar). Units without a breakfast bar feature a dining table and two chairs. Bedrooms are furnished with a twin bed, nightstand, desk, chair and chest of drawers. Bedroom size and shape varies by layout. Rooms are fully furnished and equipped with telephone and data jacks providing free hook-up to the campus network, including the internet. The units are close to classrooms and the cafeteria, and several are ADA accessible. For a virtual tour, visit http://www.drury.edu/vtour/campus/college_park/index.cfm.

Approximate costs of a nearby hotel, the University Plaza, is $85 per day plus tax.

Stipend, Tenure, and Conditions of Award
Teachers selected to participate will receive a stipend of $1200 at the end of the residential workshop. Stipends are intended to help cover ordinary living expenses, books, and travel expenses to and from the workshop location. Stipends are taxable. 

Professional Development (Continuing Education & Graduate Credit)
All teachers who complete the institute will receive a letter confirming attendance and describing workshop activities, as well as a certificate of completion. Certificates will include participants’ name and institutional affiliation, as well as a description of coursework performed, field trips taken, and lectures attended. These materials may be used to request Continuing Education Credits (CEUs) or Professional Development Points (PDPs) from home school districts. Workshop participants seeking graduate credit may enroll for three hours of credit from Drury University. (They will be required to follow Drury’s admission procedures for non-degree students and to pay their own tuition and fees.) Teachers who enroll for three hours will be required to complete a sequence of course plans that build upon the work accomplished during the summer seminar.

The Application Procedure and Deadline
The deadline for the application March 1, 2010.

CHECKLIST OF APPLICATION MATERIALS
A completed application consists of an online NEH cover sheet application (https://securegrants.neh.gov/education/participants/) and three copies of the following collated items:

US Postal Mail your application packet materials to:

NEH Workshop
c/o Kathy Jester
Drury University
900 N. Benton Avenue
Springfield, MO 65802

Contact Information: rfuller@drury.edu or kjester@drury.edu
Phone: 417-873-7223
Website: wilsonscreek.drury.edu

Selection of Participants
A selection committee consisting of the project director, the curriculum specilist, and Dr. William G. Piston The most important consideration in the selection of participants will be the likelihood that an applicant will benefit professionally and personally from the Workshop experience.

Successful candidates will be notified on or about April 1, 2010. If accepted, applicants must confirm their participation by April 10.

We look forward to welcoming you to Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield and Drury University. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely,


Randall Fuller
Project Director for the Landmarks Workshop and
Associate Professor of American Literature: 417-873-7220 Email: rfuller@drury.edu