Egerton

Spring 2015 marks the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War, the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln and the start of Reconstruction. Prize-winning author Douglas Egerton, a professor at Le Moyne College, will share his expertise on this critical period in U.S. history as Cornell’s Merrill Family Visiting Professor of History this spring.

These epochal events continue to affect the United States to this day, says Barry Strauss, chair of the Department of History, and students can explore them in Egerton’s course, History 3430, The Civil War and Reconstruction. The course will examine this 40-year period from many perspectives, from diplomacy and law to race and gender, covering presidential elections, the impact of Reconstruction on the West and the North, and pivotal battles.

“Anyone who is interested in American history and who likes a good story should take this course,” says Strauss. “Egerton is a dynamic lecturer and a first-rate scholar. It’s a great opportunity.”

Later this spring Egerton will give a public lecture on the anniversary of Lincoln’s assassination.

Egerton’s most recent book, “The Wars of Reconstruction: The Brief Violent History of America’s Most Progressive Era” (2014) was named one of the best books of the year by The Atlantic. The New York Times called it “a dramatic portrait of on-the-ground struggles for equality in an era of great hope and brutal disappointment,” and The Wall Street Journal said, “The history of that era has rarely if ever been as well told.”

Other books by Egerton include “Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election That Brought on the Civil War” and “Death or Liberty: African Americans and Revolutionary America.”

The Merrill Family Visiting Professorship in History welcomes a prominent historian to Cornell for one semester each academic year. The late Philip Merrill ’55 was a publisher, diplomat, Cornell trustee and presidential councillor. He and his wife, Eleanor, firmly believed that all Cornell students should have a strong grounding in history, the American political tradition and the humanities. Eleanor Merrill and their children, Douglas Merrill ’89, MBA ’91, Catherine Merrill Williams ’91 and Nancy Merrill ’96, endowed the visiting professorship to inspire a campuswide dialogue about issues of historical importance.