The April, 2009 meeting of the Clarksville Civil War Roundtable will be held Wednesday, April, 15th, 2009 at 7 PM in the cafe of Borders Books store in Governor's Square Mall. This is located on Wilma Rudolph Highway (US 79) just south of Exit 4 off I-24 in Clarksville, TN. The meeting is always open to interested members of the public and you do not need to be an expert to attend!. We meet the Third Wednesday of each month.
JOHN BROWN IN THE CIVIL WAR”
Most people know that on October 16, 1859, John Brown and twenty-two followers attacked the Federal armory at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. Many historians have insisted that this raid and his subsequent execution escalated sectional tensions that resulted in the Civil War. Southerners labeled John Brown as a religious fanatic, and they denounced him, his followers, and his supporters as terrorists and traitors. In the North, many abolitionists and transcendentalists began to challenge this interpretation and began transforming Brown into a religious martyr.
Our speaker, Kevin Tanner, will examine John Brown’s actions leading up to and including the raid on Harper’s Ferry. He will then focus on the two myths of John Brown: Brown the Religious Terrorist and Brown the Martyr. Within this, Tanner will reveal how the cultural battle over defining John Brown was as important as Brown’s actions in escalating sectionalism.
Kevin Tanner is an Associate Professor at Austin Peay State University for the AP Center at Fort Campbell. He recently completed his dissertation “A Foe to Sad Oppression’s Rod: The Story of Gerrit Smith,” an excerpt of which was presented to the Ohio Valley Historical Conference in Bowling Green, KY in October, 2007. He received his Ph.D. in History from SUNY Binghamton this past December. Tanner has previously served as adjunct at Murray State University and West Kentucky Community and Technical College in Paducah. He has also taught classes at Binghamton University. He has an M.A. in American History from Binghamton, and M.S. in Mass Communication from Murray State University and a B.A. in American History and Political Science from the University of Rochester in New York.
Please join us as Kevin Tanner presents an interesting program on John Brown.
Greg Biggs
Clarksville CWRT