Please join us for a Chambersburg Civil War Seminars & Tours Lecture Series! Our next lecture will be: HISTORYtalks: When Slavery Came to Pennsylvania: The Role of Enslaved Labor During the Gettysburg Campaign by Kevin Levin. Cost is $5 per person. Zoom Login details will be sent with your email registration confirmation.

Talk Synopsis

When Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia crossed into Pennsylvania in the summer of 1863 it contained roughly 10,000 enslaved men. Throughout the war Confederate armies relied on the forced labor of Black men, yet they are rarely discussed when analyzing military campaigns. This talk will explore who these men were, the many roles they played in camp, on the march, and even on the battlefield during the Gettysburg Campaign. Finally, this presentation will address how accounts of enslaved men in Confederate armies have been transformed into mythical stories of Black Confederate soldiers.

Biography

Kevin M. Levin is a historian and educator based in Boston. He is the author of numerous books and articles on the Civil War era and historical memory, including most recently, Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth, published by the University of North Carolina Press. He is currently working on a biography of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, which is under advance contract with UNC Press. You can find him online at his website, Civil War Memory [cwmemory.com].