Sylvia and Irving Margolis Lecture
on the Jewish Experience in the American South
Joyce Antler, Samuel Lane Professor of American Jewish History and Culture at Brandeis University
“Passing the ‘Torch of Idealism’: Gertrude Weil as Southern Jewish Citizen-Activist”
Introduction by Eli N. Evans,’ 58
Tues., Mar. 21; 7:30 pm
Murphey Hall 116
UNC Campus

Free and open to the public.
Visitor Parking information here: http://www.unc.edu/visitors/parking.html

The relationship between slavery and the Civil War has been a hot-button topic over the years. Prof. Bruce Levine re-examines this subject through the lens provided by an extraordinary episode in that war -- the proposal to arm slaves to fight against Union troops and to reward those who did so with their freedom. Initially rejected by the Confederate government, that proposal won the support of both Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee by the end of 1864, and a version of that plan became law a few months later. What did this plan signify? What light does it shed on secession, the Civil War, and the nature of southern society in that era?

Bruce Levine is professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His latest book, Confederate Emancipation: Southern Plans to Arm and Free Slaves during the Civil War, was published by Oxford University Press in November 2005. An extract from it recently appeared in the Civil War magazine, North & South. His earlier books include Half Slave and Half Free: The Roots of Civil War (1992; revised edition, 2005) and The Spirit of 1848: German Immigrants, Labor Conflict, and the Origins of the Civil War (1992). In 2001, the Journal of American History carried an essay of his discussing the place of anti-foreign sentiment in antebellum American politics. Prof. Levine was also a principal author of the two-volume text, Who Built America? Working People and the Nation's Economy, Politics, Culture & Society (1st ed., 1990, 1992).