Author: John Hildebrandt – The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable

A Report from the Field: The 18th Annual Sarasota Civil War Symposium

By John Hildebrandt
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2010, All Rights Reserved

There are relatively few Civil War sites in Florida, but for three days every winter, Sarasota is the center of the Civil War universe. This past January, my wife, Marie, and I attended the Civil War Education Society’s 18th Annual Civil War Symposium at the Helmsley Sandcastle Resort on Lido Beach in Sarasota, Florida. For most of us, the Civil War is best studied on the field of battle—be it Gettysburg, Antietam, Shiloh, Fort. Sumter, or Vicksburg—but in the midst of an Ohio winter the beach on Lido Key is a better than fair substitute. This was our fifth symposium, spaced over the past eight years, and it has become a January tradition.

Taking “The Gettysburg Test”

By John Hildebrandt
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2009, All Rights Reserved

If, as William Faulkner postulated, at least once in the life of every Southern boy, it is 3 p.m. on a warm July afternoon in the shallow valley that separates Seminary Ridge from Cemetery Ridge, it is also so for every student of the Civil War. However, in the student’s imagination he is a Licensed Battlefield Guide, leading a group of spellbound battlefield visitors on the short walk from Seminary Ridge to the fields that witnessed the glory, and the horror, of Pickett’s Charge.