Dr. Peter Carmichael, Professor

Teaching Fields:

Civil War History, Southern History and Public History

Contact:

Peter Carmichael
202C Woodburn Hall
P.O. Box 6303
Morgantown, WV 26506-6303
Phone: (304) 293-2421 ext. 5222
Fax: (304) 293-3616
Peter.Carmichael@mail.wvu.edu

• Degrees

  Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University, 1996
  M.A. Pennsylvania State University, 1992
  B.A. Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis 1988

• Research Interests

  My next book project, “Black Rebels” will explore the experience of slaves who served as Confederate soldiers. This unique master-slave relationship within Southern armies has never been examined by scholars, and to date the subject has only drawn the interest of those who write in the romantic tradition of the Lost Cause. My intention to focus on the master-slave relationship will allow me to examine the traditional subjects of living conditions and resistance. But I also intend to explore uncharted territory such as: how the shared experience of battle reconfigured the master-slave relationship, what were the symbolic uses of the “camp servant” in Confederate propaganda, how did lower class whites in the army view slaves, and were camp servants a source of division in white ranks? This project is in keeping with my interest in the construction and exertion of power in the Old South and the Confederacy. I am also finishing a volume entitled the War for the Common Soldier for the Littlefield Series, which will be published the University of North Carolina Press.

• Grad Students Advised

  MA
  Lizzie Dietzen [co-chair Bingmann]
  Joseph Obidzinski [co-chair Bingmann]
  Joseph Rizzo [co-chair Bingmann]
  Kati Singel [co-chair Bingmann]
  Jacob Struhelka
  Lauren Thompson
  Ashley Whitehead [co-chair Bingmann]

  Ph.D.
  William Feeney
  David Goldberg

• Courses Offered

  Hist 759 Readings in US History 1840-1898

• Publications

  AUTHORED BOOKS
  The Last Generation: Young Virginians in Peace, War, and Reunion (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2005)

  Lee’s Young Artillerist: William R. J. Pegram (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1995)

  EDITED BOOKS
  Audacity Personified: Essays on the Generalship of Robert E. Lee (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004). Edited the volume and contributed the introduction, and one essay.

  Slavery in North America: From the Colonial Period to Emancipation: The Civil War and Emancipation.. Volume 4 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2009) Edited the volume and contributed the introduction and entries for each document.

  ARTICLES IN REFEREED JOURNALS
  “So Far From God and So Close to Stonewall Jackson: The Executions of Three Shenandoah Valley Soldiers,” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 111 (2003)

  ”’Oh, for the Presence and Inspiration of Old Jack’: A Lost Cause Plea for Stonewall Jackson at Gettysburg,” Civil War History: A Journal of the Middle Period 41 (1995)

  CONTRIBUTIONS TO BOOKS
  “Turner Ashby’s Appeal,” in The Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1862 ed. Gary W. Gallagher (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003)

  ”’All Say They are under Petticoat Government’: Lizinka Brown and Richard Ewell,” in Intimate Strategies: Military Marriages of the Civil War, eds. Carol Blesser and Lesley Gordon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001)

  “New South Visionaries: Virginia’s Youth and the Message of Progress,” in The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History eds. Gary W. Gallagher and Alan T. Nolan (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000)

  “Stonewall’s Successor: Richard S. Ewell,” in The Human Tradition in the Civil War and Reconstruction, ed. Steven E. Woodworth (New York: Scholarly Resources, 2000)

  “The Great Paragon of Virtue and Sobriety: John Bankhead Magruder and the Seven Days,” in The Richmond Campaign of 1862, ed. Gary W. Gallagher (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2000)

  ”’Every Map of the Field Cries Out about It’: The Failure of Confederate Artillery at Pickett’s Charge,” in Three Days at Gettysburg: Essays on Confederate and Union Leadership, ed. Gary W. Gallagher (Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 1999)

  ”’We Don’t Know What to do With Him’: William Nelson Pendleton and the Affair at Shepherdstown,” in The Antietam Campaign ed. Gary W. Gallagher (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1999)

  ”’We Respect a Good Soldier, No Matter What Flag He Fought Under’: The 15th New Jersey Remembers Spotsylvania,” in The Spotsylvania Campaign ed. Gary W. Gallagher (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998)

  “Escaping the Shadow of Gettysburg: Richard S. Ewell and A. P. Hill at the Battle of the Wilderness,” in The Wilderness Campaign, ed. Gary W. Gallagher (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1997)