Conference on the Civil War

2:30-3:45 pm

Panel 1: U.S. Law and the World (Butler Auditorium)

Presenters

• Robert Bonner, Dartmouth College
  • Confederate Pariahdom and International Law
• Noah Crawford, Texas A & M University
  • “The Sinking Hour”: Two Civil Wars and the Legality of Movement Along the Rio Grande
• Mark Elliott, University of North Carolina Greensboro
  • “The Great Right of Migration”: Human Rights, Nationalism and the Constitutional Debate over Chinese Immigration in the 1860s

4:00-5:30 pm

Special Roundtable on the Legal History of the Civil War Era (Butler Auditorium)

Presenters

• Cynthia Nicoletti (University of Virginia)
• Gautham Rao (American University)
• Anne Twitty (Stanford University)

5:45 pm

Opening Reception Begins (University Archives and Special Collections)

6:00 pm 

Wiley-Silver Award Presentation (University Archives and Special Collections)

• Cecily Zander (University of Wyoming) for The Army Under Fire: The Politics of Antimilitarism in the Civil War Era 

6:45-8:00 pm 

Opening Reception Continues

9:00-10:30 am

Panel 2: Laws of War (Butler Auditorium)

Presenters

• Jared Asser, University of Georgia
  • “The Assassin, The Brigand, the Spy, and the Rebel”: Fantasies of Masculinity in the Lieber Code
• Heather Carlquist Walser, Southern Methodist University
  • “A Lever of Power”: Amnesty and Emancipation in the Civil War and Reconstruction
• Lisa Tendrich Frank, Independent Scholar
  • “They are Now Treated as Public Enemies”: Codifying Domestic Warfare through the Lieber Code
• Beth Kruse, National Park Service Mellon Fellow 
  • “Kept at Hard Labor and Inhumanely Treated”: Confederate Policies for Captured U.S. Colored Troops

10:45-12:00 pm

Panel 3: New Interpretations of the Reconstruction Amendments (Butler Auditorium)

Presenters

• Giuliana Perrone, University of California, Santa Barbara
  • Thirteenth Amendment
• Amanda Kleintop, Elon University
  • Fourteenth Amendment
• Pippa Holloway, University of Richmond
  • Fifteenth Amendment

2:30-4:00 pm

Panel 4: Freedom Seekers and Emancipation (Butler Auditorium)

Presenters

• Kelly Houston Jones, Arkansas Tech University
  • “We the Undersigned”: White Petitions for Compensation in the Killings of Enslaved People
• Natalie Joy, Northern Illinois University
  • Notaries and the Creation of U.S. Citizenship in the 19th Century
• Laura Nelson, Princeton University
  • Inscribing Freedom: Documentation as Legal Strategy in Antebellum Philadelphia’s Antislavery Activism
• Evan Turiano, Trinity College
  • Freedom Seekers and Constitutional Crisis in the Secession Winter    

5:00-6:30 pm

Keynote Address (Student Union Auditorium, Room 124)

• Ariela Gross, University of California, Los Angeles
  • “Erasing Slavery, Rewriting Freedom: How Stories of Slavery and Emancipation Shape Battles Over the Constitution”
    
    

9:00-10:15 am

Panel 5: Civil Rights in the Civil War North (Butler Auditorium) 

Presenters

• Makato Hunter, University of California, Santa Barbara
  • The “Dynamite of Law” and the Other “Relic of Barbarism”: The Greater Reconstruction and Antipolygamy Prosecution in the Mormon West
• Nicholas Mosvick, National Review Institute
  • Habeas Corpus, Ableman v. Booth, and the Jurisdictional Conflict in the Civil War North
• Rebecca Plant, University of California, San Diego
  • Popular Views of Habeas Corpus in the Civil War Era
• Andrew Wiley, Cumberland University     
  • The Midwest’s Anti-Black Laws: Federalism, Abraham Lincoln, and the Justification for ending Slavery

10:30-12:00 pm

Panel 6: Enforcing Reconstruction Legislation (Butler Auditorium)

Presenters

• Evan Bernick, Northern Illinois University College of Law
  • Reactionary Constitutionalism and Birthright Citizenship
• Isabelle Grant, Columbia University
  • Reconsidering the Ku Klux Klan Act: A New Legislative History of Investigation and Enforcement
• Brook Thomas, University of California, Irvine
  • The Practicality of Socialist Utopist Robert Dale Owen's Proposed Fourteenth Amendment
• Aubrey Vial, Columbia University
  • The Power of Enforcement: Understanding the Thirteenth Amendment Through the Peonage Act