U.S. Naval Academy History Professor Wayne Hsieh examines the Generalship of Robert E. Lee.  This class is part of a course called, "The American Way of War."

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Robert E. Lee was a conflicted man when he stood before the Virginia House of Delegates in 1861 to accept command of the state’s military forces. Exactly 150 years later, historian Gary Gallagher spoke on the same spot about Lee’s resignation from the U.S. Army and his competing loyalties--between his country and that of Virginia.

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Author and University of Pennsylvania history professor Stephanie McCurry speaks about her book, “Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South.” She says the South sowed the seeds of its demise in creating a regime that excluded white women and slaves, who together comprised a majority of the population. 

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This week on The Civil War, historians and professors discuss Confederate officer Edward Porter Alexander’s memoir, “Fighting for the Confederacy,” which he wrote in the 1890s about his wartime experiences and observations.

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The battle of Bull Run took place on July 21, 1861 and was one of the main topics of this year’s annual summer conference hosted by the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College.

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Historian Peter Carmichael is a specialist on the Civil War and Southern history. He is currently the Director of the Civil War Institute and teaches history at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. In this week’s class, Professor Carmichael looks at the complexity of the Confederate soldier.

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“Operation Gold” was a 1950s project conducted by the CIA and the British Intelligence Service to tap into Soviet communications by tunneling from West Berlin into East Berlin, Germany. Known as “Operation Stopwatch” by the British, the 1,500 foot tunnel was active for eleven months, and netted about 40,000 hours of East German telephone conversations - even though the KGB knew about the tunnel before it was built. Retired CIA officer Lou Mehrer tells the story of the Berlin Tunnel at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library & Museum in West Branch, Iowa.

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Harvard Law School history professor Annette Gordon-Reed is the author of two books exploring the story of Sally Hemings and her family’s ties to Thomas Jefferson. Her 2009 book, “The Hemingses of Monticello,” won a Pulitzer Prize. At the National Council for History Education National Conference in Richmond, Virginia, professor Gordon-Reed discusses teaching about slavery, as well as the research that led to her books.

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These are unedited excerpts from a 1992 conversation with former President Gerald Ford. He remembers Dwight D. Eisenhower from the perspective of the Michigan congressman that he was in the 1950s. Topics include the 1952 election and the GOP’s domestic agenda, McCarthyism, civil rights, and Ike’s legacy for the Republican party. He also discusses the day he took his young sons to visit Eisenhower at his Gettysburg farm, and the impromptu lesson the former World War II general gave the Ford boys on one of this nation’s most storied battles.   

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