CWI Events
Jointly sponsored by the Civil War Institute and the Department of History, the Robert Fortenbaugh Memorial Lecture is presented annually on November 19, the anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, and takes as its central goal speaking to the literate general public without abandoning solid scholarly moorings. In recognition of the America 250th anniversary and the week of special programming surrounding Dedication Day, the 2026 lecture will include collaboration with Sunderman Conservatory of Music to commemorate the legacy of the Gettysburg Address in a multi-sensory way. The 2026 Fortenbaugh Lecturer is Matthew Pinsker, who holds the Brian Pohanka Chair of Civil War History at Dickinson College. Prof. Pinsker's lecture is entitled "Twelve Score and Ten: Lincoln, Gettysburg, and America 250," and will be followed by a performance of Aaron Copland's "Lincoln Portrait" by the Sunderman Conservatory Wind Symphony, narrated by actor Bruce Boxleitner.
The program will begin at 7:00 pm at the Majestic Theater (25 Carlisle Street, Gettysburg); free tickets can be obtained from the Majestic box office at 717-337-8200 so long as the supply lasts. For those who cannot attend in person, the event will be livestreamed through the CWI YouTube channel.
The Fortenbaugh Lecture was sustained during its first two decades by an endowment contributed by Mr. and Mrs. Clyde B. Gerberich of Mt. Joy, Pennsylvania, in honor of Professor Fortenbaugh, who taught history at Gettysburg from 1923 until his death in 1959. The endowment has been substantially supplemented by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Harry D. Holloway Fund, and the Hewlett Foundation. In 1990 the alumni and friends of Gettysburg College made special contributions to commemorate the 79 years of combined service to Gettysburg College by Professors Basil L. Crapster and Charles H. Glatfelter, who retired in 1988 and 1989, respectively. The roll of donors includes Michael Bishop (Gettysburg ’57), winner of the 1989 Nobel Prize in Medicine.
The first Fortenbaugh Lecture was delivered in 1962 by Bruce Catton. He was followed by David Herbert Donald, John Hope Franklin, Willie Lee Rose, Richard N. Current, C. Vann Woodward, Kenneth M. Stampp, Drew Gilpin Faust, Elizabeth Fox Genovese, Eric Foner, Jean H. Baker, Mark E. Neely, Jr., and other luminaries of American historical writing. With the 21st lecture by Jacques Barzun, in 1982, in the 151st year of Gettysburg College, the private printing of the lecture commenced. In 1992 Oxford University Press published, and the Book of the Month Club made an alternate selection of, a collection of revised lectures from recent years: Gabor Boritt, ed., Lincoln, the War President: The Gettysburg Lectures.
The Fortenbaugh Fund continues to welcome contributions from the friends of the Lecture and the College. For more information, please contact the Civil War Institute office at 717-337-6590 or email civilwar@gettysburg.edu.
2026 Fortenbaugh Speaker
The 2026 Fortenbaugh Lecture will feature Dickinson College historian Matthew Pinsker. Pinsker holds the Brian Pohanka Chair of Civil War History at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and serves as Director of the House Divided Project, one of the nation's most popular educational initiatives on nineteenth century US history. He has held visiting fellowships at the New America Foundation, U.S. Army War College, and the National Constitution Center. Pinsker graduated from Harvard College and received a doctorate from the University of Oxford. He is the author of three books, including most recently, Boss Lincoln: The Partisan Life of Abraham Lincoln (W.W. Norton, 2026), which the Wall Street Journal has labeled a "landmark book" and "Team of Rivals on steroids." He also produces a popular Substack series called: What Would Lincoln Do?
Pinsker appears regularly on TV channels such as C-SPAN, PBS, and A&E History, and has been recognized by the Organization of American Historians (OAH) as a “Distinguished Lecturer.” His online series for the History Channel, called "Sound Smart," has become a mainstay in social studies classrooms. Pinsker serves on the advisory boards of several historic organizations, such as Ford’s Theatre Society, Gettysburg Foundation, National Civil War Museum, President Lincoln’s Cottage at the Soldiers’ Home, and the Thaddeus Stevens & Lydia Hamilton Smith Center for History & Democracy.
Fortenbaugh Speakers
Roundtable Discussion: "The Past, Present, and Future of the Civil War," 63rd Fortenbaugh Lecture, 2025
Janney, Caroline. "John S. Mosby: A Confederate Partisan at War," 62nd Fortenbaugh Lecture, 2024
Roundtable Discussion: "The State of Civil War Military History," 61st Fortenbaugh Lecture, 2023
Reardon, Carol. "Gettysburg in History and Memory," 60th Fortenbaugh Lecture, 2022
Masur, Louis. "Abraham Lincoln and the Problem of Reconstruction," 59th Fortenbaugh Lecture, 2021
Simpson, Brooks. “The Rollercoaster Reputation of President Ulysses S. Grant,” 58th Fortenbaugh Lecture, 2019
Rable, George. “Fighting for Reunion: Dilemmas of Hatred and Vengeance,” 57th Fortenbaugh Lecture, 2018
Glymph, Thavolia. “I'm a Radical Girl: Enslaved and Free Black Women Unionists and the Politics of Civil War History,“ 56th Fortenbaugh Lecture, 2017
Hodes, Martha. “Mourning Lincoln: The Assassination and the Aftermath of the Civil War,” 55th Fortenbaugh Lecture, 2016
Glaathaar, Joseph. “A Tale of Two Armies: The Confederate Army of Northern Virginia and the Union Army of the Potomac,“ 54th Fortenbaugh Lecture, 2015
Silber, Nina. “Abraham Lincoln and the Political Culture of New Deal America,” 53rd Fortenbaugh Lecture, 2014
Blight, David, “Ambivalent about Tragedy: Bruce Catton's Civil War and Ours” 52nd Fortenbaugh Lecture, 2013
Hahn, Stephen, “Slave Emancipation, Indian Peoples, and the Projects of a New American Nation-State” 51st Fortenbaugh Lecture, 2012
Waugh, Joan, “'The Rebels Are Our Countrymen Again': U.S. Grant and the Meaning of Appomattox.” 50th Fortenbaugh Lecture, 2011
Ayers, Edward, “Loyalty and America's Civil War.” 49th Fortenbaugh Lecture, 2010
Burlingame, Michael, “Abraham Lincoln: New Information, Fresh Perspectives,” 48th Fortenbaugh Lecture, 2009
Video of the 2009 Fortenbaugh Lecture.
Clinton, Catherine, “The Tears of a President: Lincoln, Empathy and Leadership,” 47th Fortenbaugh Lecture, 2008
Smith, Richard Norton, “Abraham Lincoln and the Triumph of Politics,” 46th Fortenbaugh Lecture, 2007
Horton, James and Lois, “Abraham Lincoln in African American History and Memory,” 45th Fortenbaugh Lecture, 2006
Gallagher, Gary W., “'The Progress of Our Arms': Whither Civil War Military History?”
44th Fortenbaugh Lecture, 2005
Holzer, Harold, “Standing Tall: The Heroic Image of Abraham Lincoln,”
43rd Fortenbaugh Lecture, 2004
Holt, Michael F. , “A Time of Uncertainty: The Civil War and America's Two-Party System,” 42nd Fortenbaugh Lecture, 2003
Neely, Mark E. Jr., “Retaliation: The Problem of Atrocity In the American Civil War,”
41st Fortenbaugh Lecture, 2002
Berlin, Ira, “American Slavery in History and Memory,”
40th Fortenbaugh Lecture, 2001
Marty, Martin E., “The War-Time Lincoln and the Ironic Tradition in America,”
39th Fortenbaugh Lecture, 2000
Baker, Jean, “The Lincoln Marriage: Beyond the Battle of Quotations,”
38th Fortenbaugh Lecture, 1999
Painter, Nell Irvin, 37th Fortenbaugh Lecture, 1998
Keegan, John, “The Military Geography of the American Civil War,”
36th Fortenbaugh Lecture, 1997
Frederickson, George, “Why the Confederacy Did Not Fight a Guerrilla War After the Fall of Richmond: A Comparative View,” 35th Fortenbaugh Lecture, 1996
Faust, Drew Gilpin, “A Riddle of Death: Mortality and Meaning in the American Civil War,” 34th Fortenbaugh Lecture, 1995
Fogel, Robert W., “The Quest for the Moral Problem of Slavery: An Historiographic Odyssey,” 33rd Fortenbaugh Lecture, 1994
Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth, “To Be Worthy of God's Favor: Southern Women's Defense and Critique of Slavery,” 32nd Fortenbaugh Lecture, 1993
Foner, Eric, “The Tocsin of Freedom: The Black Leadership of Radical Reconstruction,”
31st Fortenbaugh Lecture, 1992
Stampp, Kenneth M., “The United States and National Self-Determination: Two Traditions,” 30th Fortenbaugh Lecture, 1991
Degler, Carl N., “One Among Many: The Civil War in Comparative Perspective,”
29th Fortenbaugh Lecture, 1990
Bruce, Robert V., “The Shadow of a Coming War,”
28th Fortenbaugh Lecture, 1989
Schlesinger, Jr., Arthur, “War and the Constitution: Abraham Lincoln and
Franklin D. Roosevelt,” 27th Fortenbaugh Lecture, 1988
Cunliffe, Marcus, “The Doubled Images of Lincoln & Washington,”
26th Fortenbaugh Lecture, 1987
Handlin, Oscar, “The Road to Gettysburg,” 25th Fortenbaugh Lecture, 1986
Genovese, Eugene, “Slavery Ordained of God: The Southern Slaveholders' View of Biblical History and Modern Politics,”
24th Fortenbaugh Lecture, 1985
McPherson, James M., “Lincoln and the Strategy of Unconditional Surrender,” 23rd Fortenbaugh Lecture, 1984*
Davis, David Brion, “The Emancipation Moment,”
22nd Fortenbaugh Lecture, 1983
Barzun, Jacques, “Lincoln's Philosophic Vision,”
21st Fortenbaugh Lecture, 1982
Woodward, C. Vann, 1981
Bloom, Robert, 1980
Weigley, Russell, 1979
Klein, Philip Shriver, 1978
Trefousse, Hans L., 1977
Johannsen, Robert W., 1976
Mitgang, Herbert, 1975
Vandiver, Frank E., 1974
Fehrenbacher, Don E., 1973
Current, Richard Nelson, 1972
Rose, Willie Lee, 1971
Commager, Henry Steele, 1970
Graebner, Norman A., 1969
Williams, T. Harry, 1968
Wiley, Bell Irvin, 1967
Nichols, Roy Franklin, 1966
Franklin, John Hope, 1965
Rossiter, Clinton, 1964
Donald David, 1963
Catton, Bruce, 1962
John Brown’s War:
A Tour in the Footsteps of one of America’s Most Enigmatic Figures
April 18, 2026
7 am – 8 pm
Join Harpers Ferry National Historical Park’s Chief Historian Emeritus, Dennis Frye, for a special, full-day program traversing the key sites associated with John Brown’s famed 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry.
As America commemorates its 250th anniversary, explore the enduring ideals of freedom, equality, and democracy, and the ways in which John Brown understood his own role in manifesting those ideas.
$150.00/person. Price includes full-day program and NPS entry fee; bus transportation from either Gettysburg College or Shepherd University to Harpers Ferry, Charles Town, and John Brown’s Headquarters at the Kennedy Farm; and a group dinner at the Bavarian Inn, in Shepherdstown. Participants will purchase lunch on their own in Harpers Ferry.
The tour is sold out! If you are interested in joining the wait list, please email Ashley Luskey at aluskey@gettysburg.edu.
Sponsored by the George Tyler Moore Center for Study of the Civil War at Shepherd University and the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College. Proceeds help to support both the Civil War Institute and the Civil War Center.
