i want to welcome you in our session and military history, i'm been here a long time at the university and we have for very young historians so i feel a generation or two and beyond. i'll introduce them in a moment. but before i do, i want to tell you are actually here. our historians our specialists and the american revolutionary and particular interest and military aspects. as you learn from listening to them, their approaches for independence are very considerably and speaking

up by the way because there is no microphone in here and allows you to do the same we get to the queue or nay. we are going to hear remarks on gender and personal narrative in the meetings of con reds and the influence of military service and state formation and we have called the session the military history of the american revolution but whatever we call it, our panel is they're going to illustrate the central point of all military history. that is the field encompasses of all perspectives and it could bring to bear. military organizations by very nature interact with and reflect and influence the societies in areas in which they come. the military affairs from the american revolution were no different. what we will

see today or here today is how much new scholarship and so many new directions will feature about the bore as great historians for two and a half centuries. this is a new military history which i will return later which supplies the struggle for independence. so, now we meet our panel it's. we will take them in order that will hear from them. they will take five to ten minutes perhaps to make remarks on their work and then will open the floor for a discussion which will try to keep rolling. first is doctor, lindsay chervinsky for all i want to thank her for organizing and putting together this round table, jeez from you see davis and is white house the story at the white house historical association. her current interest focuses on military service during the revolution

and a precursor to senior leadership in the new republic. her new book, the cabinet, george washington and the creation of the restitution is due out next year from the harvard university press. doctor lauren duval got a ph.d. from american university and is assistant professor of history at the university of oklahoma. her interest in gender roles during a war from in the run independence is by the household experience under british occupation and charleston south carolina. the book will be one of the first truly detailed looks at the institutions while under military occupation. rachel engl, it is a doctoral candidate at the university of the academy in bethlehem

pennsylvania. it's still a ratified field and this is central to her dissertation of the first band of brothers and friendship and camaraderie during the revolutionary era. our fourth speaker will be dana stefanelli who, hold disputes deep from the university of virginia and has held a number of teaching and fellowships in the course of his career and his writing encompassed the urban and political and economic aspects of the revolution and is now an assistant editor of the papers of george washington. it's a little different from the editorial team and they're posted at uva and he has at the fred w. smith national library at mount to burn in. now, at

this point, look for those of you that i've had the program or to view the program, there's going to be a fifth panelist who know a dust could have gotten caught at the storms so i sitting in a lounge there right now and there's not much you can do about it. he's a particularly fine scholar and i say that many this point and on each as you are panelist to her mark but then how it relates to our new direction in the military and following the comments, i will published a number of questions and i'm supposing others will pop up as we go along as we. go along,

you should feel free to raise your hand and all recognize you then you can comment ask, questions and challenge what you hear. but as you do so and recognize please wait for the microphone because the crew will bring it over. because we will be on seaspan. all right we will start from my left of the table and that means we start with lindsay chervinsky the, floor is yours and i will sit down for a moment. >> thank you so much to everyone for being here and i know there are some stiff competition in this particular panel and i speak for everyone when i say that we are grateful that you hear and we hope that you will participate in a robust conversation and i think that's what makes round tables fun and i hope that you agree.

after the end of the revolutionary war i like to jump right to the end of it. a generation of soldiers and officers went home and very few of them stay there for a long. they held positions in state governments and they held positions in the confederation of congress and they worked towards reform efforts both at the local level and on the national level. many of these initial efforts failed as historians of the confederation well no and they advocated for comprehensive reforms when they were trying within the congress which was sufficient. looking at the numbers that were illustrated about the level our participation of the army in these efforts. so for example, convention which produces finest effort in sending out new invitation for other defection, seven of the 12 delegates had served in the military. after the congress,

the crew any constitutional convention in philadelphia saw a similar number of delegates so of the 55 that gathered 29 of them at served in the military. a large majority advocated for ratification afterwards in their communities and in the press as well. once the government took over and went into operation, we had a similar level of service that i think is really helpful in these abstractly ms.. in the first federal congress, 29 individual served in the senate over a period of time as people came out of office and 15 of those 29 had from the military of representatives, 65 people served and had military service. and he for his cabinet which tend to be my focus the

secretary of treasury and the general idle at positions in washington official family within the army. three of the four of the secretaries are with the army of washington. i argue, that these were informed and motivated by a league forms of nationalism that was forged during the battle of the revolution. they had a strong national government in a civil executive and the same rv which differs from the other federalist and supported that same sort of concentrated power but was trusted in an army of its long tradition in the british tradition. many scholars have examine the role of military service and submerged in 17 eighties. a few people consider how that military service effect to people when they are in an office. we had military

experience and government experience as another and we produce asylum within the history auger fee which has a new republic. i will argue, in order to fully understand how people had decisions and motivations and ideologies, shakespeare behavior once in office at the look at where their formative experience actually took place. most of the time that was in the army. so in my work, i brought examples to the cabinet and i looked at how the councils had importance to washington and the secretary which created this new institution. i'm looking forward to in my future work as i expand in the new projects. exploring how the councils of war and other interactions between soldiers and affected the behavior and the state governments in

congress and in bodies bonnie cabinet. i would encourage others to do so as well and try to take that military perspective and look at how despite our governments exposing it completely civilian one and have the civilian authority really oversee the military. i would argue that the military culture was really warranted in the early years. so i very much looking forward to the conversation and i will answer your questions once were all done. >> doctor lauren duval. i'm >> sure most of you are well aware that there is the scholarship that had a more extensive way of what was there. my work deals with the american individual. because it occurs away from the field the battle, with two very recent exceptions they are often

overlooked and the american revolution and during a war, the army captured are occupied six american cities including five of the most popular ports in america and i want to pause for a moment and consider what that meant for civilians. they have been disrupted the environment and their sheer number of soldiers and livestock which attacks the resources of these cities in these regions. civilians required to lead the city which has military curfews and troops are drilling in their faces and or hammered throughout the city and complicated churches and their doors. drunken soldiers were part of this and they also showed city streets upon new an immediate dangers. and interior domestic species would be

rocking victims of robbery and if only confronted officers and reporters from these provisions. it was a subset double to being torn down but occupations really of war was the home of american civilians and was a fundamental challenge of the basic premise of the revolution in america that they went over the households. so my forthcoming book examines these dynamics in the military application and the lines of the urban household. it's in the sight of conflict between these civilians and the civilians themselves with race, gender and freedom. the occupation is really crucial for understanding the experience during the revolution and to the states of the war in conflict. it's how the household will be the center of emotional ties that were strained and exacerbated

by the experience. the disorder which they got an american households and hierarchies within would have an understanding of why there was at stake in this conflict. there is a vibrant scholarship on war in particular from other wars and the civil war and world war ii. they were pretty under explored from the american revolution and kept returning this occupation to the military history and really adds nuance to the understanding of civilians. and importantly, we had the gender nation of warfare and by this i mean not only is women's experiences part of this victory but relations of power to men and women including soldiers and civilians and people both free and enslaved. in short, i argue what happens to societies and to families

and two men and women. and exploring the revolution through the household, eliminates these gender dynamics and in philadelphia where they're worried about his wife elizabeth in their house and even know elizabeth had the situation well in hand. it reveals that they insisted was moving a single piece of paper in his office and had the space and his absence and had the experiences of the people in charleston and organize and hosted the british officers. and jane boone took advantage with the relationships from soldiers in a life and there's often a dark side and shoulders

in the city streets were facing the set of the balance of the household and other implements. civilians encountered british forces in their homes and experienced the balance of war in the domestic concerns. war permeated society and lead the way with men and women in the household pay and all they thought about domestic space. in the military history of the revolution it shifted on this conflict which affected our between civilians and military. it forces us look at war be on the battlefield and other spaces were war takes place and in other ways that manifests itself in life. it pushes us to broaden our narrative which is on civilians and where they experience they wore. these gender dynamics intersect the

power of race, status and hierarchy and they are essential ways that we should think about the american revolution. >> rachel engl. >> thanks. thanks lindsay for organizing this and thank you for coming. and february, 1818, john adams sent a letter to the publisher and editor of the baltimore publication called weekly register. in the letter, they to directed to provide an answer to the question of the scholar to continue to debate today and most debate in a few minutes. what do you mean by the american revolution? adams response was simple yet compelling. he said that the revolution was affected before the war commenced. moreover, he can argue that the revolution was in the hearts and in the minds and hearts of the people but she believes was illustrated through the change

of religious sentiments among obligation. above all, items offered that the radical chains and the principles of the people was the real revolution. adams vampire the statements of the shifts including the people on the ground during the revolution a stage in sentiment and scholarship extreme emotions or any revolutionary area has sustained attention by most scholars with the strengthening of they built in history of emotions. and compelling work by historians including serena say been and sarah not it's persuaded individuals to wait throughout the war and in seeking to recover how they went through it practitioners can fine material to work with especially with the period of

the revolutionary war. significantly by incorporating historians which can develop the interpretations of the recording questions that effect the studies of this period and as well to reveal the individual perspectives by the records which will answer those same questions. in other words, focusing on commotion's in friendship as they study which can enrich our understanding of the legacy of the revolution and determine how individuals responded to the social and political transformations of this period. to understand not how it affects the lives of many ordinary men and women. the methodology and emotions and ridges our view of the experience and for members of the military. during the revolutionary war, was brought together and everyone had farmers from the back of trey

of virginia it within one environment and in doing so, many members of the army for his experience together how to interact with a diverse group of individuals of the same-sex. they were distinctive with the first experience for many within the homosexual space but also because the experience of war was separated and emotions of fear, friendship and competition among men. as i argue in my research, these individuals from the homes have the opportunity to impacting us at city to create relationships among men and between men and future dependent and patterns and established what it meant to be an army. utilizing strategy with the emotion which further uncovers the significance behind these relationships of the military. so infusing military with devotion the friendship and

camaraderie in the army demonstrate will not only drove revolutionary rhetoric and combining the relationships of war. in exploring the horizontal ability of the soldiers which offers a starting point to help the grounds of revolution in the world and was tangled of reordering a social hierarchy. armies overall played a conventional role in the revolutions, yet i believe they were often overlooked how it served an important nexus and the process of creating an implementing change as well as the conservative impulses of these transformations. overall, examining the world members of the military offers you unlock the key of a fundamental paradox of revolution and they

were created and really justified and deliberated throughout the political rhetoric in the voting the equality and fraternity and and for the discussion which was assembled here which is a something great and military history which in graces the need that will move our field forward. >> thank you miss engl, mr. stefanelli kim. >> my interest in this topic and in these directions of the military history is supposed to my time as the editor of the revolutionary and if you're familiar of george washington as a source and as a resource you know that we are looking for some very extensive detail

i will find and the documentary in the documents of the day and the bigger picture of the larger than life correspondence that creates it and the documentary editor -- excuse me. the documentary record. and as part of this, a source that i have relied on an officer sometimes the journals of their daily lives and of their service on ideally basis and interestingly in some cases it was a broader and who are writing these journals and

after traveling along distance and a particularly great resource and these kinds of journals and -- high level description of things was in the written records and in this case of the ancient century. some of these diaries and journals, in terms of where they came available to historians are some of the first primary sources and many of these of transcribed and published are more and in some ways they were forgotten to a certain extent when the

historians for the work they do. they are referenced briefly based on reference noticed in the secondary source in their travel journal in the larger topic that you as a story or working on that's not a knock and or these other peoples work of course but i'm making a plea that were looking at the sources as a narratives and perspective of the individuals involved and reference to work of sabrina say been along those lines and a lot there and the information involved and the thoughts but they were thinking about and a very careful way and had base reactions to the

events that they encountered him to the 21st century and uncomfortable or i'm using and in some cases the things that people talk about in these bands were incredibly relevant in the work that historians do in terms of race and class and gender and a lot of topics that have become the foundation of scholarship in the last few decades. and between the time that these accounts were originally published. i think there is a value to be had and he's all the resources and weren't particularly relevant in the diary of a european

wrister crash in a battle of the revolution which was focused and it description but military aspects of the war but in fact those people tended to be interested in a much bigger bigger question when the time so you could see the development about what the revolution was about and the revolutionary purpose at about the fight that they were undertaking and being an aristocrat for the cause of liberty and will interact with the civilian population and your responsibility to protect people who are not perhaps your

own -- your own people in the sense of if you are a french soldier and certainly in america but perhaps historically an enemy of these people will be seeing them in a different context for the first time in some ways as allies. and where to protect and are responsible for and getting a sense as you look there's a broader history of the revolutionary era and what it meant for these people to understand the revolution and the people involved and the ideas that they were presumably fighting for and to take those ideas and those values and of what they came from and make

them part of the broader age of revolution over the past couple of decades. so, i think -- it seems very relevant to what's going on and what rachel and lindsey have talked about. i don't know as an open discussion question how we bring those whole narratives back into the historical record that values the context as historical texts on her own but also brings in the scholarship that's been published over the last several decades. the many volumes of new information that we've uncovered as a story ends over the years and making an effort to do that is a valuable

revolutionary to go in. >> thank you dana. as moderator, i get first crack. (laughs) the question i will ask will be very general. because it's difficult to go and specifically because the people representative and our panel are different. if we can't get them to respond to a couple of very general questions and then you should feel free to get in on this. first thing all notices, all of the presentation we just heard deal with military history of perspectives that frankly are far from the battlefield. he was sometime ago it the do below terry history that we turn to as well it was a dennis

show walter that the battlefield was disappearing from the narrative and historians will ignore the fighting and the actual con that historians of science or political historians who had the conduct of the elections. i'm going to ask our panelist to comment on how their particular work intersects with what went on on the battlefield itself. i'm going to in paris our panel is an optic at random. go ahead lauren. >> an absolutely bottles are important and particularly it's a contest understanding the experience that the troops are bringing to the series in a

broader war in the cities and i would argue that violence takes place off of the battlefield and that's really need to push the bounce of what you consider the battlefield to be a particular own work in the occupation that i do it as a place where they battled fun and encountering war on their steps and is not to armies fighting each other but there's forces that part and will open up the narrative that were relevant to the military but will shift in what we considered to be a part of that battle experience. >> i'll just jump on that as well and battles battle into your work and in particular in

the war strategies in the way that washington and the councils of war and serve as an agenda to keep it out over what their opinions were and have opinions afterwards and have every perspective of the quieter people will totally any loud her personality and the decisions in a slower way and the exact same thing that he did in the cabinet. that is the first piece and the second piece that i argue is that the military culture and diplomatic culture. people who were used to battles reacted very differently to that strategy than people who were used to foreign courts. washington

really light for his advisers to argue. he liked for them to debate and two highly contest their opinions because it was a way to stress tests and idea. hamilton was very used to that concept. he was an officer, he thrived in it. jefferson who had spent many years and france, being a diplomat hated it. partly that was a personality thing and oil and water but was also what they were used to. i would argue, that the closer battlefield very much influences the culture of the cabinet and who works in that situation influences it. the battle is not necessarily part of it. >> i'd be happy to comment on it. well my research definitely looks more obviously add battles to a certain extent

because i'm looking at the relationships between which happens both on the battlefield, in camp and on the march. it's really driven by the source and they start talking about and the men themselves are not on the battles. in which they are instead the miles they walked in the day and what they are referring to. or they are talking about their misadventures or adventures and camp so, especially for the records written in 40 or 50 years after the war which is not the battles that they thought in remembering their time spent together. with other men and that's what i think it's kind of important and have in mind as well and the experience is writing about battles with after. >> to endorse that point, one

one thing that i learned about the revolutionary war and there is not a single battle that takes place during the course of washington's time which is a few months. so much of the history of the war itself is about what it takes to keep an army in the field and it's about supplies it's, about marching it's a location and all of those things are important and can illuminate a lot of things which is not to say the people involved or not themselves and interested in warfare more infighting or in the history of warfare. they do think about these things but there is a lot of other things going on that are really important to the course of events that don't involve engagements between our forces.

so, studying those moments can tell us a lot about the period and about the way it was conducted and the eventual outcome of those battles which are predicated on a lot of non finding things that happen flip. >> the effect that wars are not necessarily won by combat have all the back off is kind of stuff that keeps armies in the field and does anyone else want a ring on this? professor cole jones for. why don't you stand up and we have to wait for the boom if it's coming around flip. try to sound intelligent coal. (laughs)

>> excellent. i'm coal jones, i teach early american history in military history at the university. my question i was listening to this great panel. first of all, allow me to express my enthusiasm for these new directions and the vitality into the field. as i was listening to it, i have a similar view to marks. we moved be on the battlefield and we've showed how multifaceted the revolutionary war was and we reach in every corner of the continent. but i'm wondering if that none of the answers satisfied me about marks questioned. i'm wondering if these new directions and these new dimensions and these new methodologies and gender history and space, history of emotions and state craft. if

these are new and exciting methodologies that were productively applied to the study of combat and the experience of combat. it's not all about battles and they ranged from a brief skirmish with a handful of militia in the woods two centuries firing on each other and a massive army level campaign operation. could we use these methods and understanding the experience of combat in revolution. i'm thinking charleston under siege. what was that like and we were thinking about that and just one example. can you get back into that and thank you so much. >> i'll go first. i would say yes, absolutely. among the list of things that i want to write is a book that looks at the councils of war as an

institution because i think that there's a lot of great scholarship that precludes councils of war as their discussing a particular battle or a particular campaign. those are incredibly useful and have relied heavily and known to my knowledge as ever said let's look at all of them and what were their similarities and their differences and treatment as an advisory body which is of course from the british and tweaks depends on who is in charge and throughout the war at some point, i would like to write that book down the road and i think it would be worth wild and taking a state craft mentality of this massive institution would be really helpful. >> to follow up on that, you are right that there's pretty good pieces of individuals and

there is no or a council and so sharp in your pencil on that. >> that's a great question coal and they could be split in combat and was full of people trying to get out of the city and building in the works there was a lot of this but they still have this in combat and they were experiencing this moment of violence. and i think there's a lot of gender historians was pushing the narrative be on the battlefield and the rest of society experience for and how. at the scope and it was a very

fruitful for someone else to study. with >> my work especially it's looking to understand the trauma and experience of combat of whether or not the whole experience will have soldiers who have a small skirmishes and men who actually are along the siege of charleston and it's really varies but it's important to understand the sideshow psychological ways of being a member of the army while in that constant enemy mentality as well. that can transition into the look at the post war period to look at a

21st century ptsd and how to men re-enter society and how do they describe the psychological trauma that they experience. for me, i think that these emotions are possible in this relationship which is by the experience or potential experience of being on the battlefield. because we can't separate the two out. you >> assess i think rachel's point and seems particularly salient to me. the idea of the military family and the bonds of friendship and love that develop tween officers and the significance of that when it comes to affective conduct on the battlefield and the conduct of the army of troops and

there's a political dimension to this in terms of people and men and their imaginations who will get ahead of the revolutionary army and the political institution and i think that those go forward to the future as they suggest there is -- there's a shaking out of who is loyal to who and what does that loyalty mean. you do you intimately understand someone of this mental idea that everyone is having some kind of mind melts with the patriots on the battlefield and fully understand the use of the word love that is thrown around freely off of officers in the military family. all of those things seem directly relevant to the successful operation of

an army. especially in the difficult trough's and waves of the success. there's many difficult times through the american revolution and for the patriot cause and the significance of what those upon mean and the ultimate success of revolutionary effort between not only the americans but in the bonds with the french and with their allies and what it means to serve and overcome the long standing tradition prejudices and all those seem like important missions in the battlefield successes. >> as we are talking, one other thing that's really striking is these projects are starting a level of experience and building up from their. i think it's a slightly different approach from a more

traditional looking at a battle and see how everything is moving on a big mission. it's more complimentary and we focus a little bit unfair everyone over kind to start that experience of war and will go away. >> there's a question in the audience. tell us who you are. >> i'm connie schultz, i'm the editor of the revolutionary statesman but published the women first. i'm gonna shamelessly plug those are edition of the women's papers and he first volume of the revolutionary war period of the men which has a lot of stuff that addresses all of what you're talking about. there are 178 letters that promise the young rising officer and rises to assist or harry it who is clearly acting as the quartermaster department as a young officer and sending clean

underwear and bad need of a bare skin rug to detailed descriptions of camping out at camp sullivan. similarly, some wonderful correspondent between charles and daniel greene about the movement south and the kind of relationship between a young officer and a senior commanding general in charge. it's clear, it's almost a father son relationship and the details of the emotional not -- to mention a couple of quite interesting war courts martial. i'm interested in asking you a question. because, when we did the first volume of the statesman. before they went ought to be governors and ambassadors. we didn't have to be very selective. this is a born digital edition and in the

revolutionary (inaudible) they polish most of the documents we found. we are now heading on and beginning to where we added the paper as well as one of the qualities i wore of 1790 or 99. it's coequal but set up in the motion to washington with hamilton and we're going to be working in the next volume after that when. thomas is the general for the sixth army and for the war of 1812, we have much more selective. what are the kinds of documents that you hope in a scholarly edition and military records is mostly that we have what are the types of things that as we are making

selection decisions where one out of four of the documents that we are identifying's well you see what's the kind of thing for the history, that you do that you want included for the military records because their personal in other records as well. but much of what we have in our border books and the copies of correspondence and the generals -- what is the kind of stuff that's going to be most valuable to you as i'm not a military historian. up >> i'd be happy to start. one of the references that i have it that's most fascinating in the most underutilized because it's so hard to find our court martial records. you mention those. those are absolutely

fascinating because that you get to the ground level of experience and you can unravel those interpersonal dynamics that are behind civilians matters as well as men in the military. so i definitely -- like i said, the marshal records are not centralized anywhere and i worked with dana when i was trying to go through to say that there are not easily search able or find a bull. so if you have those. if you have any of those definitely we recommend to include those. i would say anything that gets our conversations in councils of war, or deliberations. usually they are official minutes that do not say a whole lot, anything that reveals what may

have happen is so helpful, that is where you get the interpersonal dynamics between the officers, and what crazy person brings their packs of hounds to the meeting, because he's eccentric. and what personally has a lot, anything that can get behind the scenes there. the other thing i would say, i do not know if this would be in that sort of record, and this gets at dina's point in the travel diaries, one of my favorite things was description of meals. it gives us a sense of the camaraderie, and the time spent around the table. for example, one of the travel diaries discusses, going to headquarters and visiting with washington in the various korea sources, and then they bring out a giant bowl of knots. they sit around cracking the nuts for hours and talking. that particular detail if you dig into it, what were they doing when they were eating

this giant poll notes. they're talking about the day, talking about business. any number of things. those details, even if it's just ordering a list for a meal, can be so illustrated if we had the opportunity to dig into them. >> all leaders mola's moderator, general orders. it is with general orders that you get a sense of uniformity, a commanding officer and not just a commanding officer of the army, but right on down to the various organizational levels. what kind of uniformity they are trying to bring to the service, what sort of things are considered important enough to issue a general order. it is overlooked, it is not particularly fascinating if you don't not know what you are reading, general orders are what holds an army together. i think they should be included. you're going thumbs up. there's

a question here and then we'll go back. cohen had. that would be you. wait for the boom. >> hi samuel dodge. i have very interesting idea about taking this new expensive approach to military history and how it relates to combat in the traditional approach to studying the war. the question that comes to my mind is not all conflict is the same. specifically think of defeats as opposed to victories, value forge and your county, the experience of the soldiers would be very different. occupation of philadelphia new york would be very different. if we will approach combat, and how it relates to these differences like you study. how would you account for the variation, in white combat looks like and what that means? >> that's a tough one. because

the variation, here we go. >> it's hard for me with battles, i was alluding to battle. battlefield history is written after the fact. the man fighting it, do not know what this will be named, how will this fit into the rest of the picture of the war, how is this going to be remembered, in part battlefield history is written after. there's lots of sayings if it's written by the victor, the issue i think his understanding the scope for the sounds like a broken record, but individuals on the ground. it is hard, there are times where it's a clear victory, there's other times like you said it's a clear defeat as well. there is different

emotions that are attached to that, as well. in my experience, and in my research, the men themselves do not seem as concerned with the general momentum of the war itself. that is left to the higher ups. >> i find the variation to be very helpful, how, from my research when you are looking at councils of war, councils were used for both how to plan out make the most of a victory, but also how to grapple with a defeat. washington convened a number of councils during the new your campaign, each time it was before a retreat, and as to make sure the officers agreed with a decision to retreat. and to make sure there was a report that, they can then send to congress. thousand tension, all it was political, it was

understanding that new york would be a huge psychological blow to the cause and the economy. they needed to be that political cover, at the same time if you look at the counsels that just took place after the battle of trent in, that strategy, of how do you make the most of this opportunity, do you just go back across the delaware and go liqueur wounds, rest up, or do you find a way to go into princeton, and hit another blow. both of those serve very different purposes but are equally helpful to understand strategy and i do not mean to imply that all councils were successful. there were times were strategy was decided upon, that was a very bad strategy, washington notoriously lost more battles than he won. that is very helpful as well. i

think it is very important to see the scope, in order to appreciate how they were used in all circumstances. >> i think it's a great question to think about the variation and violence. i'm interested in the civilian experience how civilians intersected. i think it is very helpful to see on the ground, day to day, what our peoples thoughts. frankly a lot of them are where their next meal coming from, a four woman walking down the street, will we get home safely. even within combat, violence can we have two or three different conversations, but to think about the violence which is endemic to war and how it seeps into daily life, i think it's a productive way to think about it. not to sound like a broken record, but to consider how war

affects all of society, and how people interact with the military. >> that is a question that can be to have an entire meeting, on the nature of combat and how >> one thing about the diaries, you travel journeys people love commenting on differences. that is something is human nature i guess. if you're looking out what is different from one place to another, that one of the biggest focuses of these sorts of accounts. this is different from what i am used to. a marquee day shot was a character, he loves to comment on the differences in how men and women interact and social situations. this is not directly relatively a battlefield point, but he comments a lot on that. it differences in a way that people react, and fish out a

water change from one place to another, is a big focus of these accounts. >> i think the study the face of battle, is illustrated of this. who is looking at, it when do they see it, what part of the field a day see, under what circumstances were they looking at, they go we can go on for ever on this. go ahead. then will come to you. >> sam watson from the united states military academy. this goes directly to your point. one of the central experiences of warfare, of war, is not just combatting violence but movement, mobility. the dislocation of and the uncertainty of war is obviously a combat in violence, but also the movement like in the civil war which we are more familiar with, there are number of books recently about refugees and movement especially in the confederacy. how might you're

different works address movement and mobility and dislocation during the war? >> and a hand went up right here, wait for the mike. >> brian franklin senator for presidential history at university. i was subject i want to ask about and the question slightly different particularly for lauren and rachel. the subject is non home domestic places. schools, churches, shops, farms and fields kind of thing. for lauren, i haven't read all your work yet, but how do the gender dynamics of warfare differ, in those kind of spaces then in the home, and then rachel, forgive me if i miss quote you here, i feel like i heard you say something like the sort of

diverse ages in stages of men had not interacted with one another, in a home or social environment like they did in the army, before. i am wondering about the same kind of spaces. men who interacted regularly with each other and churches, in the fields, and things like that. how that might contribute to the formation of their brotherhood outside the battlefield. >> it's a little confusing, it's the first prolonged experience of this and almost social space for all of them. as you mention, one of the ways that they would have experienced this if they had before they entered the war was school. for a lot of these men, school is very irregular. education is not in the traditional school house. many of them have not gone to college, with the exception of some of the officers, not even

all the officers. it's away from home. this non home domestic space. away from the familiar environment, and being put under these new restrictions. can discipline a military light, it's really kind of ace perfect storm, that creates this new experience for them. >> i'll say i think, what i'm talking about domestic space, it's really focused about the household. particularly this urban areas. the household it's like out in the neighborhood, it's households neighborhoods, and the relationship income of community in these relationships. the places you identify are part of that daily life, it's by the routines that people are here to each day. the difference here, john gilbert to distinctions between

which side kinds of buildings the army can seize for bullets -- there is that kind of distinction there, there are a ripple effects within society. for example in philadelphia, the quake are meeting house is taken four quarters. it relocates to mary competence house. she has meetings in her own house. her house becomes the space where the meeting meets. it's a transformation of space, because of the dislocations, and the other question of the ways in which spaces are being repurposed to accommodate the army and accommodate the armies needs, and the need for people to adapt, and to have them change. it becomes pertinent in charleston actually, where the army stars using sequestration, as a way to get this even civil -- to people would think they are patriots. if you don't

comes where allegiance, they will take their property, they will take you are slaves. that of course as ripple effects, it displaces families, a slave laborers, some state with the property, they produce them to produce crops, others use their camps around the british army as well, others flee. it opens up an opportunity to people to negotiate spaces, when the army moves, it disrupts the routines and hierarchies. >> can i answer the movement, question real quick. in two ways. one factor of the nationalism that i discussed, is a result of this movement. as you all know, prior to the revolution, moths to colonies grew up in a place they never really moved out far from that place, they lead fairly close to that family. the adams is a

good example. he had a house next door of that is how his wife loved at the start of their marriage. most people did not move that far when they grew up. that changes when you march hundreds of miles away from your home. that gave a lot of soldiers a different sort of perspective on nationalism, that you normally would've had. the second part of that is that the movement, we see the movement as a big factor for more of the rank and file infantry after the war most african american soldiers won back to the place that they are from before, they not have funds to go elsewhere. they have done really great work on this. they passed down the stories of adventure as something to be proud of. they're proud of their service and they passed down to their families for generations and generations. they have movement was a very important part of getting away of something that they're really proud of ..

she's done some work on how light soldiers tended to be especially from several decades later and retention funds and more mobile and they end up moving if they're able to because if they've done the movement and the ability to go on the original towns. the experience is after the war for sure. >> i don't mean to cut you off earlier, go ahead.. >> i'm going to ask a really unfair question. what would you say to a graduate student but would know the study what question would you recommend to this hypothetical hypothetical graduate student. but don't we know as a field that we really

want to know. >> talk about a broad question. (laughs) anybody? anyone in the audience to you for that matter. >> for a deep intellectual need interdisciplinary in your approach as possible so it's good if you could say that you're military and social and political and explain why. it just makes good sense in terms of the market and he fellowships that is a very dark answer but that would be my answer. >> i don't have a great suggestion but where they tend to start is in the records themselves. i talk about the

court martial records and if you can find them and i started in sampling and revolutionary scholars and a lot of information from them that you can build a project off of or work backwards or forwards if you want to as well. i think that they're kind of the link for me and my research between the two and we've talked a little bit about perhaps that's maybe were on pushing the conversation a little bit more to talk about how do we get from the war itself to the early republic. >> to echo the sources that are created around the military and the british army and whether it's a court martial or

respondents they start with looking for women that are all over them and that's how they particularly luck. it's a way to have the period for the richest people from their home. >> it's interesting to me and it was interesting to the people and he contemporaries that it would fit was a beginner historical question and are curious about something and there are letters, why was that such an interesting thing to them and is there he is historical question at scholars can talk about and why did people observing up indians for the first time talk about their skin and their hair so much. as we learn from broader phrasing

that the ideas about race and hierarchy come from our correspondent and the skin and hair but there are ways that this could be a blind alley to with the person writing but there may be broader historical questions that are relevant beyond just their own commentary. let >> me jump in on this stand. growing from your question, some wintry entering the field and you assume they get into the field and at 25 years later they had a career and you look at all these different perspectives you're hearing from today. we've heard from some of you and i'm not going to have the perspectives that you brought in this whole thing. but the scholars in the sense of also being teachers

and that involves synthesis and making it explicable and bringing it to a hole and making it explicable to others. how on earth are we going to take all these different points of view and the american revolution in the war for independence and come up with a synthesis that is going to make some sort of sense. does anybody want to take a crack at that? zero. let me go ahead, there was a synthesis i will call it to the illogical synthesis and new red bail in, would, would, would who came out of this approach to the war for independence and where is that today? did anyone up here mentioned there papers and a

footnote. has that said this is disappeared? it's something else going to grow out of it? i don't know i'm, asking you. is it possible to come up with a synthesis on the war for independence and reading all this stuff together. one that be something of 20 or 30 years of a career. but yourselves a generation ahead. you are all just starting out more or less. i'll do the undergraduate thing all. pick one of you at random. >> i talked about this a little bit with my advisor and she talked about our generation of historians seem to want to complicate history in a good way. in a way to complicate so perhaps we are going to have synthesis orthodontist

sympathies anymore and the perspective that we promoted this afternoon and having the abrupt a level. so someone like joseph martin who was under the relatively warm scholars and individuals who go to instead of one as this stands in perspective. i think we're going to have a more diverse way to say something along the lines that the revolution -- in order to understand the revolution you'll need to understand that it wasn't a physical experience which doesn't say a lot. >> i think there can be a synthesis that most older sympathies offer an answer that

is nice because it's a solid strong answer but it doesn't take into account a lot of the things right now and maybe, sent disease going forward i don't look a little messier and revolutionary america was a better place and that's okay. we don't need to have a, you know, we all read baylor would but those answers don't fit with the revolutionary world we see it. >> maybe just embracing the message to say that it was complicated and there is a lot of perspectives in the middle about all these ways that people experience it and look at it. that itself is something moving into the public and understand why it does though it does. people had such different experiences.

>> that messiness can be more appealing appealing to students because seeing it as varies streamlined and chronological arc can be seen as asserting what the messiness they see along this basis. per perhaps there are these guys that seem to have all these answers except the problems that they acknowledge might be more helpful to students to show the good answer. >> that's a really good point. >> thank you. >> to your point again. >> what if our synthesis was to return to home but put the military context so that is not just the war between a united states and britain but it's a war within families or war between loyalist and patriots. you have all these different wars which is not a synthesis but it's a common theme of many

complex messy intercepting conflicts in which people will try to appeal to certain common values with mixed degrees of success. >> right in the back of him costs. >> rachel, i was hearing you talk about trauma and one of the challenges is seeing a motions as historically contingent and contextual things. there are emotions that existed in the 18th century that might not exist and don't have the words for them in the contemporary period. i'm just thinking about the foreign us of the american revolution and how do you do a history of emotions while acknowledging there is entirely different leg

which you and you can answer that but i want everyone else to think about the past and how we think about occupations which are an app thing to think about in the last 20 years. what do you think about that in the different context and the notions of what liberty is and he control and the place of veterans and political life. broad question about the forwardness of the revolution which seems so familiar and so eternal almost in our national psyche is a fairly fairly foreign place. >> i am sorry rick not here you have a great response to this. i do think that part of the reason why the emotions has been a slow field to develop is because it's so hard. i think in part because there's emotion shown through language and one of the things i do to my

research is to show they complicate this idea. it's obvious among the officers who view this emotional way of our defense love our attachment and i really challenge that and say is this a stop reform or stop crisis and doesn't necessarily show us anything more intimate or emotional then say actions between soldiers. so that's what i love the marshall record and it's men coming forward to testifying in what language they used to describe the action that they have between each other and it's really fruitful. i think it's really hard and i really try not to read back with my 21st century emotional intelligence onto their relationships and their experiences. but i think there are ways in which you said it

could be contentious or lies them as well. i think that's what's important and where i got the understanding of the language that the office uses in the context to repeat over and over again. you come to realize that maybe it doesn't mean anything more than the actual language and knowledge of how to write that way. >> he look at just to form any letters anyway. you had an occasion to go to the george washington correspondent recently and they all signed off and the most humble a beating in and it is laughable particularly when washington is conservative middleman and paragraph after paragraph and me a beating it servant and you

can read right through it and i'm sure they read it exactly that way. go ahead please will, grab mike. matt vitals, can state university. my primary field is with society, tailing off with a thing of sam watson was saying about what we were talking about of more of this chaos and confusion, i actually think the whole civil war aspect of american revolution, war for independence is a perfect thing to talk about, primarily because of all that. we also have the conflict and confusion about how do we build a state, during the war. okay patriots are okay with occupying in policing their own frontier for loyalists. and what in part what i'm thinking, my own stuff with chaise, and regulation with all of that, what is massachusetts doing as is occupying our own people, how do you rectify that. that's

a perfect thing with discussing how do we build states, and what do we want to avoid, when we dealt with during the war. >> yeah, i think that idea of how people make sense of it, makes a dramatic experience the wartime the hardships they injured during war in the early republic. it's part of this conversation. i think some of my own work, jersey and pointed in to that, looks into that. how the experience of living under british occupation change the way they thought about their homes, the way they handle their households, the way they justified what was okay, allowable occupation. if you want to frame it that way, of what the british felt. the ways in which the nationalists, is entwined between the way people experienced war in a personal way. >> our time is running on, we have about 15 minutes left. all

of this is going out of that first question. i have four of them ready to go. let me jump turn one now that is even more general than the first when i posed consider all of the. perspectives you heard from today both from the panel and from the questions and comments that you have raised what i'm wondering is, the whole idea of the quote new military history, new don't qualify for social security a long time ago in terms of when it came up. we want to david from walter mills -- you can go farther, way, back into some of the better 19th century stop and find plenty of stuff they can find part of the new deal military history going today. what i'm asking has the new military history lost its cash? is it time to drop that? i don't know

what we call it. we got military history. to continually hard on this new military history, i do not know what that is saying to the profession anymore. is it time to take what we learned today at least into what we heard today, and say it is time to come up with something you, or drawback to simply calling it military history again. it seems to be what we are you have presented to us, what we heard from the audience is the new norm. how is it new military history? what do you think. >> i would say first and foremost, it was a ploy to get the panel accepted by the committee. which worked, we are here. saying he was always helpful. also, in a lot of ways saying you directions is action not speaking to the profession

but speaking to public consumption of what military history is. and what public conception is military history is, he probably think of people that do not look like ice. a lot of it is a public framing question to say, i read a lot of battle history, it's an integral part of my work, if you do not like that, that is okay. you might still like military history, here's a different aspect of it. in a lot of ways the new military history at least for me is not intended for an academic device, it is a political, one or it's a social one. >> at that point really, it's a new military. it's not new niece at this point, to signifier but to say it's the cultural and social approach of warfare. that's the primarily the scholarship of the

scholarship were engaged in. it's all military history, but it's different priorities. >> if you were to take, or were you to see a military history course at a college catalog, the ideas he talked about traditional battle history that is what you would expect a fine. i think it helps to signify this is separate. at least separate but connected to those. >> you know i think the revolution is a crucible for so many things that happens towards the end of the 18th century, into the 19th century. there's obviously an important role for battlefield history, i do not mean that in an insulting way. so many of the things that happened during the

course of the war, that did not happen on the battlefield, affected so many of the things that came after the war that everyone here has suggested, including we talked a bit about mobility, a little bit about the international consequence. to make a plea for an international understanding of the age of revolutions. which is not an original plea at this point. it's well understood it's under a larger atlantic context. you have a few years here, ten years, 15 years, 30 years depending on how broadly you define, it where people from all over the atlantic world are interacting around the apparatus of fighting battles. and all of the things that happened in addition to fighting battles are really important to the course of human history. i think yes, it

is all military history, yes it's all history in a sense, and that's the beauty of the discipline. >> if the audience thinks they don't have anything else to say, and our panelist have that's it. all right. thank you all for coming. i will end with where we began. that the american revolution as an example of military history generally, does or have any number of opportunities, any perspective can generally bear on it. what we have heard today, is indicative of what is going on in the field. those of you that are active in i'm assuming that that's most of you in the audience, are fully aware of that. let me give you two quick examples of before we sign off. on the army, and the school for

leadership. we're looking for senior leadership. recently a dissertation looks at junior officers and and ceos, what happened to them after the war. what skills of leadership and administration did they pick up, in their time in the army. did that have an impact on state formation. yes it did. look at the three states and the trans appalachian, ohio kentucky tennessee. these junior officers and non commission officers that ended up to town clerics, the ministers, any number of lawyer border administrative post both elective and appointed, they served using the skills they picked off of leadership in the army. at a greater rate than those two did not serving military in the war. we're

marshals you're court marshals, have taken a database of virtually every known court martial, in the continental army, and try to draw the implications of what these court marshals meant, how they affected relations between officers and men, how they affected between list and ranks, the snapping often. these topics you have broached, really is the future. it will be a messy future, i agree with that. maybe that is more fun. with that, thank you very much. (applause)