dr. dwight pitcaithley, dr. worked in the national park service for 30 years. for the last few years he was the chief historian of the entire national park service. so he is kind of a rock star for us. [laughter] so since he retired, dr. pitcaithley teaches at new mexico state unirs

dr. dwight pitcaithley. [applause] dr. pitcaithley: nick promise he wasn't going to include the rockstar part. [laughter] dr. pitcaithley: but best laid plans. thank you for coming tonight. thats to nick for wonderful introduction. thanks to the grant site for hosting this event. i'm going to talk about 25 or 30 minutes, and then i will turn it over to you, so you can talk about whatever you want to talk about, and we hope that during my time, i have been provocative enough that we can have a conversation that goes on for another 30 or 40 minutes. robert penn warren, whom many of you know, three-time pulitzer prizewinner, wrote that the civil war is our only felt history, history lived in the national imagination, and i think that is true, whether your ancestry goes back that far on not. mine mostly does not. but we sort of -- the civil war, thanks to ken burns maybe, is a part of us. it's part of our dna. we think about it a lot. every year when i teach the civil war course, first day i , give the students an exam, and i