Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Excommunicated from the Union
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S): Kurtz, William Burton
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.wkurtz.com/
CITY: Charlottesville
STATE: VA
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/willkurtz/ * http://www.wkurtz.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/William-Kurtzs-Curriculum-Vitae-Current.pdf * http://naucenter.as.virginia.edu/william-kurtz-book-launch
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: no2012147740
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/no2012147740
HEADING: Kurtz, William B. (William Burton)
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670 __ |a “Brothers in patriotism and love of country”, 2012: |b t.p. (William B. Kurtz, Ph.D.)
670 __ |a OCLC, November 13, 2012 |b (access point: Kurtz, William Burton; usage: William Burton Kurtz)
PERSONAL
Male.
EDUCATION:University of Notre Dame, B.A., 2006, M.A., 2008; University of Virginia, Ph.D., 2012.
ADDRESS
CAREER
University of Virginia, adjunct professor, 2013; Documents Compass, assistant editor/project manager, 2012-16; John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History, managing director and digital historian, 2016–.
MEMBER:American Historical Association, Association for Computers and the Humanities, American Catholic Historical Association, Society of Civil War Historians.
WRITINGS
Contributor to books, including So Conceived and Dedicated, Fordham University Press, 2015. Contributor to digital humanities databases, including People of the Founding Era, Founders Online, and the Patrick Henry Digital Library.
SIDELIGHTS
William B. Kurtz completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Notre Dame, and then went on to complete his doctorate at the University of Virginia. A specialist in the Civil War, Kurtz serves as managing director and digital historian at the John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History. His articles appear in such digital humanities projects as People of the Founding Era and Founders Online, and he is the author of the 2016 book, Excommunicated from the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America. The book focuses on how Catholics during the Civil War viewed the conflict from religious, social, and cultural perspectives. Though some Catholics were anti-war on religious grounds, Kurtz reports that most Catholics in the United States were of German and Irish decent, and these groups actively participated in support of the Union. Notably, anti-Catholic sentiments in the U.S. at the time were rampant, but Catholics were determined to participate in political life. The author also explains that, at times, Catholic beliefs clashed with American culture, and he explains how Catholics navigated these schisms. Kurtz then draws on Catholic articles and journals from the period to provide further insight.
Discussing his inspiration to write the book in a Cushwa Center website interview, Kurtz remarked: “I have always been interested in the Civil War because my father is a “Civil War buff.” As an undergraduate at Notre Dame, I completed a history honors thesis . . . on the diplomatic history of the war. When I arrived at the University of Virginia . . . I quickly realized that little had been done on Catholics in the Civil War. In fact, the last book-length study of Catholicism during the Civil War was written in 1945. To be sure, there have since been a number of studies on nuns who served as nurses or the famous Irish Brigade, but the chance to make a major contribution to Civil War and Catholic history by writing my dissertation and my book was too good to pass up.” The author expanded on his motivation in an online BlogCritics interview, and he told Pat Cuadros: “There is a renewed attention to religion during the war among Civil War historians. There was only one other book on the Catholic community (laity and religious) when I started writing and researching as part of my PhD . . . I was dissatisfied with how Catholic scholars neglected the war and how Civil War scholars neglected Catholics.”
Reviews of Excommunicated from the Union were predominantly filled with praise, and a California Bookwatch critic advised that “this wide-ranging history is key to any Civil War collection.” David J. Endres, writing in the online Civil War Book Review, was also impressed, and he stated that “Excommunicated from the Union is a carefully researched monograph, drawing from a wide array of archival sources. It is a concise, engaging volume that deserves to be read widely, among scholars of nineteenth century U.S. religion and Civil War historians, but also students in college and graduate seminar courses that delve into religious identity and the war. This superb study of the U.S. Catholic community in the Civil War era should remind scholars, students, and armchair historians alike of the important role Catholics played in the war.” Lauding the volume further in Catholic Books Review, a contributor observed that “Kurtz’s well-organized study is meticulously researched, and he translates his findings into accessible prose. The book, or individual chapters, could be assigned in courses—especially at the graduate level—on the Civil War, nineteenth-century politics, or U.S. Catholic history. Excommunicated from the Union is a valuable scholarly contribution that offers detailed evidence and provocative insights on all these topic.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
California Bookwatch, February, 2016. review of Excommunicated from the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America.
ONLINE
BlogCritics, http://blogcritics.org/ (July 10, 2017), Pat Cuadros, author interview.
Catholic Books Review, http://www.catholicbooksreview.org/ (July 10, 2017), review of Excommunicated from the Union.
Civil War Book Review, http://www.cwbr.com/ (July 10, 2017), David J. Endres, review of Excommunicated from the Union.
Cushwa Center Website, http://cushwa.nd.edu/ (July 10, 2017), author interview.
Will Kurtz Home Page, http://www.wkurtz.com/ (July 10, 2017).*
William Kurtz
Managing Director and Digital Historian at John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History
John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History University of Virginia
Charlottesville, Virginia 176 176 connections
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I am an historian specializing in the history of the United States during the American Civil War. I have extensive experience working on digital humanities projects, including projects from the revolutionary era of the United States such as People of the Founding Era, Founders Online, and the Patrick Henry Digital Library. Currently I am working at the John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History. In addition to helping to manage the center, I am in charge of two nascent digital endeavors, including a study of Civil War prisons and Virginia's African American men who fought for the Union. I have written and spoken publicly extensively about the Civil War's impact on Roman Catholic Americans. See lessSee less of undefined summary
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Experience
John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History
Managing Director and Digital Historian
Company NameJohn L. Nau III Center for Civil War History
Dates EmployedMar 2016 – Present Employment Duration1 yr 5 mos
LocationSpecial Collections Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA
I am in charge of all digital components of the Nau Civil War center, including our website (http://naucenter.as.virginia.edu/), Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/NauCivilWar/), and Twitter account (https://twitter.com/NauCivilWar). I also run our two digital projects at the center. "Black Virginians in Blue" will examine the lives of Virginia African American men from Albemarle County who served in the Union Army or Navy during the Civil War. We officially announced this project in the fall of 2016, and debuted it at our "Civil War and Digital History" conference on November 11. Eventually we will research the lives of UVA students who served in the Union Army as well. The second project will explore the lives of Prisoners of War during the war, and will become a resource for both scholars and the general public on northern and southern prisons.
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Documents Compass
Assistant Editor/Project Manager
Company NameDocuments Compass
Dates EmployedFeb 2012 – Mar 2016 Employment Duration4 yrs 2 mos
LocationCharlottesville, VA
“Early Access” Project, Documents Compass, a program of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities: Responsible for managing employees, providing quality control, working with XML and TEI, and designing proofreading style guides and workflows for the “Early Access” part of the National Archives’ “Founders Online” website that provides free access to every letter written to and from some of America’s most important founding fathers (Washington, Madison, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin). I also manage Documents Compass's website and Facebook page. I also helped Director Sue Perdue launch the Papers of Patrick Henry Digital Edition project in 2014.
University of Virginia
Adjunct Professor
Company NameUniversity of Virginia
Dates EmployedAug 2013 – Dec 2013 Employment Duration5 mos
LocationCharlottesville, VA
“American Religious History, 1607 to Present,” Corcoran Department of History: Responsible for designing and leading an upper level course, giving lectures, leading discussions, grading assignments, and helping students write a ten page work on a topic of their choice in American Religious History.
University of Virginia
Graduate Teaching Assistant
Company NameUniversity of Virginia
Dates EmployedAug 2008 – May 2012 Employment Duration3 yrs 10 mos
LocationCharlottesville, VA
Responsible for leading three weekly discussion sections of twenty undergraduates, advising students, helping professor to develop assignments, grading, and attending lectures. The following are the courses for which I was a teaching assistant:
-“Espionage, Intelligence, and Foreign Policy in the 20th Century,” Spring 2009, Spring 2010, and Spring 2012 (Gerald Haines)
-“American Military History through 1900,” Fall 2009 (Gary Gallagher)
-“United States-Latin American Diplomatic Relations in the 20th Century,” Fall 2008 (Gerald Haines)
University of Virginia
Graduate Assistant
Company NameUniversity of Virginia
Dates EmployedAug 2010 – Feb 2012 Employment Duration1 yr 7 mos
LocationThe Papers of George Washington, University of Virginia
Performed research, translation, transcription, and copy-editing tasks for the editorial staff of the “Revolutionary War Series” of the Papers of George Washington.
Essays in History
Associate Editor, Book Reviews
Company NameEssays in History
Dates Employed2011 – 2012 Employment Duration1 yr
LocationUniversity of Virginia
Responsible for selecting, editing, and publishing book reviews submitted to the journal.
Essays in History
Managing Editor
Company NameEssays in History
Dates Employed2010 – 2012 Employment Duration2 yrs
LocationUniversity of Virginia
Responsible for handling incoming email correspondence, helping to schedule and conduct meetings of the editorial staff, updating the Drupal-CMS based website, and assisting other editors with copy-editing submissions to the journal.
Documents Compass
Editorial Assistant
Company NameDocuments Compass
Dates EmployedJun 2009 – Aug 2011 Employment Duration2 yrs 3 mos
LocationCharlottesville, Virginia Area
As an employee from June 2009 to January 2011, and then as an editorial assistant from January 2011 to August 2011, I worked on two projects under the direction of Director Susan Perdue. The first was the pilot project for Founders Online Early Access. I was responsible for helping to proofread and transcribe historical documents in XML. The second project was a collective biography of the Founding Era of the United States called People of the Founding Era. We data mined biographical information from existing documentary projects on UVA Press's Founding Era Collection website. We then did additional research to discover missing life data about individuals from this period while also linking them to other people in the database based on family, occupation, and other connections.
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Education
University of Virginia
University of Virginia
Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) Field Of Study History
Dates attended or expected graduation 2008 – 2012
Activities and Societies: Essays in History, Graduate of Tomorrow's Professor Today Program, Documents Compass, Papers of George Washington
University of Virginia
University of Virginia
Degree Name Master of Arts (M.A.) Field Of Study History
Dates attended or expected graduation 2007 – 2008
University of Notre Dame
University of Notre Dame
Degree Name Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) Field Of Study History
Dates attended or expected graduation 2002 – 2006
Activities and Societies: Phi Beta Kappa; Circle-K; Phi Alpha Theta
Volunteer Experience
Notre Dame Club of Charlottesville
Web Master
Company NameNotre Dame Club of Charlottesville
Dates volunteered2014 – 2016 Volunteer duration2 yrs
Cause Education
I helped update the website, add pages and improve navigation, improve content, and helped to create an online membership renewal form.
1
William B. Kurtz
John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History
Department of History, Nau Hall
P.O. Box 400180
Charlottesville, VA 22904
TEL. (434) 243-2324
wkurtz@virginia.edu
www.wkurtz.com
EDUCATION
University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA
Dissertation: “Roman Catholics in the American Civil War”
Ph.D., History, May 2012
Exam Fields: American Civil War, United States, Great Britain
Advisor: Gary W. Gallagher
University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA
M.A., History, August 2008
Advisors: Joseph Kett and Gary W. Gallagher
University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN
B.A. with Honors in History, Minor in Anthropology, May 2006
Advisor: Dorothy Pratt
RESEARCH AND TEACHING INTERESTS
United States History; Religion and Immigration in the United States; The
Era of the American Civil War; African American History; American Catholic History
PUBLICATIONS
Articles and Other Publications
“‘A Singular Zeal’: William S. Rosecrans’s Family in Faith, Triumph, and Failure.”
U.S. Catholic Historian (Forthcoming).
Excommunicated from the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America. Fordham
University Press (December 1, 2015).
“The Battle of Stones River.” Essential Civil War Curriculum (September 2015).
www.essentialcivilwarcurriculum.com.
“‘This Most Unholy and Destructive War’: Catholic Intellectuals and the Limits of Catholic
Patriotism.” Book Chapter in So Conceived and Dedicated. Fordham University Press
(April 2015).
“The Grand Review of the Armies.” The Civil War: Opposing Views of Freedom, 150th
Anniversary Commemorative Magazine. I-5 Publishing (February 2015).
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“The Civil War Online and Digital History.” Essential Civil War Curriculum (September 2014).
www.essentialcivilwarcurriculum.com.
“Let us hear no more ‘nativism’: The Catholic Press in the Mexican and Civil Wars.” Civil War
History (March 2014).
“‘The Perfect Model of a Christian Hero’: The Faith, Anti-Slaveryism, and Post-War Legacy
of William S. Rosecrans.” Special Civil War Issue of U.S. Catholic Historian (Winter 2013).
“Father Corby’s Absolution.” Gettysburg 150th Anniversary Commemorative Magazine. I-5
Publishing (Summer 2013).
“The Catholic Herald and Visitor and the Catholic.” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and
Biography 135 (October 2011).
“Immigrants.” Pennsylvania Civil War 150th Anniversary Website (2011).
www.PACivilWar150.com.
Book Reviews
Alison Clark Efford, German Immigrants, Race, and Citizenship in the Civil War Era (2013), Civil
War History (March 2017).
James Carson, Against the Grain: Colonel Henry M. Lazelle and the U.S. Army (2015), The Journal
of Southern History (February 2017).
Jeff Strickland, Unequal Freedoms: Ethnicity, Race, and White Supremacy in Civil War-Era
Charleston (2015), The Journal of the Civil War Era (December 2016).
David T. Gleeson, The Green and the Grey: the Irish in the Confederate States of America (2013),
The Historian (Fall 2015).
Timothy L. Wesley, The Politics of Faith During the Civil War (2013), LSU Libraries Special
Collections’ Civil War Book Review (Fall 2013).
William C. Davis, A Taste for War: The Culinary History of the Blue and Gray (2011), The
Civil War Monitor (December 2012).
William C. Davis and James I. Robertson, Jr., Virginia at War, 1865 (2011),
Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 120 (April 2012).
George C. Rable, God's Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the
American Civil War (2010), Essays in History 45 (2011).
Joan Waugh, U.S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth (2009), Essays in
History 44 (2010).
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SCHOLARLY PRESENTATIONS
“Albemarle USCT: Black Civil War Soldiers and Sailors from Central Virginia”: Civil War
and Digital History Conference; University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, November
11, 2016
“Albemarle African American Men in the USCT”: Lightning Talk. DH @ UVA Conference;
University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, October 14, 2016
“Patrick Henry Goes Digital”: Virginia Association of Museums Conference; Williamsburg,
VA; March 14, 2016
“Commonwealth Slavery: Digital Studies in the History of Slavery at the Virginia
Foundation for the Humanities”: Poster Session. American Historical Association
Conference; Atlanta, GA; January 9, 2016
“Founders Online ‘Early Access’: Best Practices and Lessons Learned about Working on
Large Scale Digital Editions”: Digital Humanities Summer Institute Colloquium;
University of Victoria, Victoria, Canada; June 2015
“Remember the Catholic Ladies: Integrating Immigrant and Catholic Women Digitally into
American History”: Women’s History in the Digital World Conference; Bryn Mawr
College, Philadelphia, PA; May 2015
“Maria Monk, ‘Bridget,’ or Just Plain Invisible?”: Catholic Lay and Religious Women
in the Era of the American Civil War”: American Catholic Historical Association
Conference; New York City, NY; January 2015
“Founders Online”: Poster Session. Association for Documentary Editing Conference;
Louisville, KY; July 2014
“Religion in the Camp”: American Catholic Historical Association Conference; Washington,
DC; January 2014
“‘Disgraceful’: American Catholics and the New York Draft Riots”: American Catholic
Historical Association Conference; New Orleans, LA; January 2013
“‘Brothers in patriotism and love of country’: Northern Catholics and Civil War Memory”:
Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism; Notre Dame, IN; September 2012
“The Making of a Catholic Hero: William S. Rosecrans and the Catholic Memory of the
American Civil War”: American Catholic Historical Association Conference; Chicago, IL;
January 2012
“Missed Opportunity? The Legacy of the American Civil War for Northern Roman
Catholics”: “Legacy of Civil War” Conference; Philadelphia, PA; November 2011
4
“Catholic Abolitionists: The Rosecrans Brothers, the Purcells, and Ohio Catholicism During
the American Civil War”: “Ohio Goes to War!” Conference; Cleveland, OH; September
2011
“‘Terra Incognita’: Uncovering the Story of German Catholics in the American Civil War”:
Forschungsbibliothek Gotha, Germany; August 2011
“German-American Catholics in the Era of the American Civil War”: German Historical
Institute; Washington, D.C.; April 2011
“It is the ‘duty’ of Catholics to stand by the Union: The Diverse Responses to Civil War by
Orestes Brownson and the Roman Catholic Press in both the North and the Loyal Border
States”: Fourth Conference on the Civil War (“Leadership”); Oxford, MS; October 2009
“Making a Catholic Republic: Orestes Brownson, Irish Catholics, and Roman Catholicism in
Nineteenth-Century United States”: Religion and Identity Graduate Student Conference;
Northwestern University Department of Religion; Evanston, IL; April 24-25, 2009
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
Adjunct Professor, Corcoran Department of History, University of Virginia, “American
Religious History, 1607 to Present,” Fall 2013
Responsible for designing and leading an upper level course, giving lectures, leading
discussions, grading assignments, and helping students write a ten page work on a topic
of their choice in American Religious History
Seminar Instructor, Corcoran Department of History, University of Virginia, “Americans in
the Civil War Era,” Fall 2011
Responsible for designing and leading a seminar for history majors, leading discussions,
grading assignments, and helping students write a twenty-five page work of original
historical scholarship
Teaching Assistant, Corcoran Department of History, University of Virginia, Fall 2008–
Spring 2010, Spring 2012
Responsible for leading three weekly discussion sections of twenty undergraduates,
advising students, grading assignments, and attending lectures
-“Espionage, Intelligence, and Foreign Policy in the 20th Century,” Spring 2009,
2010, and 2012 (Gerald Haines)
-“American Military History through 1900,” Fall 2009 (Gary Gallagher)
-“United States-Latin American Diplomatic Relations in the 20th Century,” Fall
2008 (Gerald Haines)
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Digital Historian and Archivist, John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History, Corcoran
Department of History, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, March 2016-Present
Responsible for managing and creating our two digital projects focusing on prisoners of
war and Virginia African American soldiers and sailors during the Civil War,
maintaining our center’s website, running our social media pages, planning and hosting
5
a digital history conference on November 11, 2016, and assisting our directors in the
daily operations of the Nau Center
Assistant Editor, “Early Access” Project, Documents Compass, a program of the Virginia
Foundation for the Humanities, Charlottesville, VA, Spring 2012-March 2016
Responsible for managing and training employees, providing quality control, working
with XML and TEI, and designing proofreading style guides and workflows for the
“Early Access” part of the National Archives “Founders Online” website that provides
free access to every letter written to and from some of America’s most important
founding fathers (Washington, Madison, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton)
Managing Editor, Essays in History, a Graduate Student-run Historical Journal, Corcoran
Department of History, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, Fall 2010–Spring 2012
Responsible for handling incoming email correspondence, helping to schedule and
conduct meetings of the editorial staff, updating the Drupal-CMS based website, and
assisting other editors with copy-editing submissions to the journal
Associate Book Reviews Editor, Essays in History, Fall 2011-Spring 2012
Responsible for selecting, editing, and publishing book reviews submitted to the journal
Graduate Assistant, The Papers of George Washington, University of Virginia,
Charlottesville, VA, Fall 2010–Spring 2012
Performed research and copy-editing tasks for the editorial staff of the “Revolutionary
War Series” of the Papers of George Washington
Editorial Assistant, “People of the Founding Era” Project, Documents Compass, a program of
the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, Charlottesville, VA, June 2009-August 2011
Researched, performed quality control, developed best practices and workflows for an
online prosopography project that compiled a large database of individuals from the
founding generation of America; helped to train new employees in our research
methods and digital tools, and was promoted to Editorial Assistant in January 2011
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Attended Rare Book School course “Scholarly Editing: Principles & Practice,” Rare Book
School, Charlottesville, VA, June 8-12, 2015
Learned about scholarly editing skills and textual criticism techniques used in creating a
critical edition from Dr. David Vander Meulen, Professor of English at the University of
Virginia and editor of Studies in Bibliography
Attended Digital Humanities Summer Institute workshop “Conceptualising and
Creating a Digital Documentary Edition,” University of Victoria, Victoria, Canada,
June 1-5, 2015
Learned about the process of creating and managing a documentary edition online from
experienced editors Jennifer Stertzer and Cathy M. Hajo
6
Attended National Endowment for the Humanities workshop “Digital Methods for Military
History,” Northeastern University, Boston, MA, October 10-11, 2014
Learned about geospatial mapping and network analysis techniques used widely in the
Digital Humanities in order to start applying them to my own research.
Attended Association of Research Libraries workshops, “An Introduction to XML & XML
Applications,” and “Transforming Library Metadata with XSLT,” Association of Research
Libraries Headquarters, Washington, DC, February 26-28 and May 14-16, 2014
Learned about using XML for library applications, including TEI and metadata
standards such as MODS and METs; learned to use XSLT to transform XML into HTML
and how to use XSLT to crosswalk files from one metadata standard to another
Graduate of “Tomorrow’s Professor Today Program,” Teaching Resource Center, University
of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, August 2009–May 2011
A program facilitating the transition from graduate student to faculty member by
emphasizing preparedness and excellence in teaching, professional development, and
scholarship; helped to design and implement a graduate-student course covering these
topics in Virginia’s history department
HONORS AND FELLOWSHIPS
Herzog-Ernst-Scholarship (One-month Research Stipend), University of Erfurt, 2011
German Historical Institute Doctoral Fellowship (Two-month Travel Grant), German
Historical Institute, 2011
Bradley Fellowship (One-year, Full-Tuition and Stipend), University of Virginia, 2010–2011
James and Sylvia Thayer Short-Term Research Fellowship, Archives at the University of
California-Los Angeles, 2010
Hibernian Research Grant Award, Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism,
University of Notre Dame, 2010
Summer Language Fellowship (for German), University of Virginia, 2008
Dean’s Fellowship (Multi-year, Full-Tuition and Stipend), University of Virginia, 2007–2010
Phi Beta Kappa, Inducted Spring 2006
PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
American Historical Association
Association for Computers and the Humanities
American Catholic Historical Association
Society of Civil War Historians
LANGUAGES
Reading knowledge of French and German
7
DIGITAL HUMANITIES SKILLS
XML, XSLT, TEI, HTML, Basecamp, JIRA
REFERENCES
Dr. Gary W. Gallagher
Nau Professor of the Civil War
Corcoran Department of History, University of Virginia
gallagher@virginia.edu, (434) 924-6908
Dr. Gerald P. Fogarty, S.J.
William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of the History of Christianity
Department of Religious Studies, University of Virginia
gpf@virginia.edu, (434) 924-6707
Dr. Elizabeth R. Varon
Langbourne M. Williams Professor of American History
Corcoran Department of History, University of Virginia
erv5c@virginia.edu, (434) 924-7147
Dr. Joseph F. Kett
Professor Emeritus
Corcoran Department of History, University of Virginia
jfk9v@Virginia.edu
Susan H. Perdue
Director, Documents Compass
A Program of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities
ssh8a@virginia.edu, (434) 924-4519
Dr. Benjamin L. Huggins
Assistant Editor, Revolutionary War Series of the Papers of George Washington
University of Virginia
blh5a@virginia.edu, (434) 924-3569
William Kurtz Book Launch
The Nau Center's digital historian, William B. Kurtz, has just published his first book, Excommunicated from the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America (Fordham University Press: Dec. 1, 2015). You can read more about his book at its official Fordham University Press webpage, or at Dr. Kurtz's website, www.wkurtz.com.
The Nau Center will host an official book launch at the Byrd/Morris Seminar Room in the Harrison Institute / Small Special Collections Library on January 29, 2016 from 4:00 to 5:30 PM. Attendance is by invitation only. There will be some copies of the book available for purchase at the event.
Date:
Friday, January 29, 2016
Time and Location:
4:00-5:30 PM, Byrd/Morris Seminar Room, Harrison Institute / Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia
Interview with Will Kurtz, author of new book on Catholics and the Civil War
Published: February 08, 2016
William B. Kurtz is digital historian and archivist at the John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History at the University of Virginia. His first book, Excommunicated from the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America, was published in 2015 by Fordham University Press. In 2012 Kurtz presented his research at the Cushwa Center's American Catholic Studies Seminar, and he received the Center's 2010 Hibernian Research Award. Heather Grennan Gary recently had a chance to talk with him about his book.
excommunicatedcover
What first got you interested in Catholics and the Civil War? How did you get started?
I have always been interested in the Civil War because my father is a “Civil War buff.” As an undergraduate at Notre Dame, I completed a history honors thesis with former faculty member Dorothy Pratt on the diplomatic history of the war. When I arrived at the University of Virginia to study under Gary W. Gallagher, he convinced me that religion was a growing field of study for 19th century history, and I quickly realized that little had been done on Catholics in the Civil War. In fact, the last book-length study of Catholicism during the Civil War was written in 1945. To be sure, there have since been a number of studies on nuns who served as nurses or the famous Irish Brigade, but the chance to make a major contribution to Civil War and Catholic history by writing my dissertation and my book was too good to pass up.
While the Civil War is commonly seen as a turning point for U.S. history in general, you mention in your introduction that historians are divided on whether the Civil War is a turning point in U.S. Catholic history. From you title, is it fair to say that you believe it is a turning point?
My central question was to examine how the war shaped the Catholic population, most of which lived in the states outside of the Confederacy. On the whole, I think the war was a missed opportunity to promote assimilation and acceptance of Catholics on their own terms. Angered that the bloodshed of thousands of Catholics did little to eradicate anti-Catholicism, and by strong signs of continued nativism and religious prejudice after the war, many church and lay leaders effectively doubled-down on the creation of a separate Catholic subculture. This subculture of course never totally separated Catholics from other Americans, but it did create a massive system of parochial schools, organizations like the Knights of Columbus, and a large Catholic press designed to safeguard Catholics’ faith from a seemingly hostile outside world.
How did the Civil War impact the Catholic community in the United States at that time? Were things significantly different for Catholics from the beginning of the war to the end of the war? How did the ramifications of the war play out in the U.S. Catholic population, and for how long?
will_kurtzKurtz
At first Catholics volunteered in large numbers to serve the Union. Many non-Catholics appreciated it when Catholics raised the American flag over their churches and when New York Archbishop John Hughes wrote in favor of the Union and served as an unofficial emissary to Europe to convince Catholics there of the justice of the Union cause.
But as the war dragged on, its human cost became greater, and the Lincoln administration conducted a “harder war” that targeted southern slavery and even civil liberties in the North. Many Catholics, especially conservatives, pulled back from a war that was no longer just about saving the Union. They thought the war was too radical. They enlisted in smaller numbers and some openly opposed the war effort along with other Democrats in the North.
Tragically, their opposition led to the infamous New York Draft Riots of 1863, where crowds composed largely of Irish Catholics attacked Republican and black institutions, charities, and individuals across the city. Republicans such as the influential newspaper editor Horace Greeley saw this and charged Catholics with the old criticism that they weren’t truly loyal to the U.S. because of their religion. Anti-war Catholics reacted by talking briefly about the possibility of a “religious war” and reaffirming the needs to protect Catholics’ religious rights and their faith at all costs.
It’s really not until the 1950s and ’60s when some in the church move away from its emphasis on separate institutions and toward more open engagement with non-Catholic America. Only then do you see this defensive, subculture mentality start to recede in American Catholic life.
Your book includes some interesting demographic statistics—specifically, that while the Catholic population of the U.S. in 1860 was about 10 percent of the national total—about 3.1 million—about 90 percent of those Catholics lived outside of the Confederate states. That suggests that existing sources—especially southern Catholic sources—are pretty scarce. What were some of your most helpful sources, and where did you find them?
Notre Dame is actually an excellent place to study southern Catholic history, because of its archival holdings from the Archdiocese of New Orleans. Jean-Marie Odin, the archbishop of the city at the time, was French as were many of his priests. Louisville, Kentucky, was part of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati at this time, and there is a wonderful collection of letters from Bishop Martin Spalding, a native-born, slave-holding, anti-war bishop. In addition, the Notre Dame Archives holds a microfilm version of the records from the Archdiocese of Baltimore. When you couple those collections with its excellent collection of southern Catholic newspapers, researching at Notre Dame allows one to get a very good feel for the experience of Catholic southerners at this time. You’re right, though, that the collections aren’t generally as good as those from the North.
You include a chapter on priests and nuns in the Army. Do we know how many sister nurses served during the Civil War? How did their contributions change the prevailing narratives about Catholics and the Civil War?
The general number people cite of nuns serving during the war is 620, but researchers at the Daughters of Charity Archives in Emmitsburg, Maryland, believe this number was actually much closer to 700. Nuns were derided before the war through such lurid works as Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk (1836), which depicted them as corrupt and meant to gratify the lust of evil priests. Although this account was debunked before the war, many Americans still believed it, and some nuns complained of physical and verbal abuse whenever they wore their habits outside their convent’s walls. The sister nurses who served went a long way toward getting rid of anti-Catholic prejudice, at least as far as nuns and convents were concerned. They were commended for their work by the U.S. Army’s Surgeon General, William A. Hammond, and later they were invited to take part in an unveiling of a Lincoln memorial built at his gravesite in Springfield, Illinois in 1874. Nuns were much more successful than Catholic soldiers or priests in changing individuals’ opinions of Catholics, if not of their larger religion itself.
Did you uncover any surprises during your research?
One of the under-told stories I discovered was the effort to recruit American Civil War veterans into the Papal Army between 1867-1868. While most historians focus on the American Fenians, a group of Irishmen who hoped to achieve independence for Ireland, the story of the American Papal volunteers is ignored in most general histories of U.S. Catholicism. Although it ultimately came to nothing, there were allegedly hundreds of veterans and young men interested in volunteering under the command of Charles Carroll Tevis, a former Union colonel. That the American bishops were primarily responsible for squashing the idea shows how sensitive the hierarchy was to charges that Catholics were more loyal to the Pope than the United States.
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Fall 2013 American Catholic Studies Seminar: Will Kurtz
The Hibernian Research Award
The Nau Center at University of Virginia
Interview: William B. Kurtz, Author of ‘Excommunicated from the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America’
Posted by: Pat Cuadros January 27, 2017 in Book Interviews, Books 0 Comments
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Photo of William B. KurtzDr. William B. Kurtz is a digital historian and archivist at the John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Excommunicated from the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America. Dr. Kurtz has presented his research at many Civil War conferences and he is very active with the annual Virginia Festival of the Book.
Why were you interested in focusing on Catholics during the Civil War?
There is a renewed attention to religion during the war among Civil War historians. There was only one other book on the Catholic community (laity and religious) when I started writing and researching as part of my PhD at the University of Virginia. I was dissatisfied with how Catholic scholars neglected the war and how Civil War scholars neglected Catholics.
What unique challenges did Catholics experience, compared to those of the Protestant majority?
First, many were immigrants and as Catholics they pledged their religious loyalties to a European monarch, the pope. As huge numbers of them moved to the U.S. in the two decades before the war, the native-born population worried that these new arrivals might threaten their way of life. As foreigners and non-Protestants then, Catholics were suspected of being truly loyal to their native countries, blindly obedient to their priests, and potentially antagonistic to democracy.
Protestants during the war didn’t face questions about their loyalties, because Protestantism was taken as a given for most Americans. It was seen as an inherently modern and democratic religion, thus perfectly suited for the United States. In the 1840s and 1850s there were many instances of violence against Catholics. During the war and long after, Catholics had to combat that legacy of being regarded as disloyal and un-American because they weren’t native-born Protestants.
What about challenges for the Catholic soldiers?
Cover of Excommunicated from the UnionThere was this idea that one should die a “good death.” This was particularly important for soldiers away from their families. For Protestants this was an inner conviction and way of behaving at death, but for Catholics it required a priest to hear one’s confession before the battle or give last rites to a dying soldier. There were hundreds of Protestant chaplains, but only a few dozen Catholic ones to serve perhaps as many as 200,000 men scattered throughout Union armies. The U.S. Christian Commission supplied Protestant soldiers with thousands of bibles and tracts, but there’s no equivalent for Catholics. Catholic bishops were haphazard at best; they didn’t make a united effort to take care of soldiers of their faith.
What was one major reason Catholics were unable to combat prejudices from Protestants and Nativists?
Catholics were very loyal to the Democratic Party because it was conservative on social issues, had reached out to them as newly-arrived immigrants, and was the major political force opposing nativism in the antebellum U.S., North or South. During the war, Catholics refused to bolt from the Democratic Party, even after many Northern leaders and anti-slavery radicals saw its refusal to endorse all of President Abraham Lincoln’s wartime policies as an impediment to the North’s military victory. After the Emancipation Proclamation was issued in September 1862, many Republican northerners, especially radicals, came to believe that opposing the eradication of southern slavery was tantamount to sympathizing with the Confederacy. Catholics and most Democrats wanted a war for the “Union as it was,” not to eradicate slavery or to promote other radical reforms.
Many of us have seen films or shows about the Civil War. I don’t remember seeing much about Catholic nuns and their service!
corby-and-irish-brigade
The Conspirator actually does a good job of highlighting Mary Surratt’s Catholic faith and there’s a brief scene in Gettysburg meant to be Father William Corby’s famous battlefield absolution. But you’re right there’s little on nuns, and that continues with the show Mercy Street where the focus is on Protestant lay women.
Why do nuns rank as the top nurses of the Civil War?
Unlike most women at the time, some nuns like those from the Daughters of Charity, based out of Emmitsburg, Maryland, actually had some pre-war training in nursing. They were also hard-working, extremely dedicated, and believed that the self-mortification daily experienced as nurses was a path to personal holiness. While they ostensibly tried to be religiously neutral, they also hoped to convert soldiers they attended or at least to shed a more positive light on the Catholic Church’s image in America.
By all accounts, they were successful in dispelling old prejudices held by many Protestants they came in contact with on both sides. Statistics from one hospital run by Daughters of Charity, Satterlee General Hospital in Philadelphia, clearly shows it had a much lower mortality rate than most in the North or South. Those statistics were recorded by the hospital’s Protestant chaplain, Nathaniel West, who lavishly praised the nuns for their hard work and devotion.
Do any failures/successes from these formative years of our country’s history carry over to today for Catholics?
I think the example of Father Corby and the heroism of the Irish Brigade are stories that are better known today to Civil War scholars and buffs than to most Americans in the 19th century, and in that sense they stand as widely recognized and irrefutable instances of Catholic patriotism. As far as the failures or points of disagreement go, they still exist and are often found in disputes between Catholic conservatives and more liberal Americans over hot button issues today (sexual freedom) just as they were over the big issues in the past (nationalism, education).
Unlike during or after the Civil War, World War II and its aftermath did a lot to get rid of anti-Catholicism (and anti-Semitism) in the U.S. The soldiers themselves finally had enough of it and dedicated themselves to easing religious tensions back home. Thus you have the sociologist William Herberg famously proclaim in 1955 that Judaism and Catholicism are just as American as Protestantism, and the first Catholic president, John F. Kennedy, who was a WWII veteran, was elected in 1960.
What is really interesting to me are the parallels between the Catholic experience then and the Muslim experience now. See for example Humayun Khan, a Muslim American, UVa graduate, and U.S. Army captain who died in Iraq in 2004. Just as he is an example of a patriotic Muslim that counteracts anti-Islamic stereotypes in modern America, Father Corby and the Irish Brigade were revered the same way by Catholics after the Civil War. Both Catholics and later Muslims have been suspected of being un-American because of their religion. Both groups sent soldiers of their faith to fight and die for the nation. But, unfortunately, these sacrifices were only appreciated by some Americans and the religious prejudices against them remained long after the Civil War and Second Iraq War ended.
Excommunicated from the Union
California Bookwatch.
(Feb. 2016):
COPYRIGHT 2016 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com
Full Text:
Excommunicated from the Union
William B. Kurtz
Fordham University Press
2546 Belmont Avenue
University Box L, Bronx, NY 10458-5172
www.fordhampress.com
9780823268863, $35.00, www.amazon.com
Excommunicated from the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America is
recommended for Catholic studies and history holdings alike, and examines Catholic interests and social
and religious sentiments around the time of the Civil War. Many history readers unfamiliar with this
background will be delighted with a survey that provides unusual insights on how Irish and German
Catholics become involved in supporting the Union war effort, contrasting their experiences and approaches
with the calls for religious and political inclusion that challenged their concepts of faith and social structure.
In documenting anti-Catholicism in early America, this book illustrates the experiences of Catholics who
served in a time of upheaval and who preserved their religious views in the face of challenges to their roles
as Americans. From Catholic opposition to the war to how they remember it, this wide-ranging history is
key to any Civil War collection as well as a recommendation for Catholic studies students.
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"Excommunicated from the Union." California Bookwatch, Feb. 2016. General OneFile,
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Accessed 2 July 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A444914444
Excommunicated from the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America
by Kurtz, William B.
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Retail Price: $120.00
Issue: Winter 2016
ISBN: 9780823267538
A Catholic Communion Forged by War
Scholars of U.S. Catholic history have long lamented the absence of Catholics from historians’ narratives of the Civil War. If this is so, it is not for lack of involvement with more than 200,000 Catholic soldiers, at least fifty priest chaplains, and over six hundred religious sisters serving as nurses. Yet a dearth of monographs on this subject remains, making the recent contribution of William B. Kurtz all the more important and welcome. Kurtz, Digital Historian at the John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History at the University of Virginia, began the research that informs this volume as a doctoral student at the University of Virginia writing his dissertation under Civil War historian Gary W. Gallagher.
Kurtz’s research attempts to answer the question: “Did the Civil War help promote Catholics’ acceptance into the broader American society and culture, or did it merely reinforce existing prejudice?” (p. 6). He offers a mostly negative response to the first part of the question and a qualified affirmative to the second. Beginning with the Mexican War and ending with the construction of the war’s memory in the 1870s-1880s and beyond, Kurtz documents how Catholics tried and largely failed to win acceptance.
In developing his study, he admits the limitations of his source material. By relying on period newspapers and extant manuscript collections, Kurtz confesses that his study privileges the views of elite Catholic laity and clergy often to the exclusion of the poor, female, and non-Irish Catholics (though there is evidence in his research that he attempted to give voice to lay women and German Catholics in particular). His engagement with these sources, despite their limitations, provides a compelling argument and ultimately a new way of understanding the U.S. Catholic community during and after the war. If as Kurtz’s title suggests, Catholics were “excommunicated” from the Union, an allusion to the strength of the nativism and anti-Catholicism that drove their lack of acceptance in American society, then it must also be true that the war helped forge a new or at least strengthened communal identity – a Catholic subculture.
Kurtz’s careful scholarship provides important distinctions regarding Catholic engagement with the war, noting that Catholics’ approaches were not static; they evolved over the months and years of the conflict. The reaction of Catholics on April 12, 1861 (at the time of the Confederate firing on Fort Sumter) was very different from January 1, 1863 (the date of the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation) and still further distinct from April 15, 1865 (Lincoln’s assassination).
The author informs his readers that initially Catholics were enthusiastic about supporting the war – at least through 1861-1862 and with the limited aim of reuniting the nation, not ending slavery. The result was that “the war initially helped Catholics, Protestants, and nativists put aside old prejudices to work together toward the common goal of restoring the Union” (p. 42). But even in 1861 there were signs that Catholic support for the war, especially in the border regions, was limited with many supporting peace even if it resulted in a permanent Confederacy. This “skin deep” patriotism would not convince Protestants and nativists of the importance of Catholic contributions during and after the conflict.
Kurtz then turns to Catholic participation and accomplishments during the war. He dedicates a chapter each to the contributions of Catholic soldiers and clergy and religious sisters – groups often not appreciated even in discussions of the war and religion. Here he highlights the work of the religious sisters who “did more to rehabilitate the church in the eyes of Protestant Americans than did the actions of Catholic chaplains or soldiers” (p. 68). Kurtz argues that despite their often exemplary service, the war fostered resentment for soldiers, chaplains, and sister nurses, especially as their sacrifices were not always valued.
In his final chapters, Kurtz turns more specifically to the causes of Catholics’ marginalization in the postwar North, including their opposition to the Emancipation Proclamation and what they viewed as more radical war aims. By 1863, Catholics’ increasingly saw the war as “unholy” and gruesomely bloody, waged by an “activist federal government seemingly bent on disrupting their lives and infringing on their civil liberties, religious freedoms, and local ways of life” (p. 110). Here the author charts a resurgent anti-Catholicism in the 1870s and 1880s, especially Catholics’ conflict over school funding and Bible reading. In the final chapter, Kurtz dissects the creation of Catholic memory of the war, which was ultimately a failed project: “The service of Catholics alongside their Protestant neighbors during the war had not united Catholic and non-Catholic alike in ‘the same baptism of precious blood’” (p. 128).
Excommunicated from the Union is a carefully researched monograph, drawing from a wide array of archival sources. It is a concise, engaging volume that deserves to be read widely, among scholars of nineteenth century U.S. religion and Civil War historians, but also students in college and graduate seminar courses that delve into religious identity and the war. This superb study of the U.S. Catholic community in the Civil War era should remind scholars, students, and armchair historians alike of the important role Catholics played in the war and how the war in turn shaped Catholics’ communion of faith.
Rev. David J. Endres is assistant professor of church history and historical theology at the Athenaeum of Ohio/Mount St. Mary’s Seminary, Cincinnati. He is editor of the scholarly quarterly, U.S. Catholic Historian, and has written on the role of U.S. Catholics in the Civil War.
William B. KURTZ. Excommunicated from the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America. New York: Fordham University Press, 2016. pp. 236. $35.00 pb. ISBN 978-0-8232-6886-3. Reviewed by Karen TEEL, University of San Diego, 5998 Alcalá Park, San Diego, CA 92110.
During the nineteenth century, most white Catholics in the United States were of Irish heritage, and Irish Catholic experiences and attitudes often have been presented as representative of all white Catholics in that era. In Excommunicated from the Union, Civil War historian William B. Kurtz broadens and complicates this picture. Kurtz highlights the efforts of US- and German-born Catholics to establish their identities as true Americans, to serve their nation with honor, and to combat anti-Catholic nativist sentiment before, during, and after the Civil War. Ultimately, he shows that Catholics’ participation in the Union cause did not lead to their acceptance in mainstream US culture, as many hoped it would.
The study proceeds logically. Kurtz prepares the reader for his central argument about the Civil War by detailing anti-Mexican and anti-Catholic attitudes honed during the Mexican War. Separate chapters discuss the experiences of Catholic soldiers and of Catholic priests and nuns in the Civil War, as well as how the Catholic Church split over the question of slavery. Kurtz argues that many Catholics opposed the war not simply because of anti-black bias, of which Irish American Catholics are often accused, but because they were politically conservative supporters of national unity. Although they were not necessarily proslavery, he explains, they considered active abolitionism, which was endorsed by only a tiny minority of citizens, to be fanatical and socially disruptive. After the Civil War, anti-Catholicism continued virtually unabated, despite the fact that many Catholics had fought to keep the Union together. Kurtz concludes by chronicling Catholics’ memorialization of their own war participation as an effort to preserve the Union. Ultimately, he argues convincingly that when Catholics’ war service failed to integrate them into the larger US body politic, an already existing tendency toward an insular Catholic subculture was exacerbated, contributing to the development of “a separate Catholic America.”
Excommunicated from the Union is a welcome beginning toward filling a gap in the study of nineteenth-century US Catholicism, which has emphasized Irish Catholics almost exclusively. As such, the work raises vital questions for further research. I will mention two. First, extending Kurtz’s line of questioning has the potential to contribute to the ongoing illumination, currently being pursued by scholars in many fields, of the history of racism and white supremacy. Kurtz demonstrates that the story of Catholic opposition to the Civil War is more complicated than the common narrative that white (Irish) Catholics adopted the antiblack racism of dominant US culture. In crafting additional strands to this narrative, Kurtz largely sets aside the issue of racism, implying that the white Catholics he is describing were concerned more with their own social acceptance than with subjugating African Americans. In fact, by emphasizing that many abolitionists were also anti-Catholic, he suggests that it was only natural for white Catholics to oppose them. Perhaps so. Still, insofar as these Catholics sought acceptance within a white supremacist society by endorsing or failing to oppose that society’s efforts to keep black people down, we cannot ignore antiblack racism. Second, just as the US Catholic Church was never exclusively Irish, neither was it ever exclusively white. Therefore, also clearly needed are studies of this caliber that consider the histories of nonwhite US Catholics. What, for example, were black Catholics’ experiences before, during, and after the Civil War, both within the Church and in US society more generally? Not only would such studies be valuable on their own, but they could also add dimension to and correct our portraits of white Catholics. These are some of the further avenues of inquiry rendered visible and urgent by Kurtz’s carefully nuanced account.
Kurtz’s well-organized study is meticulously researched, and he translates his findings into accessible prose. The book, or individual chapters, could be assigned in courses—especially at the graduate level—on the Civil War, nineteenth-century politics, or US Catholic history. Excommunicated from the Union is a valuable scholarly contribution that offers detailed evidence and provocative insights on all these topics.