November 10, 2010
The historic West Virginia Independence Hall (WVIH) Museum in downtown Wheeling will present a lecture by Dr. Mark A. Snell entitled “The 1860 Election of Abraham Lincoln” on Saturday, Nov. 20, at 6 p.m., followed by a reception. The talk is the first of a series of programs commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Civil War and West Virginia statehood. The lecture and reception are free and the public is invited to attend.
The lecture will focus on Lincoln’s election 150 years ago in November, 1860, which helped set the stage for the Civil War. The 16th president has been captured in the collective memory of West Virginia and the nation as a whole.
After retirement from the United States Army, Snell moved to Shepherdstown, W.Va., where he serves as an associate professor of history at Shepherd University (SU), teaching courses on the Civil War, World War I and World War II. He also is the director of The George Tyler Moore Center for the Study of the Civil War at SU. Snell previously taught in the department of history at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Recently, he served as the visiting senior lecturer in the Department of War Studies at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, England. Snell also is an adjunct professor in the Masters of Military History degree program at Norwich University, a top military college in Northfield, Vt.
In February 2009, Snell was given the “Honorary West Virginian Award” by Gov. Joe Manchin.
Snell has written or edited several books on the Civil War including From First to Last, The Life of Major General William B. Franklin (Fordham University Press, 2002). He is the editor of Dancing Along the Deadline: The Andersonville Memoir of a Prisoner of the Confederacy (Presidio Press, 1996) and Unknown Soldiers: The American Expeditionary Forces in Memory and Remembrance (Kent State University Press, 2008). In addition he served as co-editor of Bugle Resounding: Music and Musicians of the Civil War Era (University of Missouri Press, 2004).
For more information about the lecture, “The 1860 Election of Abraham Lincoln,” contact Travis Henline, site manager at Independence Hall at (304) 238-1300.
West Virginia Independence Hall, originally built as a federal custom house in 1859, served as the home of the pro-Union state conventions of Virginia during the spring and summer of 1861 and as the capitol of loyal Virginia from June 1861 to June 1863. It also was the site of the first constitutional convention for West Virginia. Designated a National Historic Landmark in 1988, the museum is maintained and operated by the West Virginia Division of Culture and History, with the cooperation and assistance of the West Virginia Independence Hall Foundation. The museum is open daily from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Saturday, with the exception of major holidays. The museum is located on the corner of 16th and Market Streets in Wheeling.
With the leadership of the West Virginia Department of Education and the Arts, Kay Goodwin, cabinet secretary, the West Virginia Division of Culture and History brings together the state’s past, present and future through programs and services in the areas of archives and history, the arts, historic preservation and museums. Its administrative offices, led by Commissioner Randall Reid-Smith, are located at the Culture Center in the State Capitol Complex in Charleston, which also houses the state archives and state museum. The Culture Center is West Virginia’s official showcase for the arts. The agency also operates a network of museums and historic sites across the state. For more information about the Division’s programs, visit www.wvculture.org. The Division of Culture and History is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer.
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