Fall 2024
"Bonds of War: How Civil War Financial Agents Sold the World on the Union" with Dr. David K. Thomson, Associate Professor of History at Sacred Heart University
Date: Monday, November 11, 2024
Time: 6-7:30 p.m.
Format: In Person
Location: Room 114, Belk Library and Information Commons
Description: How does one package and sell confidence in the stability of a nation riven by civil strife? This was the question that loomed before the Philadelphia financial house of Jay Cooke & Company, entrusted by the U.S. government with an unprecedented sale of bonds to finance the Union war effort in the early days of the American Civil War. How the government and its agents marketed these bonds revealed a version of the war the public was willing to buy and buy into, based not just in the full faith and credit of the United States but also in the success of its armies and its long-term vision for open markets. From Maine to California, and in foreign halls of power and economic influence, thousands of agents were deployed to sell a clear message: Union victory was unleashing the American economy itself.
Details: This event is free and open to the public. For a disability accommodation, visit odr.appstate.edu.
Host: The Appalachian State University Department of History and the College of Arts and Sciences
Questions? Please contact Dr. Judkin Browning, professor of history, at browningjj@appstate.edu or (828) 262-6022.
About Dr. David K. Thomson
Dr. David K. Thomson is an associate professor of history at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, CT. His book, Bonds of War, received the 2023 Wiley-Silver Prize in Civil War History for the best first book published in Civil War History, as well as an honorable mention for the 2023 Organization of American Historians Civil War and Reconstruction Prize. His writing has also been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, Bloomberg, and the Boston Globe Magazine.
To learn more about Thomson, visit his website: davidkthomson.com.
Founding the Series
These events are part of the Civil War Speaker Series in the Department of History, housed in the College of Arts and Sciences at Appalachian State University. Dr. Judkin Browning, Professor of Civil War and Military History, designed the Series for scholars to give presentations on different aspects of the Civil War, helping the general public and campus community view and understand the conflict through new prisms.
For questions, contact Dr. Browning at browningjj@appstate.edu or (828) 262-6022.
About the Civil War Speaker Series
The Civil War Speaker Series furthers the College of Arts and Sciences mission of fostering the development of knowledge and skills essential to continued learning, as well as cultivating habits of inquiry. The U.S. Civil War is perhaps the most popular American history topic among the general public—judging by book sales, TV programs and internet searches. However, interpretations of that conflict are undergoing constant permutations, forever influenced by what’s happening in our own society (see the explosion of works on military occupation and guerrilla warfare since the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003).
These speakers allow the campus community and the greater community to learn more about current historical interpretations as well as expose them to new and creative ways of understanding the war and its aftermath. They will see that the war is about far more than Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant, and that these scholars open up new windows of opportunity to grapple with the issues of a war whose legacy we are still dealing with today.
This series advances our College’s vision, particularly “to engage more of the public in the enterprise of higher education and to help a larger public understand the significance of broad-based education anchored in a tradition of the liberal arts.”