Even today, college campuses across the country still feel the lingering effects of the Civil War. It’s an interesting notion – interesting enough for Michael David Cohen, research assistant professor of history, to write a book on the subject titled “Reconstructing the Campus: Higher Education and the American Civil War.”
Although the book was published in 2012, Cohen’s book was recently awarded the 2014 Critics’ Choice Book Award in August.
Tom Chaffin, research professor of history, called Cohen’s area of study “unusual” for investigating the intersection of the war and higher education.
“As a lot of scholarship is devoted to military history and race relations,” Chaffin said. “Few if any scholars have looked at higher education, and it serves as a reminder that the civil war was not just battlefields, but affected and transformed aspects of life on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line, north and south, east and west.”
During his research, Cohen traveled across the county to visit schools with detailed records, including South Carolina College and the University of California, Berkeley. The names of many of the establishments Cohen visited have been changed because of expansion experienced since the 19th century.
“I traveled to archives and was able to perform original research and ultimately tell the story of America’s higher education in my own words,” Cohen said.
Prior to the war, Southern colleges were small, traditional and largely limited to students from elite families. After the war, damage to infrastructure was so severe that colleges convinced private donors to support expansions.
Having secured these donors, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, along with other colleges, became true universities. More students began to enroll, and many institutions planned to add graduate and professional schools. While the term “university” was used before the Civil War, it simply indicated prestige as opposed to a difference in curriculum.
The University of South Carolina also admitted one African-American student; a display of increased reverence for civil rights.
In his book, Cohen also argued that the Civil War led to greater federal government involvement in education, which directly impacted funding. Military officers were also distributed to schools, giving way to early ROTC programs.
Cohen notes the importance of reflecting on this era of our nation’s history and has enjoyed the commemoration of the Civil War Sesquicentennial.
“Right now it’s the 150th year since the Civil War, and it’s nice to see people interested in the events that have happened,” Cohen said. “It’s important to see just how much the Civil War impacted everyone’s lives. I like seeing that the work I’ve done is part of a larger picture beyond battlefields, beyond emancipation of slaves: it changed everything.”
