Georgia Historical Society

Dear Colleague,

Welcome to Savannah - a city rich in history, charm, and southern hospitality!  The Georgia Historical Society (GHS) invites you to join us for a four-week residential seminar of study, research, and discussion as we explore "The American Civil War at 150: New Approaches." Our program was selected as a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar for College Teachers for Summer 2010.  GHS will offer a four-week session from June 6 - July 2, 2010.  An NEH Seminar includes 16 participants working in collaboration with one or two leading scholars. Participants will have access to a major library collection, with time reserved to pursue individual research and study projects.

Seminar Content, Scope, and Approach
"The American Civil War at 150: New Approaches" will engage college and university teachers in four weeks of rigorous study to include intensive readings of primary and secondary sources, discussion sessions, guest lectures, and site visits. Together we'll read and discuss new scholarship on the War and will carry out individual research projects using the extensive holdings of the Georgia Historical Society's Library and Archives. Our hope is that this Seminar will challenge your preconceived notions of the reasons behind the conflict, the people who lived through it, and the consequences of a war that threatened to undermine the American experiment and undo the handiwork of the Founders. 

Many of the issues that divided the Civil War generation - race in American society, the growth and scope of federal authority, states rights vs. centralized power, the role of minorities in American life - are still critical to civic life in our own day.  As the national sesquicentennial commemoration of the Civil War approaches in 2011, a greater understanding of these issues will be more important than ever.  We hope that your participation in this seminar will enhance the level of instruction about this critical period in American history in college classrooms around the country and thereby engage students to think critically about contemporary problems and conflicts. 

The American Civil War was arguably the single most significant event in American history.  If the Revolution established the United States and the Constitution its republican form of government, the Civil War preserved both from their greatest challenge.  The Civil War created our modern nation.  It ensured the survival of the United States of America, our republican form of government, and proved to the world once and for all the ability of the "People" to govern themselves.  The Civil War prevented perpetual strife and anarchy by crushing the doctrine of secession and making America "one nation, indivisible;" abolished slavery and laid the foundation for a biracial society; affirmed our nation's commitment to majority rule and acceptance of the results of legitimate elections as first established in 1800; and created the world's beacon of liberty and the haven for millions seeking refuge, asylum, and opportunity over the past 150 years.  

While all of this may seem self-evident, in the popular mind nothing could be farther from the truth.  In the 1890s, as America became an Imperial power on the world stage, both Northerners and Southerners united to create the "Reconciliationist" version of the war: both sides fought valiantly for what they thought was right, leaders on both sides were honorable men, and race and slavery had little or nothing to do with the cause.  By the 1890s (and ever since) both sides could lament the Reconstruction era as a tragedy, a misguided attempt to create a biracial society, which they claimed had never been a goal of the war.  As Civil War scholar Gary Gallagher has recently noted, "The Reconciliationist Cause most often was characterized by a measure of northern capitulation to the white South and the Lost Cause tradition."  Lost in the process was the fact that, as Frederick Douglass noted in 1871, loyal Americans should never forget that a Confederate victory would have meant "death to the Republic."  

As Jim Crow became the law of the land, white Southerners and Northerners shook hands across the bloody chasm and agreed to lay aside the more fundamental issues of what caused the war in order to achieve reconciliation and racial solidarity as America entered the world stage at the turn of the century.  In this view, there were no traitors to the United States, states rights, not slavery, was the root cause of the "conflict," and the conflict itself became a "War between the States" rather than a Civil War between the forces of the national government and an insurgent uprising bent on destroying the United States in order to perpetuate the institution of slavery.   With few exceptions, this Reconciliationist interpretation prevailed until the nation entered the Centennial remembrance of the War in the early 1960s (which also coincided with the Civil Rights movement), and outside of academic circles, continues in force in popular culture to the present day.  It was forged at the expense of all those - black and white, southern and northern - who fought to defend the government of the United States against the most formidable and dangerous internal threat it has ever faced. 

The Civil War was a conflict of unprecedented scale and bloodshed that resolved two issues left unresolved by the Founders: 1) Is the United States a creation of the states or of the people - a loose confederation of states that could at any time reclaim their sovereignty or an individual nation established on the principals of representative government and majority rule? And 2) would the United States continue to sanction human slavery, an economic and social institution inherited from the colonial period but increasingly incompatible with the nation's stated commitment to the cause of liberty?  With these questions in mind, seminar participants will delve into rigorous and directed study that spans the cause of the war, the choosing of sides, slavery and emancipation, and the war as it is remembered in our collective history and memory. They will, in short, be challenged to stand on different ground, closer to the actual historical evidence, stripped of all the layers of romanticism that have prevailed since 1865, and to understand the conflict as did those who participated in it from 1861 to 1865.   

The American Civil War has historically been celebrated through re-enactments and public programming that does more to glorify the war rather than emphasize Lincoln's "rebirth of freedom."  The Civil War was a tragedy that sacrificed over 620,000 American lives and left hundreds of thousands more scarred or maimed for life.  Yes, there was heroism on both sides, but that heroism needs to be set in the context of the causes of the war as well as the unprecedented violence and suffering that engulfed our nation from 1861 to 1877, inclusive of the Reconstruction period.  Heroism must not be separated from the cause that produced it.  Participating college and university educators will be asked to remove themselves from their comfort zones, to cast aside preconceived notions they may hold surrounding the war and its participants, and to explore new scholarship and ideas that present new perspectives on the era in order to gain a deeper and more honest understanding of the conflict. 

Visiting Scholars
Speakers and course readings have been selected to engage participants in rigorous review of some of the best recent scholarship on the Civil War and are intended to inform their understanding of the themes presented in the Seminar. These distinguished scholars will discuss their books with us and guide our group dialogue on the War's causes, participants, and consequences.  We've invited three of the nation's leading Civil War scholars to be part of our seminar:

David Blight is the Class of 1954 Professor of American History at Yale University and director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale.  His book Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory received eight book awards, including the Lincoln Prize, the Bancroft Prize, and the Frederick Douglass Prize. He has many other published works, including his most recent, A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Narratives of Emancipation. He is a frequent book reviewer and appears frequently on documentaries and historical panels

Chandra Manning is an assistant professor of history at Georgetown University and is the author of What this Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War, for which she received the 2008 Lincoln Prize Honorable Mention. She is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College, received an M.Phil. from the National University of Ireland, Galway, and earned her Ph.D. at Harvard University. 

Elizabeth Brown Pryor is a Senior Diplomat with the American Foreign Service and the author of two books about the Civil War era, Clara Barton: Professional Angel, considered the definitive biography of the pioneering nurse, educator, and Red Cross organizer, and Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee through His Private Letters, for which she won the Lincoln Prize in 2008. Pryor received an undergraduate degree in history from Northwestern University & the University of London, and an M.A. in history from the University of Pennsylvania. Working in the U.S. Foreign Service, she has served in a variety of posts, including the U.S. Embassy in Madrid, the U.S. embassy in South Africa, served as a Senior Negotiator on the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, as Director for Arms Control on the National Security Council, as well as posts in Sarajevo and the U.S. Mission to NATO.

Pre-Seminar Preparation
Well before arrival, you will receive a reading list and course packet that will prepare you for the Seminar. These readings are intended to serve as a foundation upon which our presenting scholars, site visits, meaningful group dialogue, and invested research and study will be built as we explore and better understand the complex themes and experiences relating to the American Civil War.

Participants will be asked to read Chandra Manning's What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War, Elizabeth Brown Pryor's Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee through His Private Letters, and David Blight's A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Narratives of Emancipation and Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory.  Seminar participants do not need to purchase these books; we'll send them out to you two months before the seminar begins. We will also send you a coursepack with excerpts from other selected readings.

Overview of Seminar Content
Each week of the four-week seminar will follow a similar format and will be typically comprised of discussion sessions on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday mornings from 9:30 a.m. to noon.  Site visits will be made on Wednesdays, while Fridays will be open for participants to use as they choose - to pursue their own research projects, to prepare for the next week's assigned readings, or to explore the historical sites in Savannah and the surrounding lowcountry.  The afternoons of each discussion day will also be free for individual research in GHS's Library and Archives and/or preparation of the next day's reading.  I and/or Dr. Deaton will be available to participants during library hours for advisement in personal research and a dedicated archivist will be available to provide reference assistance to seminar participants.  A project Web site will be created to highlight program activities and results of participant research projects. 

The seminar will begin Sunday, June 6, with a gathering at Hodgson Hall, the Georgia Historical Society's headquarters at our Savannah campus, that will include registration, welcome, introductions, and an overview of seminar activities and participant expectations.  A reception will be hosted that evening for participants to mingle with colleagues, relax, and enjoy the hospitality and charms of Savannah.

 
Week One: "The Cause" 
During week one, participants will be introduced to "The Cause" of the American Civil War.  Participants will read Chandra Manning's award-winning study, What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War.  Manning uses letters, diaries, and regimental newspapers to explore the motivation of Civil War soldiers - black and white, northern and southern - as they fought and marched across a divided country.   Manning examines how the U.S. and Confederate soldiers - writing at the time, not later - came to identify slavery as the central issue of the war and what that meant for a tumultuous nation.  With the predominance of the Lost Cause mythology and interpretation of the War that became dominant in the 1890s (and solidified in the public mind by movies like Gone With the Wind ), scholars have struggled to place slavery back at the center of the causes of the war.  This book uncompromisingly does so, and convincingly demonstrates that soldiers on both sides of the conflict recognized slavery as the war's primary cause.  Dr. Manning's book was awarded a Lincoln Prize Honorable Mention in 2008.  On Tuesday of week one, Dr. Manning, an assistant professor of history at Georgetown University, will lecture about her book and lead the group in discussion.  

On Wednesday of this week, I will lead participants on a site visit to Ebenezer Creek (pictured here, left), one of the most significant sites connected to the African-American experience in the Civil War.  The event that occurred there on December 9, 1864, shaped the policies of the United States government toward Freedmen and set the stage for the development of the concept of land redistribution and the famous "40 acres and a mule" policy.

 As Sherman's advancing army neared Savannah during its March to the Sea, it had collected thousands of escaped slaves who followed along behind the U.S. army columns in the hope of finding freedom.  On the far left wing of the army, the 14th Army Corps under the command of United States Army General Jefferson C. Davis laid pontoon bridges over those streams too deep to ford.  When the column reached Ebenezer Creek in Effingham County the pontoons were as usual laid by the engineers and the troops crossed safely over.  This time, however, General Davis ordered the bridges taken up before the mass of former slaves, which by some estimates had reached thousands, could pass over.  Fearing that they would be returned to slavery or killed by Confederate cavalry that was hanging on the flanks of the U.S. army, hundreds of these African-Americans leaped into the deep creek, attempted to swim, and drowned.

The tragic episode exploded in the northern press. When word reached Washington of the event, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton decided to visit Savannah after its fall to investigate the matter.  His subsequent interview with Sherman and the leaders of the city's African-American community resulted in the famous Field Order No. 15 and its policy of land distribution to Freedmen along the sea islands of the Georgia and South Carolina coast. 

Today, the site of the infamous crossing of Ebenezer Creek is on private property, undeveloped, inaccessible to the general public, and looks remarkably as it did almost 150 years ago.  By visiting this undisturbed site, the participants in this program will gain a deeper understanding of the experience of African-Americans in the war, see a new side to army-civilian relations during the conflict, and come away with an appreciation for the event that set in motion the federal government's first attempt to provide economic aid for Freedmen. 

Week Two: "Choosing Sides"
Week two will focus on exploring the history of "Choosing Sides" in the American Civil War and the notion that "southern" and "Confederate" were not interchangeable. Seminar participants will read Elizabeth Brown Pryor's pathbreaking biography of Robert E. Lee, Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters.  Pryor's book won the 2008 Lincoln Prize and is a major re-examination of Lee and his place in history.  Lee's decision will be juxtaposed with that of George Thomas, a Virginian like Lee but one who chose a very different track by remaining loyal to the United States.  Professor Pryor will lecture and lead the discussion on Tuesday of this week. 

After reading Pryor's biography of Lee, seminar participants will be taken on a guided tour of Fort Pulaski National Monument (pictured, left), a U.S. National Park site located 15 miles east of Savannah.  The construction of the fort on Cockspur Island was Lee's first military assignment upon his graduation from West Point in 1829.  During the Civil War, the Battle of Fort Pulaski in April 1862 marked a turning point in military history.  It featured the first significant use of rifled cannons in combat.  These accurate, long-range weapons shattered Fort Pulaski's walls from over a mile away.  After thirty-hours of bombardment, the fort surrendered.  The battle surprised military strategists worldwide (including Lee, who thought it impregnable), signaling the end of masonry fortifications. It was from Fort Pulaski that, on May 9, 1862, United States General David Hunter issued his historic General Orders Number 11, which stated that all slaves in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina were free.  President Lincoln quickly rescinded the order, but later issued his own Emancipation Proclamation.

Week Three: "Slavery and Emancipation"
During week three, participants will focus on "Slavery and Emancipation" by grappling with a number of questions.  What impact did the dislocation of war have on the southern slave population? Were the slaves freed or did they free themselves?  What role did the Freedmen play in their emancipation and how did they go about creating their own communities after the war?  What about recent neo-Confederate claims that slaves served willingly in the Confederate army and did so in great numbers, buttressing the argument that the Civil War had nothing to do with race and slavery?  These questions will serve as a starting point for a discussion led by guest lecturer Dr. David W. Blight of Yale University and author of week three's primary reading, A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped To Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation.  Dr. Blight is a former Lincoln Prize winner, and his book illuminates the lives of two extraordinary men, Wallace Turnage and John Washington, both of whom escaped from slavery and both of whom later wrote vivid accounts of their desperate flight to reach U.S. lines.  Blight's book not only reproduced their recently recovered narratives of freedom, but he also provides richly detailed biographies of both men.  What this book makes clear is that slaves did not wait passively for someone else - the United States armed forces or Abraham Lincoln - to free them.  Instead, they played an active if not leading role in the emancipation process.  

To provide a deeper understanding of the African-American experience in war and Reconstruction, during week three participants will take a guided excursion to Sapelo Island (pictured, left), a 16,500-acre island located midway on the Georgia coastline on the eastern fringe of McIntosh County and accessible only by ferry.  The story of African-American life and culture on the island begins in the early nineteenth century and encompasses slavery and plantation economies, the establishment of Freedmen communities during Reconstruction, and endures with the presence of a small, close-knit community of African Americans who trace their lineage to enslaved West Africans.  The plantations of Sapelo Island were the largest producers of Sea Island cotton in antebellum America and the island offers a wonderful opportunity to explore the ways in which geography, environment, and economics shaped the development of African-American culture in the nineteenth century.  This particular island affords a glimpse into the rich cultural history and communities of African-Americans in Georgia's barrier islands.  Seminar participants will hear from Buddy Sullivan, the Director of the Sapelo Island National Estuarine Research Reserve and an expert on coastal Georgia history, to gain an overview of the history of the island.  In addition, they will visit Hog Hammock, a historic African-American community established in 1857 and will hear from Sapelo Island native, Cornelia Walker Bailey, a direct descendent of Bilalie, the most famous and powerful enslaved African to inhabit the island.  Ms. Bailey is author of the cultural memoir God, Dr. Buzzard, and the Bolito Man: A Saltwater Geechee Talks About Life on Sapelo Island, Georgia (which seminar participants will read), and has been deemed the keeper of the islands culture and history and the sage of Sapelo. The island will provide a context for the larger African-American experience in the aftermath of the Civil War and demonstrate the organic nature of African-American folkways and culture, and how both have been sustained into the twentieth century and beyond. 

Week Four: "The War in History and Memory"
The final week of the seminar will focus on "The War in History and Memory."  Among many others, we'll discuss the following questions: How have Americans remembered the war and its causes, and how have conflicting interpretations of those issues shaped how we perceive and remember the war?  How have those interpretations shaped policy, art, culture, laws, and the way the Civil War is taught in our secondary and higher institutions of learning?  After 150 years, are we ready to take an unblinking look at the war and those who fought it and lived through it, and be honest about what they were fighting for? How do we ever achieve racial reconciliation if we cannot acknowledge the tragic aspects of our past, and talk about them?  These issues will be discussed in this final week as participants read David Blight's prize-winning study, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, which won eight book awards, including the Lincoln Prize, the Bancroft Prize, and the Frederick Douglass Prize. Dr. Blight will return in Week Four to lead our discussion on his book as well as other recent scholarship on the ways in which the Civil War is remembered in American culture. 

Friday of Week Four will mark the conclusion of the seminar.  Participants will gather to present their research projects and discuss ways in which they plan to implement what you've seen, heard, read, and experienced in the seminar.

Participant Expectations
GHS's Summer Seminar for College Teachers will unquestionably demand a great deal of each individual participant.  To fulfill the Seminar goals and ensure a dynamic professional development experience for all attendees we expect 100 percent commitment and involvement from each participant.  A robust reading schedule will be assigned, and we ask that all required readings be completed prior to each discussion session.  Blocks of time have been set aside for group discussion and for you to conduct research in GHS's Library and Archives and prepare your research project.

While lectures and research will be conducted indoors, the seminar's urban walking tours and island excursions will take place in the heat of Savannah's summer.  You can reasonably expect warm days, potentially rainy afternoons, and flying insects of various kinds both in town and when we visit the islands. You'll want to dress accordingly for both environments. Even in summer, however, Savannah remains one of the most visited tourist attractions in the country, and the city is overflowing with charm, great food, beautiful architecture, and unique historic sites and cultural attractions. We think you'll find it a wonderful place to visit, and we invite you to take advantage of all that it has to offer. 

Seminar Institution and Staff
Chartered by the Georgia General Assembly in 1839, the Georgia Historical Society (GHS) is the state's oldest cultural organization and first and only statewide historical society.  GHS is an educational and research institution created to preserve and interpret the history of Georgia and the state's role in American history by operating a library and archive in Savannah, by presenting a variety of educational programs across the state, and by authoring publications on Georgia and American history for scholars and students across the nation.  Headquartered in Savannah with offices in Atlanta, the Society has 6,000 individual members and nearly 200 affiliate chapters.

GHS Library and Archives
The Georgia Historical Society is a major research center and houses the world's oldest collection of material related to Georgia history.  The Society's collection includes four million manuscripts, 100,000 photographs, 30,000 architectural drawings, 15,000 rare and non-rare books, and thousands of maps, portraits and artifacts, representing the collective memory of the state of Georgia and relating the stories of the state's diverse people.

Publications and Scholarship
GHS is the world's oldest publisher of Georgia history.  Since 1840, when it published its first book, the Society has led the way in interpreting Georgia's history through the printed word.  In addition to books, GHS has published The Georgia Historical Quarterly, the award-winning journal of record for Georgia and southern history, since 1917.  The Society also publishes Georgia History Today, a quarterly member magazine that examines the ongoing presence of the past.

Project Staff

W. Todd Groce will serve as Director for the Seminar. He serves as President and CEO of the Georgia Historical Society and is a published scholar specializing in the history of the South with further expertise in the Civil War era.  He is the author of Mountain Rebels: East Tennessee Confederates and the Civil War and co-editor with Stephen V. Ash of Nineteenth Century America: Essays in Honor of Paul H. Bergeron, both published by the University of Tennessee Press. He has written nearly 40 articles, essays, and book reviews. He frequently lectures on the history of the American South and U.S. military history and has made television appearances on the Discovery Channel, Georgia Public Television, C-SPAN's Book TV, and The History Channel.

Stan Deaton is Senior Historian at the Georgia Historical Society and will serve as Assistant Director for the program.  He is also the Managing Editor and Book Review Editor of The Georgia Historical Quarterly, the Society's scholarly journal. He holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Florida.

Academic Resources
In addition to lectures, site visits, and the required readings, you will be conducting research in GHS's extensive library and archives collection for your Seminar research project.  The GHS library currently provides access to paper-based and electronic catalogs, collection finding aids, serial publications, books, microfilm, and archival material.  Technologies in place in the reading room include three public-access microfilm reader/printers, one public-access microfiche reader, two public-access computer terminals, one staff-only computer terminal, and one staff-only photocopier.

GHS's archival collections chronicle the national experience as lived, interpreted, and documented by ordinary citizens and community, state, and national leaders.  GHS's vast archival collection helps to inform the development of new scholarship on topics in American history by providing researchers with access to primary source materials that provide a fuller context for understanding and interpreting the role of individuals and events - social, cultural, economic, and political - that have influenced and shaped the development of our state and nation from the time of our founding fathers through the present day.  The unparalleled archival collection of the Georgia Historical Society offers a remarkable window on the experience of Americans during the Civil War.  Indeed, it is possible to tell the story of the war through the lens of this one repository.  From the papers of leaders like Robert E. Lee, Admiral Josiah Tattnall, Colonel Francis Bartow, and General Lafayette McLaws to the writing and records of common soldiers, women on the home front, slaves and freedmen, the GHS collection relates the experience of the war in all its breadth and tragedy.  Documents that illuminate secession and its causes; others that tell of the horrors of battle and the challenges of keeping a family together behind the lines; and a rare petition from Georgia soldiers to General Lee asking that slaves be armed to fight for southern independence are crucial to more fully understanding our nation's greatest crisis.

Seminar lectures and discussion sessions will be held at the Georgia Historical Society's Hodgson Hall.  The historic Hodgson Hall is GHS's research library and archives and will be opened to seminar participants to conduct research during regular business hours (Tuesday - Friday, 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. and the first and third Saturdays of each month, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.).  In addition, the library will be opened for sole use by seminar participants during Monday afternoons, and on Saturdays that are normally closed. GHS staff archivists and historians will be available to assist you in your research.

Participants are encouraged to bring laptop computers with them as public access computers are limited.  Although personal computers are welcomed in lecture sessions, they are discouraged for on-site visits. Use your discretion here. We will make necessary accommodations to safely store personal computers at Hodgson Hall before leaving for a site visit. 

Eligibility and Application Procedures
This Seminar is designed primarily for teachers of American undergraduate students.  Qualified independent scholars and those employed by museums, libraries, historical societies, and other organizations may be eligible to compete provided they can effectively advance the teaching and research goals of the seminar or institute.  Applicants must be United States citizens, residents of U.S. jurisdictions, or foreign nationals who have been residing in the United States or its territories for at least the three years immediately preceding the application deadline.  Foreign nationals teaching abroad at non-U.S. chartered institutions are not eligible to apply.

New this year: Up to two seminar spaces are reserved for current full-time graduate students in the humanities.

Applicants must complete the NEH application cover sheet and provide all of the information requested to be considered eligible.  An applicant need not have an advanced degree in order to qualify. Adjunct and part-time lecturers are eligible to apply.  Individuals may not apply to study with a director of a seminar who is a current colleague or a family member.  Individuals must not apply to seminars directed by scholars with whom they have studied.  Institute selection committees are advised that only under the most compelling and exceptional circumstances may an individual participate in an institute with a director or a lead faculty member who has guided that individual's research or in whose previous institute or seminar he or she has participated. 

New this year: An individual may apply to up to three projects in any one year (seminars, institutes or Landmarks workshops), but may participate in only one. Please note that eligibility criteria differ significantly between the Landmarks Workshops and the Seminars and Institutes programs.

Applicants must complete the NEH application cover sheet and provide all of the information and application components requested to be considered eligible.  Perhaps the most important part of the completed application is the essay. The essay should be no more than four double-spaced pages. This essay should include your reasons for applying to the specific project; your relevant personal and academic information; your qualifications to do the work of the project and make a contribution to it; what you hope to accomplish; and the relation of the study to your teaching. Additionally, two letters of recommendation are required.  The two referees may be from inside or outside your home institution.  They should be familiar with your professional accomplishments or promise, teaching and/or research interests, and ability to contribute to and benefit from participation in the Seminar.  Referees should be provided with the director's description of the Seminar and the applicant's essay.   Applicants who are current graduate students should secure a letter from a professor or advisor.  Please ask each of your referees to sign their name across the seal on the back of the envelope containing their letter, and enclose the letters with your application. 

Completed application must be postmarked no later than March 2, 2010 and mailed to:

Georgia Historical Society
501 Whitaker Street
Savannah, GA 31401
Attn: NEH Summer Seminar 

For complete application information, go to our NEH Summer Seminar website at www.georgiahistory.com/ and click on Application . Note: If you are receiving this letter via email, you will find full application instructions in the accompanying email attachment.

Description of Housing
The Georgia Historical Society is located in the heart of Savannah's Historic Landmark District.  The history, charm, and beauty of Savannah lure over 6.35 million visitors throughout each year.  As such, there is an abundance of housing options-from intimate Bed & Breakfast inns to larger hotel chains-but be forewarned that demand for rooms in the Historic District is at a peak in the summer months.  It is the responsibility of each participant to arrange for their preferred housing.  However, as we seek to build and strengthen the sense of our scholarly community we encourage participants to stay in pre-arranged program housing.

For housing, we have reserved a block of affordable studio suites at the Residence Inn by Marriott (pictured above, and in three pictures on left) in Savannah's Downtown Historic District. These will be available at a reduced rate, at $95/night plus tax.  The facility is within a reasonable walk of GHS (10-12 minutes) or participants may choose to ride a convenient and free bus service in the historic downtown area.  These studio suites at the Residence Inn feature separate living, working, eating and sleeping areas with fully equipped kitchens and complimentary WiFi Internet access.  Additionally, each room at this rate includes the following amenities: complimentary hot breakfast daily, complimentary evening reception (wine, beer, light hors d'oeuvres), complimentary grocery delivery (leave a list of groceries at the front desk and they will be delivered to your room), access to on-site fitness facility, outdoor heated pool, cleaning services, coin-operated laundry facilities, access to same-day dry cleaning service, a lobby bar open seven days a week, a 24-hour business center with computers with Internet access, fax, copy, and print services, in-room work space, 32" LCD flat panel HDTVs (with premium cable, including HBO, CNN, and ESPN), two phones with voicemail and data ports, AM/FM/MP3 clock radio, in-room hairdryer, iron, and ironing board, and complimentary weekday USA Today, A number of restaurants at all price points are available within walking distance of the hotel. Visit their website at www.residenceinnsavannahdowntown.com for full details.  Participants interested in staying at the Residence Inn will book directly with the hotel. For those wishing to bring family members with them, please note that family members may not participate in formal seminar sessions.

Participant Stipend
Each seminar participant will receive a $3,300 stipend to assist with housing, meals, and incidental expenses.  Please note, the participant is solely responsible for costs incurred while attending the program and participant stipends are not to be considered as reimbursements of participant expenses. Please note also that there are no longer travel supplements separate from the stipend in this program.  Please note too that stipends are taxable. 

Seminar and institute participants are required to attend all meetings and to engage fully in the work of the project.  During the project's tenure, they may not undertake teaching assignments or any other professional activities unrelated to their participation in the project.  Participants who, for any reason, do not complete the full tenure of the project must refund a pro-rata portion of the stipend.

A check for one-half of the stipend will be waiting for you when you arrive. You will receive the second check in the last two weeks of the seminar.

Cultural and Recreational Resources
Savannah is truly a national treasure!  The site of the founding of Britain's thirteenth and final colony and one of the nation's first planned cities, Savannah and its rich history are matched only by its unsurpassable beauty and charm.  Boasting eight nationally recognized historic districts and thirty-five nationally recognized historic structures (eight of which are historic landmarks), Savannah's sites and storytelling locals invite visitors to enjoy the city's friendly, relaxing southern style.  In addition to stunning squares, historic sites, and local haunts (as Savannah has been deemed one of the most haunted cities in America), Savannah is home to countless artists and inspired chefs who delight the senses in galleries and restaurants throughout the city.  Please visit www.savcvb.com for more information.

Please remember that your completed application should be postmarked no later than March 2, 2010. Successful applicants will be notified of their selection by April 1, 2010, and will have until April 5, 2010 to accept or decline the offer.

Thank you for your interest. Please do not hesitate to contact us at csnyder@georgiahistory.com or 912-651-2125 if you have any questions or need additional information. I look forward to receiving your application and to seeing you in Savannah!

Sincerely,

W. Todd Groce, Ph.D.

Project Director