Public Programs

The Second Friday Lecture Series is a monthly Civil War lecture program organized by the Civil War Museum of Kenosha, Wisconsin. All programs are held for an in-person audience at the museum. The lectures are recorded and posted to the museum’s YouTube channel.

The Second Friday Lectures begin at 12:00pm and there is no cost to attend. The Civil War Museum graciously thanks the Milwaukee Civil War Round Table and Iron Brigade Association for sponsoring this series of lectures.

Friday, April 10  |  12pm – 1pm  |  Presented by: Ted Karamanski

The Civil War was won, and the American Republic was saved because of the remarkable contributions of men, supplies, and leaders provided by the states of the Great Lakes region. These are the states that created the Republican Party. Something more than slavery was behind their deep resentment of the Confederacy. Join us for a program detailing how navigation issues exasperated sectional relations in the years before the war and how Union victory transformed our region.

Theodore Karamanski (Loyola University Chicago, Ph.D., 1979; B.A., 1975) is a Professor Emeritus of History at Loyola University Chicago where he has taught courses in American Indian history, the Civil War, and public history. Karamanski has been a leading national voice in the promotion of American and public history for more than three decades.  He was the founder and later director of Loyola’s Public History Program as well as a prolific author in the fields of American Indian, Great Lakes, Civil War, and nineteenth-century American history.

Friday, May 8  |  12pm-1pm  |  Presented by: Dan Freas

“Camp newspapers are a feature of the war that is worth attention,” reported a St. Louis newspaper in 1862. “The camp paper is the organ of the soldiers, through which they communicate their condition, wants, enjoyments, and local news to the public, and to their distant friends.” Historians have documented more than 200 camp newspapers printed during the Civil War. The majority of these publications were published by printers in Union regiments using confiscated shops, equipment and materials in occupied southern communities. A few were created using portable printing offices. Mr. Freas’s presentation will introduce you to the printers, technology, and content from some of these camp newspapers which, given the lack of military or government censorship, provide honest and intriguing accounts of the soldier experience. An emphasis will be placed on camp newspapers associated with the Upper Middle West.  

Dan Freas recently retired from a 42-year career in program development and administration of historic sites and museums, most recently serving for 12 years as the director of Old World Wisconsin. A native of Western Pennsylvania, Dan’s interest in the Civil War began at a young age during a family trip to Gettysburg. His father worked for his hometown newspaper and one of Dan’s first jobs as a living history interpreter was working in a historic print shop. With a little bit of ink running through his veins, he is now combining interests in printing and the Civil War through research and writing about camp newspapers and field printing during the conflict.

Friday, June 12  |  12pm – 1pm  |  Presented by: Patrick Brennan

The third and final entry of this groundbreaking trilogy examines the battlefield’s transformation from post-battle Hell to American shrine. Patrick Brennan used an artificial intelligence-based computerized color identifier, which results in a monumental full-color study of the important three-day battle like it has never been seen before. This sweeping installment closes his three volume series, which every student of history in general, and the Civil War in particular, will want to own for a lifetime.