Second Friday Lecture: The 6th Wisconsin and the Antietam Campaign

Friday, September 12  |  12pm – 1pm  |  Presented by Dr. James Marten

Reimagining one of the oldest genres of Civil War history, Dr. Marten’s program will explore the Antietam Campaign through the lens of a single regiment, the Sixth Wisconsin. One of the core units of the famed Iron Brigade, the Sixth was organized in July 1861 and mustered out in the summer of 1865, playing major roles at Antietam as well as Second Manassas, Gettysburg, and the Overland campaign of 1864.

Dr. James Marten, Professor Emeritus of Marquette University, has written, edited, or co-edited over twenty books in two different fields: The Civil War era and the histories of children and youth. His books include The Children’s Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), a Choice “Outstanding Academic Title” and winner of the Alpha Sigma Nu Jesuit Book Award, as well as more recent books on Civil War veterans, including Sing Not War: The Lives of Union and Confederate Veterans in Gilded Age America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), America’s Corporal: James Tanner in War and Peace, a short biography of the disabled Civil War veteran and activist James “Corporal” Tanner (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2014), and Buying and Selling Civil War Memory in Gilded Age America (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2021), co-edited with Caroline E. Janney.

His latest book is The Sixth Wisconsin and the Long Civil War: The Biography of a Regiment (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2025), explores the war-time experiences and the long-term effects of the Civil War on a regiment that fought in one of the most famous units in the Union army—the Iron Brigade.