John Brown's Body - 09/01/2013

Recurring Porch Chat lecture series

During the Civil War, one of the Union Army's favorite marching songs was "John Brown's Body."  60 years after Appomattox, Stephen Vincent Benet, a former resident of Watervliet, New York, turned the marching song into the title of a poem celebrating the Civil War.  It's truly an epic poem and in 1929 it won the Pulitzer Prize.  Join us on the porch of Grant Cottage as excerpts from the poem are read.  Hear descriptions of Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, Union infantrymen, Confederate cavalrymen, the battle of the Wilderness and much, much more.  Too often the facts of history are stated dryly and without emotion.  Sometimes the feeling of history can only be conveyed through art.  This will be one of those occasions.  Presented by Steve Trimm.