Mark Your Calendars! Maryland Emancipation Day at Antietam, this Saturday, November 1st!

Hello again everyone, just a reminder that this Saturday will be our Maryland Emancipation Day at Antietam, where the park will be hosting several speakers to discuss the 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in Maryland, which occurred on November 1, 1864, when a new state constitution took effect in Maryland.

We have published the schedule on this blog before, but if you haven't seen it yet, please check it out here.


Also, we have noted that our keynote speaker will be best-selling author and journalist Todd Brewster. Mr. Brewster will be speaking at 7 p.m. that evening and signing copies of his latest book, Lincoln's Gamble, at the Antietam Visitor Center.


Today, we want to highlight two of our speakers for the morning of November 1st: Edie Wallace and Dr. Tom Clemens.

Edie Wallace will be our first speaker of the day at 10:00 a.m. Her program will discuss local African Americans in Sharpsburg and Washington County, Maryland, and how freedom came for these individuals, and what their experiences were like during the war.

Ms. Wallace is a historian with a Masters of Arts degree in Historic Preservation from Goucher College, where she received the 2003 Hiram McCullough Award for her thesis on preserving African American historic resources in rural Washington County.  She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Anthropology from the University of Delaware and a Certificate in Historic Preservation from Shepherd College, Shepherdstown, West Virginia. Ms. Wallace leads historical research and historic context development services for Paula S. Reed and Associates, Inc. in Hagerstown, Maryland.  She currently serves as President of the non-profit Friends of Tolson’s Chapel, dedicated to the preservation, restoration, and interpretation of the historic Tolson’s Chapel in Sharpsburg, Maryland.

Ms. Wallace will also be speaking and taking part in the events at Tolson's Chapel in Sharpsburg that afternoon. The website for Tolson's Chapel can be found here. They will be having events from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m.

 

Our next speaker at the battlefield that morning will be Dr. Tom Clemens. At 11:00 a.m., Dr. Clemens will discuss emancipation in Maryland from a state perspective, looking at how the process occurred and how the state constitution of 1864 came to be. 

Tom earned a B.A& M.A.in history at Salisbury State University and a Doctorate of Arts, at George Mason University where he studied under Dr. Joseph Harsh, author of the trilogy on Confederate strategy through the Maryland Campaign of 1862. He taught at Hagerstown Community College for 34 years, retiring recently as Professor Emeritus. He has published numerous articles and book reviews in various Civil War magazines, and has recently done an edited version of Ezra Carman’s Maryland Campaign of September 1862: South Mountain published May 2010 by Savas Beatie LLC; Vol. II, Antietam in September of 2012. Both volumes received the Army Historical Foundation’s Distinguished Writing Award. He is currently working on Vol. III which will include the battle of Shepherdstown Ford.

Tom appeared in several documentary films including the National Park Service film Antietam, A Documentary Film, shown daily in the Visitor Center, and has been featured in MD & DC Public Television programs as a historical commentator. He was an on-screen historian for: two episodes of A & E’s Civil War Journal and other History Channel programs.

In addition to his teaching career Tom is a Licensed Antietam Battlefield Tour Guide, and a 30+ year volunteer there, including several years of doing cannon-firing demonstrations. He is a Founder and current president of Save Historic Antietam Foundation Inc., which has preserved in perpetuity three structures and hundreds of acres of land around Antietam Battlefield. Tom is also a board member of Shepherdstown Battlefield Preservation Association.

 

We here at Antietam are very excited and thankful to have Edie Wallace and Tom Clemens taking part in our commemoration of the 150th anniversary of emancipation in Maryland on Saturday, November 1st. We hope to see you this Saturday!

The Maryland Monument at Antietam