Profs & Pints DC: George Washington and the Civil War

Profs and Pints DC presents: “George Washington and the Civil War,” on how all sides of a nation-dividing conflict enlisted a long-dead founding father, with Anne Sarah Rubin, a professor of history at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County who specializes in the study of nationalism and memory during the American Civil War. 

George Washington died in December 1799, more than sixty years before the American Civil War began. Yet in 1860 he seemed to be everywhere, embraced by abolitionists and slaveholders, Unionists and Confederates alike as a mythical symbol of their own righteousness. All drew on the image and iconography of George Washington and the American Revolution to claim legitimacy for their respective sides.

Gain insight into how our nation’s history and memory has long been weaponized to support disparate causes with Anne Sarah Rubin, an author of two books on the Civil War who has given great talks…