I am week four into my graduate class “Civil War Command and Leadership” at American Public University. It is an online program and I am not embarrassed to say it was my only choice living in an isolated region of Western Colorado where there are no graduate programs. This class is one example of why I am proud to say I am attending APU, a regionally and nationally accredited university. The degree from APU will hang proudly on my wall here soon (I am 18 hours into my masters and will be done with my master’s thesis in a 18 months or so).
The Course Description:
This course is a study of national, theater, and operational command structures of the Union and Confederacy, the leadership styles of key military leaders on both sides, and the evolution of command and control in the war. Major themes include the relationship between the commanders in chief and the generals who led the armies in the field, the relationships between the generals themselves, and the ways in which the relationships described above either served to facilitate or debilitate the causes those commanders served.
But most importantly it is the quality of the instructor, Dr. Steven E. Woodworth, who is as prolific of a Civil War historian as I know.
His biography on the APU site reads:
Steven E. Woodworth (Ph.D., Rice University, 1987) is professor of history at Texas Christian University and author, co-author, or editor of twenty-seven books. He is a two-time winner of the Fletcher Pratt Award of the New York Civil War Round Table (for Jefferson Davis and His Generals and Davis and Lee at War), a two-time finalist for the Peter Seaborg Award of the George Tyler Moore Center for the Study of the Civil War (for While God Is Marching On and Nothing but Victory), and a winner of the Grady McWhiney Award of the Dallas Civil War Round Table for lifetime contribution to the study of Civil War history.
Here is his bio on his TCU page:
I was born in Ohio, raised in Illinois (mostly), and graduated
from Southern Illinois University in 1982 with a B.A. in history. Thereafter
I studied one year at the University of Hamburg, in Germany, before beginning
studies at Rice University, where I received a Ph.D. in 1987. From 1987 to
1997 I taught at Bartlesville Wesleyan College in Bartlesville, Oklahoma,
and at Toccoa Falls College in Toccoa Falls, Georgia. At both institutions
I was more or less the entire history department and taught everything from
ancient Mesopotamia to modern Europe and the United States. In 1997 I came
to TCU, where I teach courses in U.S. history as well as the Civil War and
Reconstruction and the Old South. My main field of specialization is the Civil
War. My publications include Jefferson Davis and His Generals (University
Press of Kansas, 1990), Davis and Lee at War (University Press of Kansas,
1995), Leadership and Command in the American Civil War (Savas Woodbury,
1996), The American Civil War: A Handbook of Literature and Research
(Greenwood, 1996), A Deep Steady Thunder (McWhiney Foundation, 1996),
Six Armies in Tennessee (1998), The Musick of the Mocking Birds,
The Roar of the Cannon (University of Nebraska Press, 1998), The Art
of Command in the Civil War (University of Nebraska Press, 1998), Civil
War Generals in Defeat (University Press of Kansas, 1999), This Grand
Spectacle (McWhiney Foundation, 1999), Chickamauga: A Battlefield Guide
(University of Nebraska Press, 1999), No Band of Brothers (University
of Missouri Press, 1999), The Human Tradition in the Civil War and Reconstruction
(Scholarly Resources, 2000), Cultures in Conflict (Greenwood, 2000),
Grant’s Lieutenants from Cairo to Vicksburg (University Press of Kansas,
2001), While God is Marching On: The Religious World of Civil War Soldiers
(University Press of Kansas, 2001).
Needless to say, I am studying the Civil War with one of its premiere historians, and Dr. Woodworth is one of many I have had and will be studying history with at APU.
