Pulitzer Prize Winning Author to Appear at Sotterley

Alan Taylor, Ph.D. 

“The Civil War of 1812: Canada and the Chesapeake”

 Wednesday, May 7  |  7:00 p.m. in the Barn

To call the War of 1812 a "civil war," now seems jarring because hindsight has distorted our perspective on the past. Given the later power and prosperity of the United States, we underestimate the fluid uncertainty of the post-revolutionary generation, when the new republic was so precarious and so embattled. We also imagine that the revolution affected a clean break between Americans and Britons as distinct peoples. In fact, the republic and the empire competed for the allegiance of the peoples in North America: native, settler, and immigrant. Americans and Britons spoke the same language and conducted more trade with one another than with other nations, but their overlapping migrations and commerce generated the frictions of competition. The civil war proved fiercest in Upper Canada, where most of the settlers were newcomers from the United States. But partisan and racial divisions rendered the Chesapeake another theater of competition for local support by the British raiders and the American defenders.

Of Taylor’s seven books, the following received these distinguished literary awards: William Cooper's Town won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for American history - in addition to the Bancroft and Beveridge prizes. American Colonies won the 2001 Gold Medal for Non-Fiction from the Commonwealth Club of California. The Divided Ground won the 2007 Society for Historians of the Early Republic book prize and the 2004-7 Society of the Cincinnati triennial book prize. The Civil War of 1812 won the Empire State History Prize.

Taylor graduated from Colby College in 1977.  He has taught at Boston University and is currently a professor at the University of California at Davis. In August 2014, he will begin to hold the Thomas Jefferson Chair in American History at the University of Virginia.