Friday, November 4, 2016
UVA graduate student, Jack Furniss, participated in a panel entitled Rediscovering Conservatism in the Civil War Era at the British American Nineteenth Century Historians (BrANCH) Conference, held in the UK at Madingley Hall, Cambridge from October 28-30, 2016.
Jack presented alongside Matthew Mason of Brigham Young University, and Adam I. P. Smith of University College London. Matt examined transatlantic Whig conservatism through the strained relationship between Edward Everett and Foreign Secretary Lord John Russell, Adam looked at why all three major candidates claimed the mantle of conservative in the presidential election of 1856, and Jack suggested why the role of conservatives and conservatism in electing Horatio Seymour governor of New York in 1862 permits a reevaluation of the wartime Democratic Party.
The two-day conference hosted scholars from all across the UK and United States and included panels covering all aspects of nineteenth century America. Keynote addresses were given by Orville Vernon Burton on "Reconstructing the Long Reconstruction" and Richard Carwardine on "Abraham Lincoln's Humour," the latter introduced by UVA's own Alan Taylor, currently serving as the Harmsworth Visiting Professor of American History at Oxford.