James Marten is a professor of history and the chair of the history department at Marquette University, where he teaches courses on the Civil War and on children's history. He is the author of The Children's Civil War (1998), which was selected as an outstanding academic title by Choice magazine; Sing Not War: The Lives of Union and Confederate Veterans in Gilded Age America (2011); and America's Corporal: James Tanner in War and Peace (2014). He is also the editor of Children and War: An Historical Anthology (2002) and Childhood and Child Welfare in the Progressive Era: A Brief History with Documents (2004).
James Tanner lost two legs at Second Manassas, but went on to become a famous speaker, veterans advocate, and Republican operative. Everyone knew who Corporal Tanner was in the 1890s; this lecture explores his life as as representative veteran and Gilded Age go-getter.