The N.C. Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy will commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War with various activities during the next four years.
The division’s “Sesquicentennial Lecture Series” will consist of eight lectures throughout the state during each year. Salisbury was selected as the site for the first lecture because Gov. John W. Ellis of Salisbury was in his second term of office when he was called upon on April 15, 1861, to furnish two regiments of troops to the United States to serve against South Carolina.
He followed his reply, “You will get no troops from North Carolina,” with a convention call that ended in the state’s secession on May 20, 1861.
UDC Sesquicentennial Chairman Sue Curtis of Salisbury has announced that author and history professor Dr. Gary Freeze of Catawba College will be the first speaker in this set of lectures. His presentation, “North Carolina Secedes,” will be held at 7 p.m. May 20 at the Tom Smith Auditorium in Ketner Hall on the campus of Catawba College, 2300 W. Innes St.
Soloist Eva Millsaps will sing North Carolina’s state song, “The Old North State.” The lecture is free and open to the public.
Dr. Freeze holds all of his college degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was a Morehead Scholar and graduated with a Phi Beta Kappa key. He has taught at the University of North Carolina Charlotte, N.C. State University and UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a professor of American history at Catawba, has authored several books and has been featured in a number of video specials for the Rowan Public Library.
He has spoken at a UDC N.C. Division Convention and the Robert F. Hoke’s Salisbury Confederate Prison Symposium. For his many efforts, the UDC awarded Freeze its prestigious Jefferson Davis Historical Gold Medal.