Professor brings local history to life

People often say that history comes full circle, but sometimes history professors do, too.

Matt Pinsker, associate professor of history and Pohanka Chair for Civil War History, was raised in Lancaster County, where his interest in Civil War history “started too early to remember.”

Pinsker grew up surrounded by an appreciation for history and narrative. His parents were a high-school history teacher and an English professor, and his grandfather told enchanting stories.

“I was always interested in becoming either a professional basketball player or a history professor,” Pinsker says, “but I was much more strongly recruited for one.”

He focused his interests in college, where he “had one of those professors who changes your life. I became his research assistant while he was writing a biography of Abraham Lincoln.”

Pinsker’s interest in Lincoln flourished, and he is now the author of several works on Lincoln, including Abraham Lincoln for the Congressional Quarterly Press’ American Presidents Reference Series, as well as the book Lincoln’s Sanctuary: Abraham Lincoln and the Soldiers’ Home, which is the first book to connect the Lincoln summer house to key Civil War developments.

Pinsker’s work garnered him attention, and he soon was commissioned to write books, including one on the Underground Railroad.

“I’ve always been more focused on Lincoln, but when I started studying the Underground Railroad, I saw how misunderstood it is,” Pinsker says. “This was not the stories of secret tunnels and passageways, and not just an instance of breaking the law, but rather the organizing of a widespread campaign of disobedience.”

As Pinsker told Dickinson’s Extra Features, “the Underground Railroad is probably the greatest interracial movement in U.S. history, at least before the civil rights movement. It deserves more serious study.”

He says that once slaves crossed the Mason-Dixon Line, the catchers searching for them were often in as much danger as the escaped slaves. In places like Carlisle and Lancaster where there were “a lot of free black residents, the fight over escaped slaves was sometimes physical, legal or financial.”

His passion for this kind of local history, rooted in his Lancaster upbringing, made Dickinson an ideal place for him to work. He joined the faculty in 2002.

 “Dickinson is one of those classic liberal-arts colleges with a great sense of community. It’s a great place to work,” Pinsker says.

In Oct. 2005, the history department honored Pinsker as the first Pohanka Chair for Civil War History. He has used this to illuminate Civil War history by incorporating studies of local events into his classes.

“At every stage of every class I teach, I can talk about the role of the college and the influence of Dickinsonians. This helps students to see local connections to big events. My charge as chair was to present the Civil War era to our students and the community in a way that’s accessible to them—through workshops, panels, events, field trips; whatever it takes.”

During his course The Underground Railroad: History and Metaphor, Pinsker took students on field trips to local sites so that they could “discover the active role many central Pennsylvania communities played in the Underground Railroad.”

Students in his spring 2006 senior seminar on the American constitution profited from Pinsker’s visiting fellowship with the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia when he took them to the Center to meet with executives and to talk about the inner workings of the museum.

“Ultimately, this is what Dickinson is all about. When President Durden is evoking Rush,” he is showing that Dickinson is “not an ivory tower school, but that we’re trying to make a difference in the world.”

Pinsker is doing his part both through the organizations he works with—he is on the advisory committee of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, a trustee of Brasenose (Oxford) College Charitable Foundation and a judge for the National History Teacher of the Year Award—and through his outreach efforts.

One way that Pinsker shares his research beyond Dickinson is through his 2006 and 2007 summer Underground Railroad programs for K-12 teachers. The program is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities We the People initiative.

The 2007 workshop, Landmarks of the Underground Railroad: From Christiana to Harper’s Ferry, helps teachers learn how to “present the elusive subject of the Underground Railroad with more facts and better historical context.” He will continue the program in 2008.

Uncovering and teaching the history of the American Civil War has taken Pinsker on quite a journey—one that started in and kept him strongly connected to central Pennsylvania. On his path, he ignites a passion for local history in others.

“I think history is one of those subjects that should belong to everyone,” Pinsker says. “It should be part of all our lives. It’s interesting; it’s about people.”