Iowa’s role in the Civil War is the topic for a Greene County Historical Society Sunday afternoon program on June 23.
The free program will be at 4 pm at the museum, 219 E. Lincoln Way in Jefferson. It follows the 10th anniversary celebration of the Thomas Jefferson Gardens at the west end of the musem’s block.
John Liepa, a Des Moines Area Community College (DMACC) professor emeritus, will talk about the war’s long-term impact on the Iowa’s history.
Local history buffs may remember Liepa’s entertaining 2018 presentation at the museum on how baseball came to Iowa, which is one of the war’s long-term affects on the state, says Liepa.
In the June 23 program, Liepa will tell how events and changing attitudes between 1830 and the beginning of the war in 1861 influenced Iowa’s role in the conflict. He’ll lay out the evolution and changing status of laws that affected black Iowans; the key roles played by individual Iowans, including women, in the strife, and how the conflict impacted the Homefront.
One of those impacts was baseball. Liepa says Iowa soldiers who fought in the Civil War brought the new game home with them, and soon nearly every community had its own team. Other results included the completion of the railroad across the state, which allowed larger scale agriculture with the development of new markets, and a change in the state’s political stance from solid Democrat before the war to solid Republican for the next 70 years.
Liepa taught U.S. and Iowa history and political science at DMACC for nearly 40 years. In retirement, he teaches at the Senior College of Greater Des Moines and at Drake University’s Osher’s Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI), and offers programs on Iowa’s past to groups throughout the state though Iowa Humanities, which seeks to bring the humanities to life for Iowans.
The program is co-sponsored by Humanities Iowa. Refreshments will be served.
Through June the Museum is open on Thursdays from noon to 5 pm.; Fridays and Saturdays, 10 am to 5 pm; and Sundays, noon to 5 pm.
