Former UNC History Professor James Leutze has died.
Back in the day -- 50 or so years ago he was one of the most popular professors at Chapel Hill. He later served as Chancellor of UNC-W.
He taught a pair of history classes -- one on the American Revolution and the second one on the Civil War. He'd get 200 or so students every semester.
One of the odd things that has stuck with me for 50 years now was his first class on the Civil War.
He began the class by asking the students why the North and South fought the Civil War. As you might expect various students gave the conventional explanations that come to mind --> it was about slavery ......... the conflict between the industrial North versus the agrarian South, etc.
Prof. Leutze dismissed all those explanations. He then launched into a lecture around the perceived advantages held by the North --> much larger population ... existing military, etc. ...... and ..... then the perceived advantages from the Southern point of view --> all they had to do was not lose ..... greater martial spirit, etc.
He concluded the class by arguing that the war was fought because both sides thought they could win.
This was a clever, but not entirely satisfactory answer. In his next class he came back and gave a more conventional explanation of the conflict between the North and South which led to the Civil War ..... ie., slavery.
Years later when I got deep into my Civil War buff hobby I found that his first lecture wasn't a clever, original idea with Prof. Leutze .... but, in fact, was taken pretty much verbatim from the first chapter of the first volume of Shelby Foote's famous Civil War trilogy.
He was a superb teacher. I suspect he could have gotten more than 200 students to sign up for his classes if we had a bigger lecture hall.
link to obituary:
www.uncw.edu
Back in the day -- 50 or so years ago he was one of the most popular professors at Chapel Hill. He later served as Chancellor of UNC-W.
He taught a pair of history classes -- one on the American Revolution and the second one on the Civil War. He'd get 200 or so students every semester.
One of the odd things that has stuck with me for 50 years now was his first class on the Civil War.
He began the class by asking the students why the North and South fought the Civil War. As you might expect various students gave the conventional explanations that come to mind --> it was about slavery ......... the conflict between the industrial North versus the agrarian South, etc.
Prof. Leutze dismissed all those explanations. He then launched into a lecture around the perceived advantages held by the North --> much larger population ... existing military, etc. ...... and ..... then the perceived advantages from the Southern point of view --> all they had to do was not lose ..... greater martial spirit, etc.
He concluded the class by arguing that the war was fought because both sides thought they could win.
This was a clever, but not entirely satisfactory answer. In his next class he came back and gave a more conventional explanation of the conflict between the North and South which led to the Civil War ..... ie., slavery.
Years later when I got deep into my Civil War buff hobby I found that his first lecture wasn't a clever, original idea with Prof. Leutze .... but, in fact, was taken pretty much verbatim from the first chapter of the first volume of Shelby Foote's famous Civil War trilogy.
He was a superb teacher. I suspect he could have gotten more than 200 students to sign up for his classes if we had a bigger lecture hall.
link to obituary:
Honoring the Life and Legacy of Dr. James R. Leutze
UNCW is mourning the loss of Chancellor Emeritus James R. Leutze, a visionary leader, distinguished educator and respected historian, who passed away recently.
www.uncw.edu
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