Gorsuch (click image for hi-res)  

ANN ARBOR—University of Michigan history student Allison Gorsuch walked into a New York vault and became the first historian to study certain Civil War letters. She’ll use that work to help high school students as one of 15 Gilder Lehrman History Scholars.

Gorsuch, a Plymouth, Minn., native, was selected from more than 300 undergraduate applicants nationwide. The scholars spent six weeks this summer at Columbia University for a program that combines historical research, seminars with eminent historians, and behind-the-scenes tours of rare archives in New York City. Each scholar will have the opportunity to produce original research resulting from his or her work.

Gorsuch, a student in the history department at the U-M College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, especially enjoyed meeting and working with other students, archivists and historians from across the country. Each got the chance to open letters of a single soldier no historian had read before.

“Working with the original documents was amazing because no one outside of my soldier’s family had looked at these letters and so I felt like I was on the brink of discovering something&#8212who knew what could be in the letters?” Gorsuch said. “I got to know and like my soldier and his family through his letters and it deepened my interest in cultural history. It might sound cliche, but I think a simple letter or diary makes history far more interesting than any textbook or lecture on the Civil War could ever be.”

During the program, each scholar researches the Civil War correspondence of a soldier from one of 15 states. They prepare an inventory of the collection for use by future scholars and then prepare pamphlets that will be used for high school classes focusing on local history. Each pamphlet will have an introductory essay about the soldier, where he came from and how the home front remained important during the war.

Applicants to the scholarship program this year represented 186 colleges and universities across the United States. This year’s scholars hail from some of the top colleges and universities in the country, including U-M, Yale University, Rutgers University, Princeton University, Grinnell College, Brown University and the University of Chicago.

“These are the brightest young historians in America,” said James Basker, president of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, based in New York, which sponsors the program. “We see them as a kind of Rhodes Scholar among history majors. We hope this spurs them all to consider careers as scholarly historians in the future.”

Founded in 1994, the Gilder Lehrman Institute promotes the study and love of American history. It creates history-centered schools and academic research centers, organizes seminars and enrichment programs for educators, produces print and electronic publications and traveling exhibitions, and sponsors lectures by eminent historians. The institute also funds awards including the Lincoln, Frederick Douglass and George Washington Book Prizes and offers fellowships for scholars to work in history archives, including the Gilder Lehrman Collection, which includes more than 60,000 American historical documents.

Related links:

U-M history department

Gilder Lehrman Institute

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