Reconstruction
As a graduate student at Cornell, Frank Varney was once asked a simple question: “We know who won the war — but who won the peace?” Years later, he turned his answer into a presentation. Join us for our November meeting, where Professor Varney will explore the very different Reconstruction plans of President Lincoln, President Andrew Johnson, and Congress — and how those plans ultimately played out. He will also examine the political conditions in the South immediately after the war, Johnson’s struggles with Congress, the flawed compromise that followed the election of 1876, and the lasting legacy of Reconstruction that still reverberates today.

Dr. Frank Varney
Frank Varney earned his undergraduate degree at William Paterson University and his M.A. and Ph.D. at Cornell University. He regularly leads student groups to historic sites—especially Civil War battlefields—and frequently speaks at Civil War roundtables, historical societies, and other organizations. He has also served as keynote speaker at several veterans’ memorials. A briefly retired Distinguished Professor of History, Dr. Varney returned to teaching after receiving an offer too good to refuse. He currently teaches U.S. and Classical History at St. Michael’s College in Vermont. In addition to writing numerous appendices, chapters, introductions, and articles for works by other historians, Dr. Varney is the author of General Grant and the Rewriting of History (2013) and General Grant and the Verdict of History (2023).