CHICAGO CWRT AUDIO
RECORDINGS
The Civil War Round Table of Chicago ("Chicago CWRT")
was founded on December 3, 1940, as the very first of over 200 such Round
Tables that now meet around the world. For more information about the
group visit its website by clicking HERE or pointing your brower to http://www.chicagocwrt.org/home.html
The group (or possibly E.B “Pete” Long, one of its founding
members) purchased a Webster Electric Ekotape mono tape recorder (copy of advertisement
below) and, beginning on September 20, 1951, started to record their meetings. Hal
Ardell, a Chicago CWRT member since 1985 and its Audio Librarian, found out
that Patricia Long, Pete Long’s widow, had donated a box of reel-to-reel tapes
to the Special Collections Division of the Chicago Public Library following her
husband's death. Mr. Ardell, pledging as collateral his first born son,
borrowed the tapes and dubbed them to cassette using a reel-to-reel tape
recorder loaned to him by Richard McAdoo, a Chicago CWRT member/ past
president. Mr. Ardell also began to record the Chicago CWRT meetings
beginning in 1985 using a standard cassette tape recorder and then later
digital recorders. As of 2016, the Chicago CWRT has hosted almost 600
lectures, and a list of the meetings that have been recorded is posted at http://files.cwrtdc.org/Chicago-CWRT-Lecture-Series-Recordings.pdf.
For health reasons, Mr. Ardell discontinued recording the lectures
in 2013, but Marc Kunis, a CWRT member, has videorecorded the Chicago CWRT
lectures and posts them to YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/user/PRODACCT1
Mr. DeSoto, past President of the Civil War Round Table of the
District of Columbia, learned about Mr. Ardell's efforts when he
was researching whether any audio recordings existed of the founders of the
CWRTDC (e.g., Bruce
Catton, Virgil Carrington “Pat” Jones). Indeed, there were several
recordings made of selected founders and past presidents of CWRTDC. With
the permission of the Chicago CWRT, certain of these recordings will be posted
at https://soundcloud.com/cwrtdc/.
A list of CWRTDC’s recordings is posted under the “Listen To Past
Speakers” Tab at www.cwrtdc.org
Mr. DeSoto, with the help of member/mentor David E. Hilliard,
helps record lectures for CWRTDC and fully appreciates the considerable effort
(and devotion) that goes into recording lectures and making them available by
cassette or digital media. For example, a single one hour lecture can
easily take as many as 10 hours of set-up and editing to make available to
interested listeners. To preserve what he deems a “Treasure Trove” of
recordings made over 65 years ago, and to honor the dedication and enthusiasm
of Mr. Ardell to make these recordings and maintain them, Mr. DeSoto offered
to assist with digitizing the cassettes on behalf of the the Chicago
CWRT. In so doing, he also edited the tapes (e.g., to delete “ums,” noises, coughs, clear
errors, excess pauses, and in some limited cases, discussion). He also
normalized the levels and equalized certain recordings using SoundForge
software.
Mr. DeSoto believes that you will find that the lectures are
stimulating in their own right, but that they are also remarkable in what is
said by the speakers and members about not only the history of the Civil War,
but also the current events at the time the lecture was presented. For
information about the founding of the Chicago CWRT as well as other Round
Tables, Mr. DeSoto recommends that you listen to the recording made on June 21,
1952, at Gettysburg College, which includes a lecture by Bruce Catton (Vice
President of the CWRTDC at the time, noted author . . . and Pete Long's
reported "fact-checker") as well as opening remarks by Elmer
Gertz, President of the Chicago CWRT; Henry W.A. Hanson, President of
Gettysburg College; J. Walter Coleman, Superintendent, Gettysburg; Ralph G.
Newman; Carl F. Haviland, President of the NY CWRT; Robert Self Henry,
President of the CWRTDC; and Robert Lee Kincaid, President of of Lincoln
Memorial University.
Mr. Ardell thanks Mr. DeSoto for his sincere effort in helping to
preserve the audio recordings of the Chicago Civil War Round Table for future
generations and, in that regard, offered for inclusion here the passage copied
below, written in 1990 by the late Ralph G. Newman, a founding member of
the Chicago CWRT and former owner of the Abraham Lincoln Bookshop in Chicago,
IL.
"The Civil War Round Table came into existence because a few
men (and now also women) wanted to share their enthusiasm and interest in this
special period of history with others who were like-minded. They soon
learned that there were many who shared their enthusiasm and love for this
unique time in our national past. They learned that an individual who has
an interest in the Civil War need never be lonesome. Almost every community,
every city and town, has one or more individuals with its borders who have a
lively curiosity about the years of this entirely American war. One need
only to inquire at a newspaper, library, or book shop to be directed to a
person or persons who would drop everything they were doing to join you in a
journey to the 1860s. The Civil War Round Table has provided the perfect
vehicle for those who want to travel back to the days of Abraham Lincoln and
Robert E. Lee. Those of us who were present at the beginning rejoice and
take pride in the scholarship, fellowship, and good life enjoyed by all during
the past 75 years of scholarship. For us "veterans" it has been
a wonderful adventure"
Sources: Discussions with Mr. Ardell; information in the audio
recordings themselves; secondary material (e.g., newsletters
of the Civil War Round Table of the District of Columbia).
