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Outside of Wisconsin, the Black Hawk War is best known as the conflict in which Abraham Lincoln earned his limited military experience. Within Wisconsin, it is somewhat better known if only because its namesake and his Sauk tribe are memorialized by parks, towns, inns, and roads throughout the state. But what was the war actually over, and what did it mean? Professor John Hall explores the colonial roots of a war far more significant than most realize – one that settled at last a 200-year contest for control of the region by great powers both Indian and European.
Presenter John W. Hall is the Ambrose-Hesseltine Professor of U.S. Military History at UW–Madison. He holds a B.S. in History from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and a PhD in History from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. He specializes in American military history with particular emphasis on early and Native American warfare. He is the author of Uncommon Defense: Indian Allies in the Black Hawk War (Harvard University Press, 2009) and numerous essays on early American warfare, including “An Irregular Reconsideration of George Washington and the American Military Tradition,” Journal of Military History (July 2014), which won an Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Prize. He is a past president of the Society for Military History and a retired U.S. Army Reserve colonel, with past assignments as a historian to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, U.S. European Command, U.S. Central Command, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
When:
September 16, 2025
Where:
1N2114 Rausch Rd, Lodi, WI 53555
