Historian Says Nebraska At Center Stage in National Conflicts

As Nebraska celebrates 150 years of statehood, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian says the state’s role in forming the nation into what it is today is sometimes forgotten, but shouldn’t be. T.J. Stiles argues Nebraska and the Great Plains were actually at center stage for some of the nation’s biggest and most pivotal conflicts.

Stiles knows a bit about Great Plains history too. His 2015 book “Custer’s Trials- A Life on the Frontier of a New America”, won last year’s Pulitzer Prize for history. It uses General George Armstrong Custer, the Union Army Commander who also led some of the military’s biggest battles against Native Americans on the Great Plains, as a reference point for how the Plains helped shape American history.

“We have to remember that the Great Plains states, and Nebraska specifically, have been the center of some of the biggest conflicts in American history,” Stiles said.

Although no battles were fought during the Civil War within the territory that would eventually become Nebraska, one of the reasons the war started in the first place was whether slavery would be allowed here.

“The Civil War itself resulted from a struggle over Kansas and Nebraska, over the settlement of the Great Plains, the question of whether slavery would be expanded into new territories,” Stiles said.

Many settlers who came to Nebraska and other Plains states moved here partly because of social issues like slavery.

“People who went to Kansas and Nebraska when they were first settled, went not only with a desire to find land, it was kind of climax, the last place where the great westward expansion, the desire to get free and cheap land took place, but also it was a place where people went because they were motivated in the great causes of the day, to stop slavery. That’s something that brought settlers into the Plains States initially,” Stiles said.

Nebraska has also played a part in other conflicts, causes and movements. The populist movement, led in part by Nebraskan William Jennings Bryan, had some of its roots here. The Plains Indian Wars included Nebraska and also helped shape the nation as we know it today. Struggles between farmers and ranchers and big business and the challenge of building the transcontinental railroad also had major Nebraska themes. Stiles believes there are several reasons for Nebraska’s central role in pivotal moments in American history.

“Part of it is geography, part of it is the beliefs and the ambitions of the people who moved there,” Stiles said. “And then part of it is the flow of time, the fact that this is kind of the last place that really gets settled in the United States. West and East had been developed before the Great Plains. That’s why it’s a place where we see a lot of those long-running conflicts kind of reach their climax in the Great Plains.”

Chris Sommerich, the executive director at Humanities Nebraska, says Nebraskans are fortunate to live in a place that has played a big part in American history. He thinks it’s important to continue to learn about the state’s past.

“People who care about learning history and thinking about how it applies to where we are now and where we’re going in the future, that is important to help us understand where we’re trying to go,” Sommerich said. “I think Nebraska is fortunate and blessed in a lot of ways that we probably take for granted.”

Although not everything that has happened here has been pleasant, T.J. Stiles says there’s no doubt Nebraska has helped craft America.

“There’s tragedy in Nebraska history, there is triumph and hard struggle in Nebraska history, but it is a long and rich history that really should be considered to be at the center of the larger story of U.S. history,” he said.

Stiles will deliver the 22nd Annual Governor’s Lecture in the Humanities on Tuesday, October 3rd at the Holland Performing Arts Center in Omaha. The lecture is free and open to the public and starts at 7:30 p.m. CT.