The Great Partnership: Lee, Jackson, and the Fate of the Confederacy

Dr Keller will discuss the unique friendship and working relationship between Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, the Confederacy's most famous and successful command duo. He will address why the partnership between the two generals was so important to the South’s bid for independence, what Jackson's death meant on a strategic level for the Confederacy, and how their styles, friendship, and faith cemented them together into a fighting machine that consistently won during the 1862-1863 time period.

About the Speaker

Since 2011 Dr Christian B. Keller has been Professor of History in the Department of National Security and Strategy at the United States Army War College, Carlisle, PA, where he teaches courses for senior leaders on the theory of war and strategy, national security policy and strategy, and the American Civil War.  In 2017 he was named the General Dwight D. Eisenhower Chair of National Security and in 2019 became the Director of the Military History Program for the school.

Previously, he served as Professor of Military History for five and a half years at the Army Command and General Staff College, Ft. Belvoir, VA, and has also taught at numerous civilian institutions, including Shippensburg University, Gettysburg College, Dickinson College, and Washington and Lee University.  In 2001-2002, after completing his PhD at Penn State, he was a Fulbright Professor of American History at the University of Jena, Germany.

Along with many scholarly articles focusing on strategic, operational, and ethnic topics in the Civil War, he is author of The Great Partnership: Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and the Fate of the Confederacy (Pegasus, 2019) which won the Douglas Southall Freeman History Award, 2020. His newest book, Southern Strategies: Why the Confederacy Failed was published by the University Press of Kansas in June 2021.

A native of Carlisle, Dr Keller lives with his wife, Kelley, in an antebellum house that witnessed the occupation of Carlisle Barracks by Confederate troops at the end of June 1863.