"The Black Hawk War": In-person Badger Talk in Lodi, WI

Join presenter John Hall on September 16, 2025, at 7:00 PM at the West Point Area Historical Society to learn more about The Black Hawk War.

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.

You may also like the following events from Badger Talks:

• This Saturday, 9th August, 08:30 pm, Universe in the Park: In-Person Badger Talk at Nelson Dewey State Park, Cassville, WI in Cassville
• This Saturday, 9th August, 08:30 pm, Universe in the Park: In-Person Badger Talk at Mirror Lake State Park, Baraboo, WI in Baraboo
• Next Monday, 11th August, 08:30 pm, Universe in the Park: In-Person Badger Talk at Peninsula State Park, Fish Creek, WI in Fish Creek

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