History Is Lunch: Christopher Slocombe, "Weather, Soil, and Geology at the Siege of Corinth"

On October 25, 2023, Christopher Slocombe presented “’A Land of Sickness and Death’: Nature and Health at the Siege of Corinth” as part of the History Is Lunch series.
In spring of 1862, the Siege of Corinth became the state’s first major Civil War military operation. One of the western theater’s largest and most strategically significant campaigns, the siege was also one of the war’s sickliest, and thousands of soldiers suffered from or succumbed to disease.
Slocombe draws on period letters, diaries, and reports but also employs the natural sciences for a fresh examination of the action through the lens of environmental history.
“Understanding sickness at Corinth requires we attend to a mosaic of environmental factors that existed in active interplay with the behavior of nearly 175,000 Union and Confederate soldiers who descended on the area,” said Slocombe. “The Siege of Corinth’s health crisis-and the innovative responses it demanded from medical authorities-together place the campaign at the intersection of environmental and medical histories of the western theater.”
Christopher Slocombe is assistant director of admissions at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. He earned his BA in political science and communication studies from Marquette University and his MS in history with distinction from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Slocombe’s current work includes a project exploring race and Civil War memory in Corinth and a piece on Freedmen’s education and post-Civil War military occupation in Old Tishomingo/Alcorn County.
History Is Lunch is sponsored by the John and Lucy Shackelford Charitable Fund of the Community Foundation for Mississippi. The weekly lecture series of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History explores different aspects of the state's past. The hour-long programs are held in the Craig H. Neilsen Auditorium of the Museum of Mississippi History and Mississippi Civil Rights Museum building at 222 North Street in Jackson and livestreamed on RUclips and Facebook.